Today

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life"

You've heard it before, right? Not like I just did.

When Dad was admitted into the VA hospital in early January to finally get his surgery done, he was so upbeat. He was estatic to have a date set and an end to his hemotoma, Ralph (we had named him) in sight.

On the spartan industrial walls of unit 2F (surgical wing) that he was in awaiting surgery there were white dry erase boards with permanent marker sketching out:

Room #:

Today is:

Your RN is:

Your CNA is:

Anticipated discharge date:

I believe these are called Patient Communications Boards in the private sector. Heck, they could have been called that at the VA as well, except for the little fact that no one ever wrote anything on them. Day after day would go by with no updates. Zero communication.

I never saw any patients question it, but I always felt that if it were me sitting in one of those hospital beds, I would feel an ever greater sense of loss of time and normality to have it continually in front of my face.... blank date, blank discharge date, etc.

One day before Dad's surgery, he lept out of his bed with agility and energy we hadn't seen from him in a few months. He walked over to the blank board on his half of the room and filled in:

Today is: "the first day of the rest of your life."

Days and weeks after Dad had left that room, the words remained. I guess since no one thought to write on them, no one thought to erase them either. I would see them from the hallway, though, as I would walk past heading to or from another of his rooms. In fact, the one day I got to get him out in a wheelchair for a bit, I wheeled him past it on the way back, so he could see it again.

Until tonight, I had totally forgotten about that. Much of the last month, for me, has been reliving in my mind the hard parts of the hospital visit. The sad times. The pitfalls. Even more annoying than having them play over and over, is that I'm generally an optimist and Dad gave me 33 whole years of good stuff to think about. I really, really, don't want to dwell on the last few weeks. On top of those flashes, real life has been hitting pretty hard too. Not working, debt, moving - it's been nearly more than I can bear. Diems have been Carpe-ing me instead of the other way around.

During my drive to Richmond on Saturday, though, I had little thoughts running through my head of little ways to progress, small things I could do to begin digging out from this hole, prayers being answered. Now that it's a few days past that, and I've acted on them, I actually feel pretty good.

A few moments ago, I began preparing for bed. As the thoughts of what I had done today and what was ahead tomorrow passed, I could almost hear Dad's voice clearly say, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

Thanks, Pa.