{"id":213,"date":"2012-07-10T21:27:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T02:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/fathertime\/?p=213"},"modified":"2012-07-10T21:29:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T02:29:00","slug":"detours-accidents-and-oversize-loads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"Detours, Accidents, and Oversize Loads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week did not go as planned.<\/p>\n

Monday night I was 90% packed for a road trip with the girls to Chicago the next day. Very early Tuesday morning, I received a call from my mom saying that my grandmother, who has been in a nursing home for over a year now, was being rushed to the hospital. It didn’t look good. So instead of driving eight hours to Chicago on Tuesday, the girls and I drove eight hours the other way, to South Carolina. No fun rest stops<\/a> this time, just some hard driving to be with the family.<\/p>\n

The girls took the change of plans pretty well, all things considered. It helped that I reminded them that there were a few animals at the zoo in South Carolina that we didn’t get to see two weeks ago when we were there. Once we were in South Carolina, the girls were fine. They love being at their Grandma’s house, which makes their Grandma and me happy.<\/p>\n

We spent time at the hospital and at my grandparents’ house. I didn’t want the girls to see their great-grandmother in the state she was in, but I did want them to be around family during this hard time. Dying is part of life, and I want to help my girls start to grapple with that. They asked me some tough questions, and it was clear that Hannah, at least, had done some thinking about this topic. I mentioned at one point that our bodies aren’t designed to live forever, and Hannah corrected me: They were meant to live forever, but Adam and Eve messed that plan up. Good point, Hannah.<\/p>\n

It was also clear to me that Hannah understood how sad this situation is for her great-grandfather. My grandparents have been married for sixty-something years. After my grandfather retired from the Army, he opened a furniture upholstery shop. He and Grandma worked together at that shop every day, Grandma in the front office meeting customers and handling the books, Grandpa in the back doing the upholstery work. Sure, they each have had other friends over the years, but they’ve lived life together as a couple for decades. Decades. Watching Grandma slip away is very, very hard for Grandpa. Hannah has a sense of that, of what it means to be with someone for so long. I hope she’ll hold on to that, and know that a long, happy marriage is a possibility, even if it didn’t happen for her parents.<\/p>\n

Friday afternoon, on the way back to the hospital, another unplanned event occurred: We were in a car accident. I was slowing to a stop at a red light when a Dodge Ram pickup truck turned into my lane, hitting the back left passenger door. There was a loud bang with a certain audio quality that I had never heard before. I realized we had been hit, so I stepped on the brakes. We slowed down, but we also rotated 90 degrees before we stopped. That was an eerie feeling, hitting the brakes but not stopping in the usual fashion.<\/p>\n

The girls and I were fine. The other guy was fine. I’ll need a new back left door, which is all crumpled in now, but the accident could have been much worse. It’s a bummer that the new car I bought in December is messed up, but I keep thinking that had we been in my old car, a Saturn sedan, that Dodge Ram would have rolled right over us.<\/p>\n

Last week was one of those weeks when being a parent seems almost overwhelming. It’s challenging enough dealing with the expected challenges of two girls growing up–keeping them healthy, overseeing their education, teaching them about money, dealing with tantrums. When you add in a few unexpected challenges, like helping them understand death and dying and comforting them after a car accident, well, the enormity of being a father becomes clear.<\/p>\n

I love those girls so, so much. I want them to know that they are loved. I want to help them become confident, intelligent, compassionate young women. I want to be the best father to them that I can be.<\/p>\n

Some weeks are easier than others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week did not go as planned. Monday night I was 90% packed for a road trip with the girls to Chicago the next day. Very early Tuesday morning, I received a call from my mom saying that my grandmother, who has been in a nursing home for over a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,23,35,77],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accidents","tag-flexibility","tag-loss","tag-marriage","column","twocol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}