So Grateful

Thanks, everyone, for your words of love and support over the last couple weeks. The entire Sklar gang drove up to Boston this weekend to visit Pop Pop, who is currently in a rehab facility right outside Boston. He’ll be there for the next couple weeks. My dad has a long road ahead of him—he’s permanently blind, and is incredibly weak from everything he’s been through—but I have to say his spirit and optimism is amazing. If anyone can take something so devastating and turn it into something positive, it’s my father. I consider myself blessed to have half his gene pool, and if I can contribute to the world one quarter of what’s he’s contributed…well, then I’ll consider myself superwoman.

After watching him in the rehab facility for a few days, though, I know where my type-A personality comes from. My dad is going nuts just lying around and is determined to get back onto his feet as soon as possible. Apparently during a meeting this morning when his doctors and therapists were trying to convince him he needs to stay a few more weeks, they said to him, “Fred, you can’t even put your shoes on by yourself!”

“Want to bet?” he asked them and made them get him his shoes and, to their complete shock and astonishment, proceeded to get out of bed, put them on, and tie them completely on his own.

“I pulled a muscle in the process and my back is killing me,” he told me proudly later today, “but I had to do it. I had to prove to them that I’m no invalid.”

I’m sure in a week or so when he’s roaring around the corridors with his walker, terrifying the rehab nurses, they’ll be begging him to go home.

You go, Pop Pop.

Please continue to send those warm thoughts and wishes his way.