Skip to main content
I cried last night. It’d been awhile since I broke down and prayed to God. Funny how art can pull things out of you that you’re aware are swimming under the surface, but you have been able to keep at bay. After watching a heartbreaking episode of Deadwood, the phenomenal HBO western series, I was so affected that I couldn’t stop the tears from coming.

In the episode, a main character’s son dies, tragically. Though, is it anything else but a tragedy when a child dies? This boy’s death was sudden, violent and unexpected. However, it made me too aware of my own son. My Jake.

Maybe because it was late, or because I was up, alone, at 12:30, but the tears came and I was overcome with the need to drop down and pray. I haven’t been the most religious man in a couple of years. Those lingering pangs of anger caused by cystic fibrosis and the how’s and why’s continue to hold me back. But last night, it was all I could do to hold back… to beg for mercy.

But that’s the thing… what can God do? Jake’s illness is progressive. It’s not going to go away unless a cure is found.

Lately, he’s had a more noticible cough. Julie says she can hear a difference in the sound of his cough. At first, I couldn’t. But by the end of my vacation, I noticed it too. It eats us up inside. In some way, he’s gotten worse.

You do everything you can, within reason, means and energy to make sure your child is healthy. We are good parents. Ahh, but that’s the thing about it, no matter what you do, CF is going to continue to attack his body and he’ll gradually get worse.

Remember my resolution to smile more? It’s hard at times to do that when this monster is creeping around your child, latching on to him.

I cried last night. Not the first time. Definitely not the last.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Beginning of an Explanation

When I dropped off of the Internet, it wasn't meant to be a years long sabbatical. I thought I just needed a break; that I was getting burned out from writing Basement Songs and movie reviews for Popdose.com. Something cracked, though, and I couldn't consider writing even in a journal for a very long time. Things changed in the winter of 2017. While driving to pick up Jacob at theater rehearsal, I experienced my first panic attack. It started immediately after he got in the car at the theater and it slowly took over my body for the fifteen minute drive home. My skin became clammy and I felt myself removed from my body. My brain was empty and I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I gutted it out until we walked through the front door. Without saying a word, I went upstairs, crawled into bed and got in the fetal position. I just wanted to close my eyes and shut out the world. The next morning I awoke exhausted, as if I'd exercised the previous day. That was the first time
MARATHON FOOTNOTES (for those who didn't think I would really footnote a stream of consciousness thought): Footnote #1 Academy Award Winning Best Picture Films from 1969 to the Present: Midnight Cowboy, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather II, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Dances With Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Footnote #2 Members of the band YES, from 1969 to the present: In 1969, Yes is formed with Jon Anderson on vocals Peter Banks on guitar, Bill Bruford on drums, Tony Kaye on keyboards and Chris Squire playing bass. This group records

The End of the Explanation

I don't want to drag this out for a series of extended posts; there's no need to go into the minute details. So I'll wrap up my ongoing mental health journey with this post. After I basically quit writing, I began the work on myself. From 2017 to the middle of 2019, the only things I wrote were 10 minute dramas for our church, and let me tell you, even those were a challenge. But when God gives you a deadline, you don't mess around. There was a real depression that came with the relief of not writing or worrying about writing scripts. Again, if I wasn't writing, what was I doing? I really struggled with this question because we had moved from Ohio to Los Angeles so I could pursue a career in film. Even though I'd written and directed a movie, and sold a script, in my mind that wasn't good enough. I couldn't appreciate all of the great things in my life, and the solid career that I had forged in animation over 18 years. It took some real work: a lot o