Coming to terms with a disability and the grieving process

Posted in Sandi's blog on 15 June 2010 | 0 Comments

After my dad had his leg amputated this year and during his subsequent journey from recovering in the hospital to moving to the rehabilitation centre and beginning to learn to walk again with his prosthetic leg, I was absolutely staggered by his resolve and the fact that he appeared to have bypassed the grieving process altogether and because I have gone through it myself, just found it impossible to believe.

So, I asked my brother, who is a doctor and knows a thing or two about such things, and he confirmed that he too was astounded, but that my dad was positive, upbeat and seemed to be handling it all with a ridiculous amount of good grace. But it just didn’t make sense to me, so I thought that maybe my brother was just being a bloke about it. So I asked my sister in law, the physiotherapist, the social worker and anyone else that was involved in my dad’s care and would listen and they all said the same thing, so I just had to let it be, but I was waiting for 'it' to hit the proverbial fan. It still made no sense. Aren’t human beings just programmed this way? Isn’t grieving for one’s loss just a part of the way that we process this sort of stuff? Apparantly not in my dad’s case, but I still didn’t trust it and so I waited.

And after nine months in the system, my dad finally returned to his fully adapted home and his wonderful and patient partner and then it hit him. The stark contrast between the supported medical system where everything is done for you as part of the package and the reality of home, which certainly has all of the comforts that he needs, but is a completely different kettle of fish suddenly made him realise exactly what he has lost.

He is not at all bothered about his leg, being Jewish, it has been buried and he plans to be reunited with it sometime in the future; the only thing that he is struggling with is his loss of independence. My dad and I are cut from the same cloth and so this is what I expected and I feel strangely relieved that he is feeling this way, because it is natural. And he is now processing it all, both practically and emotionally and working out what he needs and how to get as much of his independence back as possible, albeit in a different guise. And after a few weeks of sounding like he was going to bite my head off, he rang to tell me that he is getting a van, with an electric wheelchair and a hydraulic ramp, so that he can do stuff on his own and he sounded upbeat and full of life again. Sure, he is going to bounce around the grieving process for a little while longer, and as always, I will be right here loving and supporting him throughout.

0 comments | Tags: Disability, Grieving, Life