Archive through January 22, 2001

The ClubHouse: The Game II - Mysterious Puzzler: Discussions/Challenges: The Never-Ending Personal Thread: Archive through January 22, 2001

Elitist

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 09:18 am Click here to edit this post

Since Az told me to $hit, I am starting this thread.

I am going to jump in deep pretty quick, so get your waders on. And Guru, please be gentle - my first story is depressing as hell.

I have mentioned before my dad dying when I was 20. This had a profound affect on me, and I have never really talked to anyone about it in depth.

It was the summer after my sophomore year in college. I and some guy and girl friends of mine went down to my home on the farm for the annual Fourth of July picnic. We were having a blast, and of course enjoying being with my family. It was one of those wild, exuberient times when you are with good, young friends.

We went back to school, and one week later, at midnight, the phone rang. My aunt was calling me to tell me my dad had just died, and that I needed to come home. I was half asleep and said I would be there tomorrow. I tossed and turned the whole night. This was totally unexpected.

The worst thing is that I had and Organic Chemistry test the next morning, and for some dumb reason thought I had to take it. So I took the test in a daze, and afterwards told my prof I would be gone for a few days because my dad had died. This was the first person I had told.

I drove the 350 miles home by myself, and saw my mom devastated. It was the worst possible thing that could happen.

I thought afterwards that it would only take a little time to get over his death, and that I would be OK. But looking back, you can see my grades plummet over the next year and a half, until I shook myself enough to bring them up to par. And I felt like a cloud hung over my head for years.

After college, I went into graduate school and went on a systematic path of self-destruction. I had never drunk before, but I became known as a big party animal. I was lucky enough to work for one of the top chemists in the world, but my drinking and partying nearly caused me to not get my degree. I was even engaged to be married, but that even fell through.

I did graduate and get a good job, but even then, thinking of my dad could make me break down in tears. It wasn't until about 13 years after his death that I could look back and think about him and not cry or get depressed. Of course I am crying now, dummy.

I know I still have a lot of issues with this, but one I just don't understand. Why wasn't there somebody out there that could see what I was going through and help? Isn't there something that can be done that helps the pain and sorrow and loss when you lose someone?

Sorry. I still think about him, and sometimes I see him alive in my dreams. I guess we never forget the ones we love.

Please somebody come up with something lighter for the next story.

Azriel

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 09:26 am Click here to edit this post

Okay, now I'm going to work crying. I don't even want to think about my daddy dying.
~hugs Elite~

Elitist

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 09:31 am Click here to edit this post

Thanks Az.

Guruchaz

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 09:35 am Click here to edit this post

I think when you lose someone that has been a big part of your life, it's very disturbing inside and for some people it can carry on for years. We sometimes expect people to look inside ourselves and tell how we are feeling but that simply isn't possible 100%. Your friends and the people you talked to, especially those who may not have known your father or much about him, could never feel the same pain that you feel. Sometimes individuals scream inside hoping others can come rescue them but it's evident that they must eventually sort things out and rescue themselves. It's very important to talk about it and to keep contact with friends and family so things can eventually get sorted out in one's mind.

I lost my grandmother when I was a senior in high school and my grandfather not too many years after that and I thought the world of them. I have some sort of idea how you are feeling, but again, not 100%. I'm very sorry about your dad, E.

Joni

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 09:40 am Click here to edit this post

{{{Big hug for elit}}} You said at the end of your post that you still see your dad in your dreams. I know what that is like. You need to remember the time that you had with him.

My dad saw me once. I was three days old and he left soon after. He went and married another woman {Who was never really his wife because he never divorced my mom} and had two more kids. When I was 5 he died. I never got to know him. All my life I knew that I had an older brother named Todd and two younger siblings. {I didn't know if they were girls or boys } As I got older I searched and searched for them with no luck. One time I was stationed in Chicago while I was in the Navy and I knew that my father's family was from Il so I sat in the library one night and searched through every phone book they had. No luck. About a year and a half later I was in Norfolk Va and I was sitting there at the computer at the library searching Yahoo and decided on a whim to try looking in People Search to see if I could find any relatives. There popped on the screen the name and number of my father's parents. I remembered their names from the death certificate. I was scared and happy. I got home and dialed the number. The person picked up and I asked if there were any relatives of my father. The guy said that he was his brother and asked who I was. I told him that I was his daughter. There was a a moment of silence and then you could hear him telling the others in the room. My grandma got on the phone and talked with me for a little while. She told me that Todd and my two sisters had been looking for me . She took my number and promised to give it to them. Over the next few days I talked and cried with them all. It was a wonderful feeling. I found out that I had two neices and I was excited. Less than a week later one of my neices died of Sids. The moment I found out I wanted to go up there and be with them. My sister told me not to though. She said that they did not want to meet face to face under these bad conditions. I understood. That summer my brother sent me a plane ticket up there. I walked off the plane and there was my brother and one of my sisters. I held onto them so tight. It was wonderful. The next day I got to meet the other sister. We are all great friends now and talk to eachother on a regular basis. I am going to see them in Febuarry and I am quite excited. So there is a story with a happy ending. Hope it wasn't too long :)

Juju2bigdog

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 10:27 am Click here to edit this post

Looks like this is the big cry thread. (not joking, really did cry)

What a nice thing, Joni, that you ended up with finding your family.

Both of my parents died young. I was 18 when my father died and 19 when my mother died. I had an older sister who was married with children and living in another town. That left me and my 17 year old brother alone in the house. We kept the house, and I finished raising my brother. We both went to college on scholarships. I went from being a child one day to an adult the next. And that's when I learned a person does whatever a person has to do. You just go do it. Chances are it will work out okay, and it has for me.

Spamgirl

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 10:31 am Click here to edit this post

My mom died, but y'all already know about that.

(Insert my sad story here)

Elitist

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 12:39 pm Click here to edit this post

Spam, I know. When you first told me this, it brought back a lot of pain. It always does when I hear someone young has lost a parent. The worst thing is I know some of what you are going through, but I can't know exactly what you are going through. So it seems so trite to say I'm sorry, when what you really want to do is give you a big bear hug and cry my eyes out.

Guruchaz

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 12:47 pm Click here to edit this post

Ok, here goes. People joke about E being my daddy and this is ironic. I'm surprised people haven't said the same thing of Merlin.

If any of you read the "family" thread that Az started, you'll notice that my family is said to resemble the Jetsons. For the most part, that's true. I came from a your average nice home with 4 siblings (myself being the youngest). Both of my parents worked.

Mom was the optimist of the household and made a lot of the decisions. Dad was the pessimist with a bit of a temper (never physically abusive although I remember getting it a few times with the belt, deserved I'm sure) and would drink from time to time which magnified the pessimism/anger. I can remember times when I was younger where we did things together but now it's hard to remember the last time we actually shared an open moment or personal time together. I remember he loved going hunting, camping, hiking and all that but rarely would he ask me to go. Either he would go with a buddy of his or would go off on his own. He is a whiz at fixing things. However, he never really showed me how to do the things fathers usually show sons how to do: put oil in the car, fix a flat tire, mow the lawn, etc. I remember showing interest and then told to go find something else to do because I might get hurt or that it was too dangerous. He is still particular about mowing his own lawn. Of course I can now fix a flat tire and mow the lawn but I take my car to have oil put in it. You get my drift. He was always so distant it seemed and my attempts to stay close to him got to the point where I just started to give up the effort, feeling it would never happen. We talk and keep in touch and there's no animosity but maybe just a little regret that we didn't turn out to be closer. Most son's rolemodels are their father. I can't say that mine is and sometimes that hurts inside. I love my dad because he's my dad, but there is very little openness and closeness with him. I don't feel like I could talk to him about anything and everything. Everyone should have someone they can feel open to, don't you think? That's why I'm lucky to have met Tonia.

So, there you go.

Juju2bigdog

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 03:29 pm Click here to edit this post

Elit, I wonder if, at the time of your father's death, you felt, maybe subconsciously, that it was your fault because you were just having fun and not paying attention and concentrating on yourself? Which, of course, is an absurd idea because no child can prevent the death of a parent, and they certainly don't cause it by being self-centered. Kids/young adults are naturally self-centered.

Thirty years later I still have dreams in which my parents are alive, and I have come to expect that I always will. I think it is probably part of the continuum of life.

Juju2bigdog

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 03:35 pm Click here to edit this post

Yes, Guru, it's good you have Tonia.

Maybe it's never too late with your dad. After all, he is still alive now...

Misslibra

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 06:15 pm Click here to edit this post

Well I'm lucky enough to have both of my parents alive, even though their divorce now. which I mention in the hot tub thread. Their divorce was a major impact on my life. I became wild, rebellious. None of my other siblings were home at the time, so I had no one to talk to. That was until I met my best friend til this day. I would practically live at her house, because going home was to painful.

Amazingly enough, my mother has forgiven my father for the things that he did to her. And they are friends. There isn't anything my father wouldn't do for her, even though he is remarried now, with a son. She can call him up, and ask him for anything, and he is right there for her and me. I love both of my parents for that, because they showed me the true meaning of forgiveness. By not letting hate destroy you.

It taught me you have to learn to let things go, and move on, because that's a lot of baggage to be carrying around, when it so much easier to forgive. For this reason I admire the relationship that my Mother, and Father have.

Sure my Mother was a bitter woman for some time after the divorce. She even went and got herself a hand gun, and had it registerd, because she said he would never put his hands on her again.

And it was a very hard time for me, since I was the only child still at home. My grades dropped in school, and I actually felt like I wanted to die. We all were in deep pain. But some how we made it through. And all is forgiven. Because it's just impossible to live a healthy life carrying around hate, and pain all your life.

Guruchaz

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 06:20 pm Click here to edit this post

Thanks Ju.

My dad and I communicate but too much time has passed to flip a switch and turn on the openness. There are a lot of things I just don't feel comfortable talking to him about.

The closest he ever got was when he would practically stand over my shoulder giving his opinion on everything I tried to do or tell me I wasn't doing it right. "Backseat driver", so to speak. Anyhoo

Guruchaz

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 06:24 pm Click here to edit this post

That's an amazing story ML. I'm glad that situation ended up in the positive.

Azriel

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 06:33 pm Click here to edit this post

I just went and hugged my mom and daddy. I feel incredibly lucky that I had them growing up and still have them.

Merlin

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 07:54 pm Click here to edit this post

Great courage, Elitist, by jumping out there like you have with starting this thread and being so open. This truly may be the never-ending thread.

One of the first things you say is that your story is depressing as hell. It is sad because you lost your dad. My dad died a few years ago and I know what it is like. But I have to say to you that the story you shared did not leave me depressed.

The reason why is that you experienced something painful and have turned it into something very positive. Take a look at who you are to your wife and your children. I cannot imagine you ever leaving them to where they are on their own.

What I think I hear you saying is that after your dad died, you felt like you were left in this position. You were on your own. There was no one out there to watch over you. You didn't say how the relationship was, with your dad and yourself, so I am not sure.

Why did no one see what you were going through? Good question. Maybe they thought you were just being a 20 year old college student who was doing what *some* 20 year old college students do, drink and party. The best answer to this is to ask the ones who you think should have noticed what you were going through. You may be surprised to see what you find out.

Is there something that can be done to help the pain and suffering when you lose a loved one, I think there is. You just did it.
Maybe it is the testosterone curse men have, you know the one, where we can't tell others we are in pain and suffering and how we feel.
You stated that you have never really talked about it in great depth with anyone. My question is to you, have you shared this with your wife? I am assuming so, but just checking.

I don't see my dad in dreams, but I have a picture of him where he is looking directly at me. It is a close up shot, and I can see into his eyes. The picture is located slightly to the side and behind my monitor. As I am looking at my monitor, his picture is in my vision. I see it as I type this, and he is smiling at me, in the ever so slight way that was his style.

Azriel

Saturday, January 20, 2001 - 09:08 am Click here to edit this post

Blah, I've been here for over an hour. I've looked at topics and wrote some posts that I didn't post. I just typed my responses all out, read them over and then erased them. That's crazy, isn't it?

When I was a teenager, I had a whole book of poetry that I wrote and I never showed it to anyone. I ended up destroying the notebook.

Spamgirl

Saturday, January 20, 2001 - 09:29 am Click here to edit this post

I had one of those, AZ... I ended up getting some of it published... :)

That was my way of releasing it and the emotions in it... by letting it out to be read by the outside world

Guruchaz

Saturday, January 20, 2001 - 10:14 am Click here to edit this post

That is a moving story Merlin. I look at the picture I have on my desk of my grandfather and sometimes wished he was still here. I'm thankful that I have a picture to remind me to never forget.

Elitist

Saturday, January 20, 2001 - 02:13 pm Click here to edit this post

Thanks for all the responses guys. It has taken me a day just to get over dredging that up - didn't realize it was still that much of an issue.

To take things on a lighter note, as I said we partied pretty hard in graduate school. I had 3 roommates that lived in a residential area in a fairly large house for a while. One of my roommates was tutoring a freshman and her roommate in chemistry. It was kinda of interesting, because the girl's roommate was legally blind, and had to have special equipment and books to be able to take the courses in college. She could see somewhat, but not enough to be able to read textbooks.

Well we had one of our all out parties which we were famous for. My roommate was interested in the girl he was tutoring, and invited them to show up, which they did.

The party was crazy as usual - lasting till dawn with quite a few sleep over guests on couches and floors - and a big mess to clean up. I got up and left about 2 p.m., cause it was kind of a tradition for us to play volleyball on Sunday afternoon. I wouldn't eat all day Sunday, play volleyball for a couple of hours, then pig out for dinner.

For some reason I didn't see any of my other roommates till late that evening. One of the other guys and I ran into each other at home, and started talking. This guy, Bruno, was short, blond, hefty, and funny as all git out. But he was acting kinda strange this evening. Kept saying "that was a Great party wasn't it"?. I finally asked the inevitable question "So, did you get lucky" to which he chuckled. Knowing I was on to something, I started to press the issue.

Finally I had to say "well did you get laid or not?"

His reply?

"Well I guess you would have to call it blind luck"

Spamgirl

Sunday, January 21, 2001 - 09:22 pm Click here to edit this post

ROFL Oh man, that's funny...

Spamgirl

Sunday, January 21, 2001 - 09:26 pm Click here to edit this post

My turn for a somewhat funny story... the only one I can think of :)

When I was in high school, my best friend was a girl named Heather... now, heather was... husky... cough... but she was pretty... I never even though of it, we'd been friends so long...

Well, every day when she came into a certain class we had together, I'd say "Hey Hebber" or some variation on the name... well, one day I said, at the top of my lungs, not thinking at all:

"Hey Heffer"... well, it sounded like the cow, and she tackled me and laid the smack down... but man, it was hilarious...

OH, another one with Heather... one day we were in that same class and everyone was working... Heather was sitting beside me with her walkman on... I bent over to pick up a book or something and let one RIP!!! It practically shook the whole building! So when everyone turned around, I looked at Heather with this horrified look on my face... when she realized something was going on, she looked up, smiled at everyone and waved... she still doesn't know what it was about :)

Elitist

Monday, January 22, 2001 - 07:22 am Click here to edit this post

And I thought no one appreciated my band camp story, Spam :)

Elitist

Monday, January 22, 2001 - 07:56 am Click here to edit this post

I wasn't going to talk about this, because it is again really personal, but it is so much a part of my life that I would feel like I was lying if I didn't let you guys know about it.

My wife and I tried to have kids for about 14 years after we got married. We had miscarriages, infertility tests, surgeries, ovulation tracking, and endless procreative sex. Though my wife had come to the decision much earlier, finally I realized we were not going to have children, something I/we desperately wanted. So with this sea change in my thinking we started looking into adoption.

We were very discouraged at first. My wife called many adoption agencies and found that it was common to wait years before a child would be placed with you, especially an infant. We finally went to a seminar with a local agency that specialized in international adoptions in hopes of learning more about it and domestic adoptions. The seminar was only us and one other couple, and was so discouraging about international adoptions we knew we couldn't go that route.

For some reason the other couple asked about domestic adoptions, and in passing the agency told them about a facilitator group in another state. These people do advertising and help put birthparents and adoptive parents together. We didn't think much about it and went home.

About two weeks later, the other lady called my wife scared half out of her wits. She had called the facilitator and had been told that they could be chosen to be parents within months. They were so shaken by the looming possibilty of being parents that they decided to slow down, but thought we would like to know about it.

We took the ball and ran with it. According to the facilitator, their average time for placement was about three months. We thought they were exaggerating, but decided to work with them.

Then came the preparation. We signed with the agency who had done the seminar, and did the dreaded "home-study" where a trained professional comes into your home and looks it over and grills you to see if you are fit parents. And we had to fill out all the paperwork to show we were good citizens and would be able to provide for the child - including police checks on the local and state level to make sure we weren't crooks.

We finally did all the preliminary work, and signed the facilitator's contract and sent in their fee and started the wait.

Seven days later, we got a phone call - A baby boy had been born that morning, and the birthparents had chosen us (from a resume) as possible parents - could we talk to them by phone? We were astounded and amazed. My wife spoke with the birthmom for about two hours on the phone, and afterwards we were asked to fly to the state they were in to meet them and possibly meet and receive the baby.

Though my wife hates flying, we jumped on a plane the next morning and flew out. When we got to our destination, we rented a car and drove to the hospital. The facilitator met us and led us to a small conference room, where we met the birthparents. We were grilled for about 2 hours, setting rules on how we would interact, if we were good people, etc. Then the birthmom's mother, who had no idea of the pregnancy till they had to call her to get them to the hospital, came in and grilled us and fought with her daughter. I don't know how, but finally everything settled down.

We were asked to leave for a bit, and we wandered the hospital killing time. The facilitator then said if we needed to get anything for the baby we might want to take a little time and go do it. We didn't have ANYTHING! We drove to a WalMart, grabbed a basket, and started piling in anything and everything we thought we would need for the baby. Car seats, clothes, bottles, diapers - we had no idea what we were doing, we just grabbed whatever looked good.

We then went back to the hospital, and the facilitator told us to follow. We went into a hospital room, and there was the birth family, including grandmother. The birthmom got up with a tiny infant, the birthfather kissed the baby, and then they brought him to my wife and said "Here is your son". To say the least, we were all in tears, my wife and mine not just from happiness, but from the pain we saw and shared from these people in making such a difficult decision, and from their sacrifice that meant so much to us.

We talked for a bit, then went back to the nursery to be trained in caring for a baby. Needless to say, the first time I put on a diaper I had it on backwards. Then after signing some papers, we were released from the hospital with our son. We soon found a hotel (we were really unprepared) and spent the first night as a family.

Love is an interesting thing - many people think you can not love a child that is not genetically yours, that somehow there are always reservations in your heart. I know that just the opposite is true in our case - our love for our son and daughter are unconditional and indistinguishable from any other parent's.

You were not born of my body, but you live in my heart.

Spamgirl

Monday, January 22, 2001 - 10:25 am Click here to edit this post

That is truly a wonderful story... got me in tears here :)