Final Solution

Obviously I haven’t been dieting since the last post. My father died on January 26. The hardest part was not getting to say goodbye. I have never gotten to say goodbye to any important person in my life who died. All of them went without me there, my friend Mickey, my grandmother, Wrenn’s grandmother, my Mom, and now Dad. I don’t know what I could possibly have done, but I somehow think I would be able to pull them back from the abyss if only I could have held their hands. It has always amazed me that notes and words from dying people to their loved ones say the same thing, “I love you”. That’s really all there is to say in the end. I said it lots of times, always ending our conversations with those words. Still, if I had been thin, I would have gone at Christmas when Eva and Nick went down. Knowing he would be disappointed in my flab, I stayed away.

I made a decision to have lap band surgery. It is scheduled for September 12, oddly enough, my Dad’s birthday. I have no idea if that’s some kind of cosmic joke or maybe a word of approval from beyond the grave. I would really, really love to be strong enough not to need anyone’s approval, but I am not and have never been. I listened to Buffy St Marie singing “ I’m cutting my own way, through my own day, and I dare say, it’s my way”. I sing along with a sense of despair. I wonder what kind of life I could have created if I had not let others dictate my actions. I’m not even going to consider what I would do if I had it to live over, because I don’t. The road ahead will be tough and require a lot of sacrifice, but it will be better than the alternative. Dad lived to be 91, but his quality of life was miserable for many years, and in the end he died alone, hard and without dignity. I want to find a better way.