{"id":18156,"date":"2022-04-08T09:44:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T13:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/?p=18156"},"modified":"2024-08-29T13:46:50","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T17:46:50","slug":"dad-cried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/2022\/dad-cried\/","title":{"rendered":"Dad Cried"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Dad Cried\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

I saw my Dad cry today. In the sixty-four years I have known him, I have never seen him cry. Not when his marriage ended and he was tossed out of the house he had built with his own hands. Not when friends and family began dying off one by one as age crept up and his social circle shrank. Not even when his little granddaughter died at the age of four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad is a fun-loving fellow and loves telling a good joke, along with some rather risqu\u00e9 ones. His repertoire of jokes and stories is endless and entertaining. But today he cried. He looked so vulnerable lying in the hospital bed, and despite his ninety years, he somehow looked young. An active man, last month he was up on the roof shovelling off the snow which was putting too much strain on the rafters, and was chopping wood for the stove to heat the house. Then, three days ago, Dad fell down the basement stairs and fractured his pelvis. His tears were because he desperately wanted to go home. He is never still and now he was confined to bed in hospital for at least two weeks, maybe more. As we visited and talked, his sense of humour resurfaced and he joked about how it was the quickest he had ever made it down to the basement. He claims he didn\u2019t touch a single stair, but somehow launched himself from the top step and landed face first on the cement floor, a superhero flight and a crash landing. We talked and we laughed and he grimaced as his laughter rumbled through him and reminded him that his body ached all over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He cried again when it was time for me to go. I love you, Dad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw my Dad cry today. In the sixty-four years I have known him, I have never seen him cry. Not when his marriage ended and he was tossed out of the house he had built with his own hands. Not when friends and family began dying off one by one as age crept up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoir"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24509,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18156\/revisions\/24509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}