Coulda Woulda Shoulda

I am desperately in need of a new normal. Well, any normal really. With the flux and the change that has taken over my life in the last month, the old normal no longer applies. New is going to be mandatory whether I like it or not. We're all facing it down - me, my sister, my step-mother, my dad - so it's not like I'm alone. 

I feel like a whiner, though, as I write this. If I am brutally honest with myself (and all of you by extension), my life is the least impacted. I can cry all I want, but in a few hours I'll be back in Austin where much of my life will remain the same as it's been - work, tennis, dogs, etc. Only my insides will have changed. I've seen my dad at his oldest and most helpless. I've witnessed his hallucinations and I've heard him implore 'them' go. I can't un-remember that. 

We can argue that the kind of change I'm going through is difficult, but by comparison? I don't think so. My family will struggle harder with the new normal. Their daily lives will change. My step-mom is already dealing with an empty house. She complained about my dad sitting in his chair watching TV all day and having to cut his food and open his Ding-Dongs, but she's facing a loneliness she never imagined she would feel. Once my dad gets released from the rehab facility, we're moving him into assisted living a mile from my sister's house in Las Vegas. From then on, she will add his daily wants and needs, ups and downs to her already busy life. 

Then there's my dad. He stands to undergo the most change in this. He wants to go home and he never will. When the ambulance carried him away that night, he had no idea he would never go home again. He had no idea my step-mom had reached the point of no-return - she's eighty-eight and can only do so much for him - and that my sister and I would need to step in and make a bunch of life-altering decisions for him. We took away his freedom to choose. We did that. Even though it's in his best interests, it's not easy. 

I hate his sadness, fear, and confusion. I hate that I can't be there with him every day to reassure him that I love him and will take care of him. Hell, that part alone has to be hard enough for him, the role reversal. I'm taking care of him. For forty-eight years, he took care of me. 

But I can't stay. And maybe that's why I'm struggling so much. I want to. I wish I could. I can't go broke, drain my savings to balance two lives - one in San Diego and one in Austin. I have to go home. I have to work. Dad would understand that. When I told him I planned to go back to Europe after my first trip there last spring, he said I needed to before I couldn't. I know he would never want me to give up my life. 

But still... It doesn't stop me from wishing I could stay. Or that I would stay. Isn't that it? The crux of it? The difference between ability (can) and desire (want). Coulda, woulda, shoulda. It's the 'shoulda' that I fear the most , I think. Will I wish one day that I had stayed, blown through my savings, and skipped a little of my regularly scheduled life? Will I say "I should have stayed"?

Here I am, though, sitting on the floor beside Gate 14 waiting for my flight home. And whining about needing to find a new normal. At home. With all my things, my job, my friends. No one will even see the change in me or understand that inside I'm struggling. Maybe my dad and I have more in common in this that I thought. We both want a home, a normal, we'll never see again. But that is life, I suppose. Death, taxes, and change - eventually they come for all of us. Along the way, I guess we all just need to get through the best way we know how. Minimize the coulda, woulda, shouldas. Take a couple chances every now and again. Eat ice cream for dinner. Go for an ace on a second serve. And make sure "I love you, Dad" are the last words you say to your eight-nine year old father before you leave him to fly home. 

One day, probably sooner than later, I'll have to adjust to another new normal, one that doesn't include my dad. My family may not have been big on "I love yous" when I was growing up, but there was NO WAY I was going to leave my dad without making sure he knew exactly how I feel about him. I can second guess a lot of my decisions of late, but not that one. No coulda, woulda, shoulda there.