The Pain We Carry

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." If you've heard this before, then you probably know it's from the former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson. While the original reference may have been about boxing in the ring, it also holds true for blows we take in life. Especially the unexpected ones.

Last year, I was hit with one of those blows when my mom called me early one Friday morning to say my dad was being rushed to the hospital. 48 hours later, he was gone. It is now nearly 10 months since he passed and that weekend I spent with my mom back and forth to the hospital still feels surreal. Like it didn't happen, but yet I was there and it did.

I recall being in the room with my mom when my dad passed, crying tears of sadness but also relief that he would no longer be in pain, and then as I often do, looking up at the sky. As some of you  know, I enjoy landscape photography and often watch the sky for great light. That day, I remember the most glorious clouds with sunlight breaking through as I looked out the window of Hartford Hospital. And I thought to myself, he is home now, take good care of him God.

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, I wrestled with the stages of grief that anyone who has experienced a loss goes through. There were good days and bad, tears from pain as well as ones from joy remembering the good times and little things that entered my mind randomly, without warning. 

As I started to stabilize, or so I thought, there was another blow that hit me in a different way that I didn't recognize for some time. I'd characterize it as a loss of a different kind and one that had been happening gradually, but seemed to be accelerating.

It had to do with the loss of my daughter, not in the physical sense, but rather in the transition she was making from childhood to young adulthood. For this dad, it felt like I was losing my baby girl, struggling to hold on to days gone by much too fast and longing for time to just slow down.

Little did I know the pain I carried had a name, and it wasn't grief. It wasn't until I visited a good friend last summer that I realized it might be something else. While playing a round of golf, he turned to me and said "so what's going on with you, you don't seem yourself." I expressed I was  struggling with how to be a dad right now while also dealing with the loss of my own father.

When I returned home, I spoke with the therapist I had been seeing and she encouraged me to consult with my physician. She thought that while we all experience grief and move through it a different pace, the pain I carried seemed to be of a different variety now. And after seeing my doctor and taking a 10-question screening, I learned that my pain had a name: depression.

It was a mild form, but something I now realized I needed help with and patience from those around me. During that time, March to September, I did very little for myself and stopped doing one of the things that brings me great joy - physical fitness. It was fortuitous then that the gym I belonged to shared a men's training group was starting up in Oct. And after procrastinating, I decided to give it a shot.

As you can imagine, my fitness level after 7 months of not doing anything was lacking. Truth be told, it was awful and I felt like I was starting over. I signed up for 6 weeks of training sessions, twice a week. The baseline fitness test our trainer did the first week confirmed I had a long way to go. If you think you can't change your physical capabilities in 6 weeks, think again. When I re-tested the same exercises we baselined, my strength and cardio gains showed 40% to 50% improvement or more!

Special thanks to Matt Mund and the men's training group at Mission Fitness for keeping me going (and credit to Matt for the photo of me below). As I write this, the 1-year anniversary of my dad's passing is just a few months away and I can't believe how quickly 2022 went by. I think of my dad often and reflect on memories that come to me like waves crashing to the shore. 

Looking ahead to 2023, I am starting with a foundation that took some time to re-establish and now feel on more solid ground. The path forward is a little brighter, although twists and turns certainly will reveal themselves along the way.

What I am sure of though is while Mike Tyson was right about that punch knocking us out, we all have the ability to get back up. To keep striving, keep climbing and celebrate the times when we find ourselves standing on the peaks of life. But also remember when we are face down in the valleys our true strength is found and we harness the power to overcome the pain we carry.