A couple friends are worried about how I will fair on the first father's day after my father went to that big pathology lab in the sky.
Don't worry, dahlinks. Father's day was definitely a Hallmark holiday with me and dad. I'd send him a card trying to find one that didn't smack of lies, he'd pretend he hadn't gotten it when I called and then suddenly "find" it, grudgingly admitting that it was a nice card and he was grateful. Then I'd tell him I loved him and he'd grunt.
"Ok, then," he'd say as though he was anxious to get back to his worn blue recliner beside which he kept a 5 pound weight with which he did the occasional arm curl. Just one more pretense that we understood each other somehow.
I understand a lot more now that he dwells on top of my fridge in a priority mail box.
My sadness is for a man who died long ago, or who's heart and spirit wore out under a weight of mental illness and drink many years before he got so physically ill. The timing of everything is ironic, too. Just as I was coming to grips with his neglect, I got lupus and had to rely on him. And just as I had worked hard to tell him the truth recently he got sick, enormously vitriolic, and impossible to talk to. Now I find it bittersweet and amusing that I thought things would all work out someday when I should know that life is a big mess and rarely does it come neatly tied up in a bow. He's as neat as he'll ever be, ashes in a box, contained in some sort of cotton wrapping.
I saw some of the old pops on the day he was scheduled for his first heart surgery. His friend, Mike, helped him out of his truck in the early dawn hours as my hotel shuttle dropped me off. Dad shuffled inside the hospital's entrance and waved a hand at me, spitting, "I don't want to hear it, Joellyn!"
"I was just going to say "Good Morning," I replied. We went to sit on a bench in the lobby. We were ridiculously early.
"Only God can help me now," he said, and I almost laughed. God who? I didn't think he believed in God. I kept my silence. Then, as is often the case with abusive people, he tried to apologize in that weak way he had. "That's Dr. Ose," he said, indicating a picture on the wall. "That's my doctor."
"Yeah, I know Ose," I replied. I'd know Ose for years. He and his family came over at holidays and for BBQs. And he knew I knew him.
And in that way that people have that have regained mental health through therapy, I waited until he was anethetized before I kissed him on the forehead and said, "I love you, Daddy. Everything is going to be fine." He grinned at me and grunted.
I bore witness to his suffering. He hated every minute of it except when his grand
kids were there and when his friend Jim came to visit and they talked about dad being a mentor to the kids Jim worked with as a coach. He also loved the Ensure milkshakes he got to drink and the tiny pecan pie that one of his silly ex girlfriends brought him. And I kept my own council. What was there to say?
The day I left to come back to Boston was the day he came home from the hospital. The whole thing was an enormous ordeal for him and he told me not to come that day. I hadn't intended to as I had plans with my sister-in-law and my nieces to go to a rally where President Obama was speaking. More irony--President Obama's path to the presidency was paved by people like dad.
I realize now that my dad didn't want me to see him weak--that it cost him some sort of pride for me to see him in his hospital gown, trying to breathe. That that was what all the vitriol and hatefulness was about--pushing me far away so he didn't have to feel, so that he could concentrate on his own misery. More irony--a variation on a theme, the one we'd been dancing to all of our lives together.
Someday, after I've finished the book I intend to write about my dad's life, there will only be one thing to say. It's the thing that I've been saying since he and mom adopted me as an infant, it's the thing I did all along, it's the thing I said to him even when he was most cruel to me or someone I loved, and it's the thing that I hope he gets now that he's a spirit. I love you, Daddy, and I always will.
Grunt.
