This week's theme/prompt is
TAILS - "Brave"
Tell about a time when you felt brave or showed bravery. (This is
TAILS so it needs to be a true/real post from your own life.)
These are pictures of my parents that I have hung on the living room wall. Most things I write about here have to do with my kids and me being a parent, but before I was a parent I was a daughter.
I lost both of my parents to cancer. My mother died 13 years ago. When we first found out she had cancer we were very optimistic that she would beat it. I took her to all her doctor appointment and sat with her at every chemo therapy sessions. Most times we were at the hospital three times a week. I moved home, took care of her, feed her, bathed her, did all the chores that she normally would and helped my father any way I could with my mother and the house. This time was very hard on my father, my mother was always the "boss" of the family and it was difficult to see her so sick and in so much pain. It was also difficult for him to try and take over as head of the house after my mother doing it for so many years. About five months after my mother was diagnosed with cancer she passed away. I tried my hardest to be strong for my father and continued to live at home and help him any way I could. My father was in his seventies at the time and my teenager brother was still in high school at the time.
My father also died of cancer. He passed away almost six years ago. He was sick for a very long time, but the doctors just thought it was one thing or another. They finally admitted him into the hospital and they finally found out it was cancer. Unfortunately it was too late to try and do anything about it. We decided to take my father home and let him spend his remaining days in his own house and bed. By then me and hubby were married and living with my father as he was in his eighties so we took care of him. Three days later my father passed away in his own bed surround by me, two of my sisters and my youngest brother. Losing my mother was hard, but losing my father was even harder. I was so used to having my father around, he was not only my father, he was my hero. Seeing him those last few days unable to eat or use the bathroom by himself was took a serious mental toll on me. I had to feed him, sit with him at night because of the pain and delirium, and my wonderful husband helped him take care of his personal hygiene and bathroom needs. I had to be strong during this time because of my daughter Aurora, she was extremely close to my father. She was old enough to know what was going on and she was old enough to be upset about it.
What does all of this have to do with the weeks theme of being "brave", well I'm not sure it really does. Do I consider myself brave for going through all this...no not really, but I do feel that it was an extremely difficult time in my life and that some how I managed to be strong enough to get through it all. Is bravery just considered a physical act or is it mental too? I'm not sure, but if it is also mental then maybe I was brave, or maybe I was just trying to be a good daughter.
Kids these days are not the same as when we were children. Things have changed drastically since we were kids. Back then computers were something you saw in movies and they were huge, now a days computers are not only in every home, most 4 year olds know how to work them. Because of changes like this the way kids learn and process information is different too. New World Kids: The Parent's Guide To Creative Thinking is a book that helps to show us how to do just that.
