St Patricks Day
This was always an easy holiday for me to remember. My father’s middle name was Patrick for a reason. His birthday was Saint Patrick’s Day. He would be 85 years old today.
In his younger days, he loved to play guitar, sing and play harmonica. He was a great dancer as well. I loved watching my mother and him dance when I was younger. They moved as one. I could never follow my father the way she did. He was so smooth and they glided beautifully together.
At the AARP meeting at Christmas, there was a singer and a piano player. They played and sang old favorites of the people there, most of them a generation before me! When they played “Can I have this Dance for the Rest of My Life”, an elderly couple, probably in their 80s like my parents got up to dance. It made me remember how beautifully my mother and father danced together. It was heartbreaking and I had to leave the Christmas party.
Who knows how much longer my father would have lived? He already had some physical limitations, but he was getting around fairly well and living at home. His home and my mother were the only two things he wanted. He loved all of his family, but he thrived with her in his home.
He had a nice long life and he saw all of his children have their own families and do well. His death would have been so much better for him and for my mother and family if he had drifted off one night in his sleep in his own bed, and had never been forced to leave his home because of an unnecessary devastating preventable infection…..an infection that robbed him of every last bit of strength he had. The acuity of my grief has eased but the sense of injustice just never goes away.
My goal, with the help of other activists, legislators, and hopefully hospitals is to stop the horrors of Hospital Acquired infectons with all of the necessary steps to do so. Nobody should be robbed of their life and their loves by HAIs.
Happy Birthday Dad. I love you.
