Life Questions from Heart Surgery

(Warning: philosophical rambling ahead!)

My dad had heart surgery a week ago. They fixed his mitral valve, did a bypass, and something else. He’s home now, doing well and driving himself (and my mom) crazy because he’s not supposed to do anything at all really. No lifting things bigger than a container of milk. No stretching open his arms. No using his arms to help get out of a chair or out of bed or really at all. We joked about getting him a strait jacket, or tying his arms to his side with a belt. You don’t really realize how much you use your arms.

He is allowed to snuggle his dog.

We went over to Dartmouth to pick him up on Saturday, the 4 of us (Jeremy, me, Bee, and Mom) piling into the mini-van for the gorgeous drive over Vermont roads. I swear, it’s never boring driving in Vermont.

Snowy trees along the road.

Mom directed us around to the right parking lot, then beelined right past the nurse’s station in the Cardiac unit and into Dad’s room. After the greetings, the complaints that he wasn’t ready to be released yet, the laughter at the hospital gown, we settled down to wait until the paperwork was complete.

On the wall was a white board of sorts with details about Dad, his surgery, his support person, and his meds.

And a spot for questions.

The white board on the wall.

I love these questions. They’re ones Dad had when he moved to this room, ones he verbalized apparently as soon as he was coherent after his surgery. They are, 100%, my dad in a nutshell. His sense of humor, his way of trying to understand his world.

They’re also perfect questions for life. What are we trying to accomplish? How long am I going to be here? How could our lives be changed if we actually verbalized those questions and truly thought about them?

The last one, “How do I escape?” wasn’t from Dad but from Bee, playing smartass and echoing their grandfather. It’s also apt.

For so many people, day-to-day life can feel like something to escape. Work can be mundane and soul-sucking; life can feel adventure-less.

It’s part of what we want to do as we go cruising. We are trying to accomplish life on our terms, with a true slowing down of time. How long am I going to be here? No idea. How about we make the most of whatever time we are lucky enough to have?

And then how do I escape. That’s the big one, in many ways. Maybe the accomplishment, in whatever time we have, is to create a life that doesn’t require escape.