June 4th, 2012
What's worse than being sick? Being sick and having two hyper toddlers running around that want you healthy and joyful. Unrelenting bosses who don't care how you feel. They only know that you are Superman, and nothing can bring you down. They need me no matter what. Being sick is not an excuse or an option.
I can feel the physical decline begin. The scratchiness in the throat, the prelude to the - Oh shit, I'm getting fucking sick- thought crosses my mind like an incandescent light bulb being flicked on. The runny nose drips like a leaky faucet. Coating the back of my throat. To make matters worse, it gives me double the trouble as the mucus finds its way out of my nostrils, like when my two-year-old cries.
I take care of myself, doing my best to avoid getting sick. Appearing physically healthy outside would encourage my internal self to get with the program and feel healthy. I should have taken more meds and less meditation.
I don't want to deal with it. I want to return the sickness that is overtaking my body to wherever it came from. The fatigue is already setting in. When I move, the aching in my joints restricts what little flexibility my age hasn't taken away from me. I need control again. My body refuses to listen to me and gives way to my weakness. But I can't. Not with these emotions I am dealing with. There is no returning the flu when it comes to you. There is no returning the grief when it happens to you. You have to stay strong for the ones that need you and depend on you.
My kids need Superman. They need my body filled with vigor and strength. They are sick as well. They need me to swoop in at a single bound and change their diapers that their stomach isn't allowing to keep clean. My boys need me to arrive on time for their four-hour medicine cycle. They need my night vision to find them in the middle of the dark night to take care of the chills attacking their skin.
They just don't need Dad; they need their superhero. But Superman feels down. I feel like I am drowning in my sickness and grief like Superman did at the bottom of Lex Luthor's pool. Only Miss Teschmacher isn't here to save me. She's back in Hackensack.
My age conspires with my sickness in their evil plot to take control of my boy's universe and take me down. My head pounds and I feel weak as each day goes by. My chest fills with fluid, and my nose can no longer store it in its passages. I am tired without a break in sight. Mentally, I try to keep the fight on, but it is so easy to give up. I would like to fly around the earth to switch the world's rotation and make things right. My grief over losing my wife joined in with my sickness and age, forming its own Legion of Doom, giving way to more bad days than good. Their pressure weighed on me, so I broke down before my kids. I mixed tears in their milk as I fed them breakfast from their cereal bowl. I'm in the diner from hell where Superman felt mortal for the first time. Getting my ass kicked by a truck driver. I am down. I am down in all aspects of the word.
I hear a cough. It's loud, like a seal. It blocks out everything else around me. The pain I am in, the misery I feel, the lack of fight in me. All of it is blocked out.
Something so simple yet so powerful. My youngest son has been sick. I'm his Superman. I must try to be impervious to my weaknesses and cast them to the wayside. He needs his third dose of Tylenol. I have to give him his breathing treatment so he doesn't get croup. The source of the seal cough.
I remind myself that I can not get sick. I can not feel down. I can not get into a car accident or plane crash. I can't get cancer or get shot working my job as a police officer. I have to be their Superman, their everything. That has to be my motivation. My body must fight off the weakness and destroy the evil plot against me to regain control.
My son is on a runaway train or suspended from a helicopter. He needs me. They both need me. There will always be new nemesis; once you defeat one, there is another. Doesn't every superhero at one time or another have to fight their inner self to come out stronger on the other side? History has always taught us that. I will always win.
Where there is weakness for my boys. I will be there. When they need a parent. I will guide them. When they need a friend. I will be their best friend. When they need a hand, I will offer two. I will conquer my inability to motivate myself for them because, without me, they are naked. Like Metropolis is naked without Superman.
They need not fear, though. All they have to do is "look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's" their Superman!
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I am reading from the beginning....this post is beautiful, strong, hopeful, and devoted.
ReplyDeleteI hope that you can feel the energy and support you are cultivating through your blog. Like a warm blanket, you and your boys are being covered in virtual love.