Was pretty spectacular. I was living with parents in Ocean City Maryland. I was helping with my dad's physical therapy he was recovering from a second stroke. I was recovering from a broken heart. I was 20 something and the idea of living with my parents was not appealing but it turned into one of my best summers in Ocean City and that's saying something.
My DDD made unbelievable progress and he improved with every single work out. I've posted on this in the past. But something we talked about while stretching in the big hot tub at Sneakers has helped me in so many ways. I had mentioned that sometimes when I think of Karen it's hard for me to see her face. I think I was so young when she died that I don't remember what she looked like. He said, "bullshit you were plenty old enough to remember your sister. You just don't know how" He explained that you need to put what you are trying to remember in context. Once you remember the person in context or if you remember them doing something you liked to do with them you will see their face in that context. I remember at that moment I closed my eyes and there she is diving Grandma's giant Buick Electra 225 with the giant bench seat in the front I'm in the middle Carol on my right Karen on my Left we pull out going up hill on Masters Drive and Karen lays a patch of rubber fifty feet long! And bam that face I will never forget.
When I think of my father I see him in the context of that day in the hot tub explaining how you can use context to remember things and people and places. You could use stories to remember things that otherwise may be forgotten. More importantly I remember the light going on simaltaniously for both of us. I could use my love of a good story, my love of context to overcome my pitiful lack of short term memory and embaressing short attention span and he could use context to rebuild his mind and bring order back to his shattered brain. He looked perfectly normal, for that moment, he was himself. When I told him about Karen and the Buick he laughed and laughed and said he remembered that too and that it was at that moment that he knew he was doing the right thing. I asked what he meant and he said early on he had decided that he was committed to helping Karen do whatever and experience whatever and accomplish anything that she wanted. First they said she had only months but she made it for tears. He said they started running out of things for her to accomplish, the piano her education, driving, her, her she always did want to waterski...we went from laughing to crying and then laughed again for crying.
From there it was cake. All downhill so to speak. We'd workout, hit the hot tub for stretch and warm down and put our past and our lives back in context. I'd ask him questions about his past and he would ask me about my future. Within weeks he was back at work helping Mom run ADTSEA. It was at one of these hot tub sessions that he said, "Son don't take this the wrong way, but I don't need you no more. Thank you for all you've done. At the end of this season you should pick a place you have always wanted to live and go there and start living your wonderful life. So I moved to Aspen.
