Christmas time is filled with joy and happiness right? All your friends and family come to town. Everything is perfect. Well, mine was quite different. Although I had the awesome privilege of having my cousin in NY for the week or so, my family hit a bump in the road. A few days after Christmas was the downfall of my picture perfect winter break from school. My family plus my cousin were all eating dinner when my dad explained to us that he was diagnosed with Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. (If you would like a detailed description visit my dad’s or my mom’s blogs). I was a little hesitant to write this, I mean expressing my inner most feelings publicly is not my favorite thing to do. However I felt it would be an interesting point of view after the season has blown over a little.
My first reaction was plain confusion. What does this mean? Am I only going to have him for one more day? A week? Or is this something that we can all handle? The questions were flooding my brain, which ultimately led to crying. It was short and loud. I don’t really like crying unless I’m locked in my room crying over a sad movie.
But then, of course, Super Cousin comes to the rescue and inspires us all to get through it with God's grace. Thank you. You always do @supercousin.
Soon after this came the first stage of my experience, which was that I felt horrible. I was deeply saddened that he could no longer do the things he loved, which was mainly based around extreme, energetic, adventurous activities. This was basically like telling Pooh Bear he could never eat honey again. I mean who would do that? There was also a component of confusion here to. Would he be able to do these exciting things once again? Or never again?
Next came phase two—the guilt. Should I have said yes when dad asked me to go biking, hiking, or play basketball a thousand more times when my laziness or homework swallowed me up? Should I have asked him to do all these things with me before they were taken away like sleep in High School? Now these opportunities seem more far away than ever, yet I’m not sure if they are totally out of grasp.
This was something I had thought right from the beginning. To be real, I wasn’t scared of if he went. I knew he would be partying or hiking the tallest, most massive, most challenging mountain ever with our creator. I was scared of what would happen with my family. How would my mom handle it? She can barely handle my normal teenage amount of phone usage. Don’t get me wrong, I would miss him tons, but I would be more worried about taking the reigns and holding my family up. So technically, this was one of my first thoughts at the dinner table that night.
This is my favorite and final stage. I like to call it, “We can do it.” One day I said to myself, I think this can work. No matter how much this experience may suck, I know good will come out of it, and somehow everything will fall into place. Here’s a lovely example of this, since this situation I believe SO many more doors of opportunity have been opened for Cycling for Change. It has been amazing seeing how this is coming together - (40) days left! Hey, if this means I’ve got myself a buddy to drink milkshakes and binge-watch LOST with, I think we can get through this.
Well, there you have it, if you wanted to know why I was 43% less peppy from December to February now you know why.
Why whenever I heard anything about hearts or heart breaks from December to February my smile disappeared.
Why when I played basketball from December to February my defense was off the hook, and I was going crazy because I was SO MAD that my dad couldn’t play hardcore ball anymore.
OKAY, enough about me. Oh wait. This is called, “How I Handled my Dad’s Heart Break.” So now you know.
**
Hannah is a high school freshman and Social Media Intern at Birch House Press and Cycling for Change. She's a young writer in the making who wishes the United States were smaller so her family and friends in other states would be a bike ride away. She has three younger sisters and two people that feed her. One of them writes cool books and the other is planning a cross country charity bike ride this summer.
My first reaction was plain confusion. What does this mean? Am I only going to have him for one more day? A week? Or is this something that we can all handle? The questions were flooding my brain, which ultimately led to crying. It was short and loud. I don’t really like crying unless I’m locked in my room crying over a sad movie.
But then, of course, Super Cousin comes to the rescue and inspires us all to get through it with God's grace. Thank you. You always do @supercousin.
Soon after this came the first stage of my experience, which was that I felt horrible. I was deeply saddened that he could no longer do the things he loved, which was mainly based around extreme, energetic, adventurous activities. This was basically like telling Pooh Bear he could never eat honey again. I mean who would do that? There was also a component of confusion here to. Would he be able to do these exciting things once again? Or never again?
Next came phase two—the guilt. Should I have said yes when dad asked me to go biking, hiking, or play basketball a thousand more times when my laziness or homework swallowed me up? Should I have asked him to do all these things with me before they were taken away like sleep in High School? Now these opportunities seem more far away than ever, yet I’m not sure if they are totally out of grasp.
This was something I had thought right from the beginning. To be real, I wasn’t scared of if he went. I knew he would be partying or hiking the tallest, most massive, most challenging mountain ever with our creator. I was scared of what would happen with my family. How would my mom handle it? She can barely handle my normal teenage amount of phone usage. Don’t get me wrong, I would miss him tons, but I would be more worried about taking the reigns and holding my family up. So technically, this was one of my first thoughts at the dinner table that night.
This is my favorite and final stage. I like to call it, “We can do it.” One day I said to myself, I think this can work. No matter how much this experience may suck, I know good will come out of it, and somehow everything will fall into place. Here’s a lovely example of this, since this situation I believe SO many more doors of opportunity have been opened for Cycling for Change. It has been amazing seeing how this is coming together - (40) days left! Hey, if this means I’ve got myself a buddy to drink milkshakes and binge-watch LOST with, I think we can get through this.
Well, there you have it, if you wanted to know why I was 43% less peppy from December to February now you know why.
Why whenever I heard anything about hearts or heart breaks from December to February my smile disappeared.
Why when I played basketball from December to February my defense was off the hook, and I was going crazy because I was SO MAD that my dad couldn’t play hardcore ball anymore.
OKAY, enough about me. Oh wait. This is called, “How I Handled my Dad’s Heart Break.” So now you know.
**
Hannah is a high school freshman and Social Media Intern at Birch House Press and Cycling for Change. She's a young writer in the making who wishes the United States were smaller so her family and friends in other states would be a bike ride away. She has three younger sisters and two people that feed her. One of them writes cool books and the other is planning a cross country charity bike ride this summer.