Schedule for getting healthy again!!

I have had a lot of people asking me about the various health issues that I have found myself facing as of late so here's the news as of the March, 18th.  My aortic and renal artery surgery (pretty major operations/requires weeks of recovery time) will be done within the next 4 to 6 months.  Both of the operations will be performed at the same time.

The gall bladder surgery (minor inconvenience/only days of recovery time required-LOL) will be done in the next 2 to 4 months. Unfortunately I just recently got some more bad arterial news. 

It seems my carotid arteries are also in pretty bad shape. The left side has blockage of 70% and the right side is blocked 50%. So they want to do the left side in the next 30 days and the right side within 30 days after that.  Each will require about a week of recovery time. This carotid condition is a major cause of strokes so yes, it is pretty important to have it done as soon as possible.  Some people told me this can also cause some memory loss but I don’t remember who said that—just joking of course!!!

I do have to say, I am a big believer in Karma. I honestly feel if you live your life right--good things are bound to be your return. I can honestly guarantee, I have never done anything so bad in my life that I should have to endure the TESTS that I have been presented with as of late. Just understand, the primary reason for all of these health issues is because in all my many years so far, I have been blessed with perfect health.  I have never spent an entire day in a hospital for myself ever.  My time has just come to pay a bit for the blessings I have received, that’s all!! 

This may sound bad to say however, it must be the north side boy in me that allows me to maintain (even with all the bad things going on in my life) a fairly positive, very resilient attitude. I will not be broken down or forced into giving up. The support of family, friends, and other loved ones helps so much in my ability to keep my head above water in these trying times. It is these same people (my wife and family and friends) who make it easy for me to state, the good in my life far out weights any of the bad.  That is just another way of saying, “Thank you to all of you from all of me!!”

In Memory of Kyle Matthew Arnst

An “In Loving Memory Tribute” to my son Kyle Matthew Arnst

Given at Kyle’s Memorial Service by Rick Arnst

Good Afternoon, my name is Rick Arnst and I am Kyle’s Dad,

I want to start out by thanking all of you for sharing a little of your lives with us today.  That within itself brings a large amount of value to the “why” we find ourselves here today, celebrating the life of my son, Kyle.

My standing before you today makes you a witness to probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life.  It just doesn’t seem fair that I am standing in this spot right now because fathers are supposed to be the one who go to meet their maker’s first.  This sort of thing takes an effect on fathers and mothers that is nearly impossible for most to even imagine or appreciate.

You may not be able to see it but on my left shoulder sits this huge giant named “anger” and he’s madder than hell at anything and everything.  On the right shoulder sits sadness, an infinite bottomless pit of despair.  The problem is these two emotions want to gain control of me so they clash; they can’t be kept apart.  The result is a huge, uncontrollable tornado that will whirls you round and round, making you so dizzy that you are unable to think straight.  The debris within the tornado rips at your body and slashes to the bone.  The pain is nearly unbearable and causes unparalleled confusion.

    

Adding to the confusion is the fact that we humans tend to take life for granted.  We treat life like the sun that we are quite sure is going to shine each and every day.  But the fact of the matter is life is more like playing baseball with an overfilled water balloon.  Life can be such a fragile thing that we don’t seem to cherish as we should until somehow it ceases to exist?  We don’t seem to fully appreciate life until it slips through our finger.

Many of the events that have led us all here today simply don’t make any sense to me.  This confusion is like being stuck in a deep, dark pitch black hole, where there is nothing but complete emptiness.   Lessons in life have taught us that the solution to end the confusion is to ask questions and get the answers and then the confusion will simply go away but is that really true?  I don’t think it is but, we will still ask ourselves all the: 

Questions like who, what, when, where, why and how: 

Who is to blame?   Is it human, a group of humans or part of some type of celestial supreme plan?

What went wrong?  Could it have been avoided?  Could we have done something better?

When did the problem really start?  Did we do anything to cause it?  Did we miss some important clue along the way?

How did we react?  Was it the right reaction or just the most simple, convenient solution at that time?

Then there is the biggest and most repeated question of all; why? Why? Why?

If you take opinion out of the equation (and we all know what they say about opinions), the truth is there are no concrete answers, no definitive solutions to any of these questions.  The problem is the human mind is not capable of conceiving such answers so in most cases a huge dose of what I call blind faith needs to be employed to help eliminate the mindless confusion.

For me the problem with blind faith is that I am an analytical, practical kind of person who is primarily logic driven and needs to be able to feel it and touch it and see it to believe it.

But something happened in my life a little over 24 years ago that began to change that part of me.  A baby named Kyle Matthew Arnst planted a seed in my brain and it took hold.  You see Kyle got real sick with spinal meningitis when he was about 10 days old.  He had to be life-flighted down to Texas Children’s Hospital and he wasn’t given much chance to live through the night.

Now the analytical side of me reasoned; here was a little boy who I hardly knew; a person that I had no time to develop any type of emotional attachment for and yet I cared deeply and unconditionally.  When we were told he was actually going to live, the relief tears flowed down my face like the Mississippi flooding.     How was it that I felt so intensely for this little guy?  It made no logical sense at all but it was undeniable, like faith, an unexplainable reality.

It becomes easy to see as in this situation, unexplained, illogical realities really do actually exist just like many of the questions and situations that require blind faith for answers.

Faith is often found in the ability to be completely unselfish.  Is the glass half empty or is it half full?  Selfish is feeling sorry for yourself and a half empty approach.  Kyle could have easily died some 24 years ago but instead we have all been given a gift; 24 years of life.  Because of this simple fact, Kyle’s life has made me realize having faith and being unselfish, allows me to see and to appreciate some of the gifts which are right in front of me but often cloaked in confusion.  Since that day 24 years ago, I have been a glass half full kind of person thanks to a little boy who nearly died one night a long time ago.  Thank you Kyle, you have made my entire life since that time, much more positive.

   

Here are a couple of other things about Kyle that I would like to share with all of you.

Kyle was absolutely the sweetest child, the most Unproblematic little boy that I have ever had the privilege to know.  He was like so pure, an angel untarnished by human frailties. 

Now Kyle’s brother and sister are also out in this group so I do want to say a couple of things about them because they too have their strengths that set them apart.

Eric was an extremely curious, overly bright child who you had to keep your eye on at all times because he was constantly trying to figure out things like, how many parts he could disassemble my high priced stereo into, or how to get past those child safety locks on the kitchen cabinets or how fast a cricket could swim normally and did that speed increase much after he flushed the toilet.

Amanda on the other hand is probably the most level headed, common sense driven, even keeled person (change that word “person” to female because that alone makes that statement even more amazing) you would ever want to meet and know.  The funny part about that is…well that is not the way she grew up.  She was born that way.  She is the daughter that every father (any father) would be proud to have.

Kyle, here is something that I do know without a shadow doubt to be true about you too… 

You and I are so much alike in so many ways. 

Like me, your greatest asset is your high levels of sensitivity.  That is why so many people consider you to be the big hearted person that you have always been.  That is why you are so easy to talk to.  That is what makes you such a good listener.  You can easily understand others because you have an innate ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and feel exactly what they are feeling.   

It is this sensitivity that is also your greatest weakness because unless you learn how to guard it and to protect it, people will take advantage of your good nature and your pure desire to please others.

 

Because of this likeness Kyle, you and I are nearly like brothers in a father and son role.  We are like twins that walked up to a fork in the road.  We took different/separate paths and at the time we thought this was the right thing to do.  You took the path that left your sensitivities more open and vulnerable.  Today I know I should have picked you up a carried you along with me.  In hindsight, I am so sorry that I did not do that.

At a distance and through trees of the forest called life, I have been able to see you but I have never been able for some reason to pull you back.  Watching you was like watching me travel barefooted down a path of broken glass.  I understood the pain, the anguish and the torment that you were going through and yet no matter how hard I tried, I was rendered helpless to assist.  I have had to ask myself many times, did you really want to come with me.  Did you really want my help?  You made so many decisions to the contrary as you matured but I had to give you the leeway to make those decisions and become your own adult man.  At least that is what I tell myself.  I think it is true.

Today our paths have grown even further apart and I no longer can see you at all but…I have to take the lessons you have shown me once again and simply believe out of faith that your path now leads to a better place free from suffering.

Here we go with the faith issue again so let me say a couple more words about that and then bring this thing to a close.

I had a 45 year old wife once who passed away in her sleep one night.  We went to bed happy after just purchasing some plane tickets to St. Louis to take part in my daughter’s college graduation.  The problem that night was she had a brain aneurysm which kept her from waking up the following morning.  Her name was Mari and she was deaf.  I found comfort in believing she was now in a world where everybody can hear.   Can that type of non-fact based faith be so bad??

Is this type of faith, the belief that in Kyle and Mari’s new world there is a void of emotional pain where everybody can hear, just wishful thinking on my part.  Is this simply a blind faith that is designed solely to make me feel better; maybe so but maybe not too? 

Have you ever had something totally unexplainable happen to you?  Have you ever heard of others experiencing the wonders of the incomprehensible?  I bet you have.  Are you the kind of person who believes the glass is half full or half empty?  Having faith can be the exact same thing as quenched curiosity.  Not having faith is like dying of thirst.  It is positive versus negative.

A couple of other questions come to mind at this point.  If a person has had an impact on you and is therefore part of who you are, don’t they in a sense still exist?  If a person exists in your memory and you make decisions and take action based on those memories that affects others, doesn’t that person still in essence exist? 

Love is something that you can neither see, or touch, or smell but it exists doesn’t it?  Beliefs founded in memories and faith are very similar.  Let me share a couple of my memories with you.

I remember one time when we buying a new home in Bear Creek which is out on the west side of town.  Up on the second floor was a three year old named Kyle Arnst who had never spoken a single word in his life.  We had begun to believe that the spinal meningitis had taken the little guys tongue away.  Anyway I was down in the living room and Kyle was looking down at me through the handrail trusses and he said as clear as day, “What are you doing Dad?”  I wish I could have answered him but the little boy who had never spoken a word had simply left me speechless.  And when he did decide to begin talking, it was in complete sentences; so amazing.

Another time:  when Kyle was little, he used to have these pajamas that were black and had the outline of a skeleton on them.  I called them the bones jammies.  Whenever he would put them on I would chase him around the house, catch him and get him down on his back and use the ribcage of the skeleton as a road map to tickle him nearly breathless.  There was one time in particular, Kyle had just put his pajamas on and I had been busy doing something else when from around a corner I saw this little face peering at me with a smile that etched into my brain like a branding iron, more vivid than any of the slides you have been watching behind me.  He had his jammies on and he was ready to play.

Kyle came to visit me recently in the hospital on a Sunday.  I was in ICU because of my blood pressure.   We were having one of our usual heart to hearts when I asked him about his immediate plans and there was that smile again.  His face lit up the entire room as he told me about the new job he was about to start that Monday and about how he really wanted to get back into school and how cooking, being a chef had actually caught his interest.  I could feel his positive energy.  I told him I would help him any way I could.  We had a great visit and he left with me giving him an early Happy Birthday wish.  I wanted to do that because I was not sure what condition the hospital would have me in on that upcoming Tuesday, February the 15^th.  I mean who really knows what tomorrow may bring but I thought if there was going to be anybody incapable of communicating anytime in the immediate future, it was going to be me.  I was wrong.

The visions that I have from this visit are like my final gifts from Kyle.  I will cherish those images and his many lessons to me about the true value of faith for the rest of my life.

For all my memories:  Thank you from the bottom of my heart Kyle for being such a large, indestructible part of me and my life that can never go away.  In me and many others in this room you exist and faith or no faith, that is a reality.  If you believe you have left us all behind I am going to tell you, that is simply not possible.  We all, and you and I, have shared a bond in life that is an infinite arrangement that can never be broken.

I will admit, sometimes I get mad at you.  Sometimes I feel you have cheated my out of so much.  I mean logic dictates that I was supposed to be the one to go first and NOW who am I going to give my Martin guitar to?  But I am only a human and “being mad” is a fleeting moment of feeling sorry for myself that quickly gives way to a thankfulness for all that we did have had together   

There is a living part of me that you will always own unconditionally.  It is the love that a father has for his son.  It is a love of no questions asked acceptance.

My greatest hope is that you have simply been chosen; your soul has been assigned to a place where  your humanly attributes of absolute goodness and endless kindness were in short supply and severely needed elsewhere by a host of helpless others whom you have yet to meet.

I have seen your true beauty in the way you treat small children.  Sometimes I honestly believe there is a part of you that knows, these little people are incapable of hurting you and so you are able give them all the love and trust you have to give which is so much; nearly boundless.

Here is the message I would like to leave all of you with today.  I do not know if it was written by Kyle’s friend or just a favorite passage of hers.  In any event it struck me deeply because it is exactly Kyle’s lessons to me about faith and finding the positive in negative realities…..and how life is full of choices, some good and some bad, but all choices have a glass half full side if you can have the faith to look.

You can shed a river of tears because he is gone

Or you may choose to
celebrate his life as the beginning of a new dawn.

You can close your eyes and see a shortened life as a theft

Or you may choose to

Open your eyes and see all the beauty that he has left.

Your heart may seem empty because of visions now dim

But you may choose to

Fill your heart up with the love you have shared with him.

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live for yesterday,

Or you may choose to

Look forward to all tomorrows because of yesterday.

You may choose to remember Kyle only that he is gone

Or you may choose to
Cherish his memory and let him live on.

You can cry for the pain caused by your emptiness inside 

Or you may choose to

Do what he'd want, find the joy and the warmth in the tears you have cried?

Son, I love you so very much.  I always have and I always will.  May the Lord take good care of you Kyle and provide you with the better place that your soul truly deserves.   I can only pray this is true and as always, hope for the very best for you.