Thankful Thursday - The Road Less Traveled

I guess it’s fair to say that life presented the option to me to take “the road less traveled” at a very young age, even though that road was one that didn’t fit into my meticulously thought out, life “plan” at the time. My father passed away after a nearly life long battle with Lupus when I was barely 16 years old. Like any child that has lost a parent, I was devastated. Mostly grief stricken by the loss of such a significant person in my life but also completely distraught over all of the major life events that would no longer play out like I had always imagined, daydreamed about, even planned and in some instances, Type A orchestrated in my mind, since I was a small child. My father wouldn’t see me graduate from high school, move me into my first dorm, cheer me on during undergraduate graduation and then see me get my graduate degree, as well. I’d be walking down the aisle one day, alone. He’d never get the chance to see himself in my child’s eyes as he held him for the very first time. Growing up with a chronically ill parent – you have a tendency to daydream about the future. You imagine better days, celebrations with no need for medications or dialysis treatments, or Dad passing out and being rushed to the hospital in the middle of Christmas Eve Mass. All of my dreams seemed to vanish in a matter of moments that sunny, March morning that I watched my father die in our home.