Broken Heart Syndrome

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Tako Tsubo is also called Broken Heart Syndrome.  That sounds bogus, doesn’t it.  Really?  I just got back from tutoring my girl Kiera.  On the outside wall of the school as you walk in is a no bully sign.  You know, the kind with a circle and a line drawn through it.

I grew up in a different era when kids weren’t coddled.  My elementary school bully was named Dick Hardin.  He was a chubby kid who would knock us off our bikes on our way home from school.  I, in turn, bullied poor little Renee who was skinny, had pale skin and a knee brace.  She was a cripple.  We didn’t use words like handicap back then.  It was all very Darwinian.

When I suffered my first broken heart, my mother told me to get over it.  That no one ever died of a broken heart.  She had forgotten about Romeo and Juliet.  Anyway, that’s what you did.  You got over it.  I had my heart broken a number of times and each time it healed, a little scar tissue formed and a wall went up around it.  Before you get all concerned about my upbringing, 10 years of therapy (and Jesus) has removed most of the scar tissue.

The irony, however, is that the person who broke my heart one too many times is this man.  He pushed me over the edge.

I had the blessing of exercising the purist type of love, unconditional.  My dad had never told me he loved me, never hugged me, never asked about my day or came to visit me when I was sick.  He did, however, do what his generation did.  He went to work every day, paid the bills, sent me to the best schools he could afford, or not afford, bought our horses, paid for riding lessons, all that.  He and my mom attended every swim meet, horse show and sporting event I ever participated in.  

After my mom died in 2007 I called my Dad about 3 times a week until he got a girlfriend and was not so lonely. Anyone who knows my father knows that there is no such thing as a short conversation.  Well, actually, it isn’t a conversation so much as a monologue.  Nevertheless, I got to know my father more in the past 5 years than ever before.

When his lung cancer metastasized to his brain in September, 2012, the final journey began.  It was the task I was born to do.  It was my life’s purpose. It was the greatest gift I could ever give and I in turn received back many fold. It was a blessing.   Between September and when he died in November we hugged many times; he told me he loved me every time I left the hospital.  I crawled into bed with him when I told him we were taking him home.  He asked me, “to die?”.  I said, yes, to die.  And so it is that my heart is broken and I have this dreadful thing called Tako Tsubo.


4 thoughts on “Broken Heart Syndrome”

  2. You are a better writer than Shakespeare because after minoring in Shakespearian literature, I just really got (recently) that Romeo and Juliet was a total parody, making fun of love and youth…not some great love story. The Onion version of a love story. You made that clear in one blog post. You win.

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