Dedicated to Dad with Love

It is amazing what the human spirit can endure. I know many have endured much worse then me but I am surviving my own personal hell.

I come from the dream family. I have three older brothers and parents that met at 17 years old and remained in love for their entire marriage.

A month before I was married, my father, the pillar in our family, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My perfect universe was shattered and life will never be the same but I do endure.

Three months after my father was given six months to live, my husband and I had to move to Chicago from San Francisco for his business school. The rock of my life was dying and I had to move 2,000 miles away. I began to endure a long distance relationship between my father and my husband. Flying back and forth between a new marriage of less then six months and a dying father who was probably going to live less then six more months, I was hurting someone wherever I was and I longed to be in both places. Then December 31, 2008 Dad’s symptoms became worse. I decided to stay home in California. After many tests they figured out that the cancer had spread to his brain and it was time for hospice. My mother and I endured helping my father be comfortable while he slowly died. It was months of the hardest, most emotional, most labor intensive work of my life. On March 29, he passed away. I lost the man who made me who I am. I lost my best friend. I lost the rock in my life. My world broke.

I am now in Chicago with my husband full time. I have traded a year of hectic flying, care taking and giving of my whole self for silence. I am lost. I don’t have the desire to return to my career in teaching. I can’t give of myself to my young students. I am not whole.

Recently, I have started to realize something that helps to mend my brokenness. As silly as it sounds, it is décor. I love the thought of a beautiful, warm, homey home. As I am broken on the inside, I desire my surroundings to be beautiful.

On a strict budget in an income less marriage, I turned to the Salvation Army. I found a chair with “great bones” and I sanded it. I took my anger for losing my father and all that he had to endure and I rubbed the chair down to it’s natural wood. Then with even and tender strokes I painted the chair. For the first time in years, I felt excited and I hurried off to the fabric store to reupholster the chair. I picked a fabric that was fun, light and vibrant. It was the light at the end of my gloomy tunnel. I reupholstered the chair and sat back and admired my creation.

I have since sold the chair to a lovely lady. I hope she loves the chair as I love all that it has done for me.

I’m currently onto my second project and I have realized this is the impetus to starting my new life. I know that I am making my dad proud. I am following my heart. He taught me to dream and so I am. I'm dreaming big, Dad. This is my blog for my journey from shattered roots to becoming whole again one project at a time. This is my beginning again through a new business: Kate Collins Interiors. May it bring me some peace as I endure the hardest part of my journey - creating a life without my father. I love you dad!