Normal Doesn't Exist Anymore

When you're father's will to live has been shattered by one sentence from a doctor, it's truly hard to fight through the knot in your chest and keep your own will to live. You put on a smile and you hug and kiss him as much as his pain tolerance will allow, you try to do your homework, you try to love your boyfriend, you try to keep up with family and friend relationships... But the truth is that nothing else matters to you except your father's happiness and well being. You'd risk your own life to let him have just one more breath on this earth, to get one more kiss from your mother, to watch one more inning of Yankees baseball. It's a feeling I really can't describe, you know that it's wrong to lessen your feelings for everyone else in your life but you can't help it, you need to focus all of your love into your dad... He deserves it, he needs it.





There is no such thing as normal anymore, but you can remember normal. Sunday night dinners together turn into take out from the diner. Watching our Yankees games together is reduced to watching them on a laptop at the edge of the hospital bed. Talking to Daddy on his lunch break is turned into spending ever spare moment with him. Your mother sleeping in on Saturdays has turned into her barely getting 4 hours a night. Your parents being financially stable has turned into affording groceries and the mortgage and nothing more. You being excited to visit your parents on the weekends has turned into anxiety because you know you will have so many chores and errands to run for them, while squeezing in homework, when all you really want to do is fall asleep in the chair next to Daddy. You don't know what good sleep is anymore, feeling rested will never be something you ever experience again. You can't listen to the radio because songs pull at every heart string. You can't eat certain foods because they bring such vivid memories, like Daddy making you his Lehnert famous grilled cheese and French toast for the first time.... You think you're happy one second, but the next you are crying. There will never be any such thing as normal ever again for you. This is the new reality.

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