What you think when you're standing in a place where life and death happens in Technicolor

Yesterday, I got a tour of a local hospital's catheterization lab where they save people's lives by performing heart procedures such as balloons in an artery, insertion of a stent, installing pacemakers and defibrillators. They call it a cath lab. It was especially difficult for me because my dad died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50. He didn't make it to the hospital.

I've written about it before and will certainly write about it again. It affected my way-of-thinking more than almost anything in my life to date. The only others that compare are the births of my children and my marriage, though each of those tend to have more affect as time passes. With my dad's death, the affect was sudden and remains constant where the others continue to grow.

I do rue upon it more than I probably should. But it does give me some perspective. My world changed that day. There's plenty written and said about not becoming a prisoner of your past and similar notions. All of that is true. I can sit around and mope anytime. But that don't get me anywhere.

But I do try to gain energy from it ... OK, not the death itself, but from the spirit of my father. I find that comforting in many ways. When my son acknowledges his existance, having never known him, it's comforting. When I do something I know he would be proud of, it's rewarding. When I do something and despair for help, I think about what my father might have done in a similar situation.

I feel perverse in some ways for feeling lucky that my dad died at 50. I'll always remember my father as he was at 50 -- strong, wise, stoic, and funny. I'll not be tortured by nursing homes, ICU visits, and progressive loss of his memory and senses.

But I rationalize it with the fact that I traded that pain for a different one -- the pain from not having more time, not seeing my son with his grampa, not hearing more stories about his youth, not having him tell me he is proud of what I've accomplished with my life, not having his opinion of my next career move.

It truly is a tradeoff. So when I start to feel bad about feeling lucky he was gone so suddenly, I let it go. I get my share of sad at other times -- when people celebrate life milestones past 50, when my kids do something I'm proud of, when I need someone's ear to hear my woes, and especially, when I visit hospital cath labs.