One thing that stands out to me is how so many have expressed the need to live long lives beyond the time they are at.
Been one for me too
Please forgive me for this long post, but this comment revived a memory of something I wrote awhile back;
Thoughts on Dad
A few years ago a lad from Scotland, I’d gotten to know, asked me how my Dad was doing, as I’d shared with him my Dad’s failings in what turned out to be his final year.
Maybe some of you folks can identify with what I wrote him.
In any event, I feel compelled to put it here, and probably in my next book.
You see, my Dad was my hero.
Oh, I wasn’t his favorite, but that didn’t matter.
For many years he was God to me, could do no wrong, I hid my wrongs from him.
Sure, as I grew, I saw his faults, but, heh, they were few.
And mine became less as I used him as a life model.
Here’s what I Emailed;
He’s a gamer, Shaun.
Days ago he was on his death bed.
Chemo and infection was taking him down…..quick.
He’s on the rebound.
To where……. I have no idea.
I visited him last weekend while he was staying at the rehab center (nursing home).
Didn’t readily recognize him.
No hair
Tiny head
Sunken eyes
Chair stickin’ half way outta the room, lookin’ out into the hall.
He looks like wunna those children with an aging disease.
He really lit up when he saw me.
I immediately felt real bad for not coming sooner.
He got up and scooted his chair back into the room, shuffling, pushing.
He invited me to sit.
There was only one extra chair
I think it had a piece of poop on it.
He had some sorta string of dried drool and blood comin’ from his lower lip, ending at his chin.
It made me sick to my stomach to look at him.
My Dad
My finicky Dad
The guy that remained well scrubbed, no matter what he did.
The guy with the weakest of stomachs.
The guy that just couldn’t eat if he thought the cook hadn’t washed his hands.
There he was……..disgusting
and so very happy to see me.
I wanted to stay and leave at the same time.
We went on a conversation loop.
He has about ten minutes of thought processing, then it starts all over again.
I grabbed his attention by saying I was thinking about going to church.
He did a feeble punch into the air, and displayed a flash of his tenacious old self, gritting his teeth and smiling with delight.
His old eyes lit up again, then welled, spilling tears as he told me how happy that made him.
Now I was disgusted with myself.
I wanted to cry along with him. I just can’t. It’s not in me.
I hadn’t lied.
I do think about it.
I think about conversation with rabid religionaires, and know why none of it is for me.
It was a visit of diverse emotions.
The nurse’s aide came in.
He questioningly introduced me as his cousin.
Well, in twenty minutes I’d completely muddled what’s left of his blithering mind.
I gave him a slight hug and left him with the aide.
Driving home, my thoughts were fixed on him.
What he is
What he once was
What I am
What I’m going to become
I recalled him and his cousin, his brother he never had, and how they talked about their aged parents
There is no fairness
There is just fact
Inescapable inevitable fact
It made me realize my own fallibility
I really don’t want to see him again
I will though
As long as I can make him happy, whether it’s a veiled lie, or just being there, I will see him, hug him, chat with him.
He has earned that…at the very least.
He’s a withered dying old man.
Cancer will take him.
I don’t think I have the guts for this, and what’s next, deteriorating visits
What have we done to think it good to keep my hero existing in his filth with confounded thoughts for as long as medically possible……
The Aleuts know what to do
The long walk and the bonk on the bean.
It’s much more heroic……respectful.
Thanks for asking, kid.
Enjoy thy youth
Other thoughts;
Thoughts on dad, death and dying excerpt
4:57
The End
Dad’s on his way out.
The guy that helped to explain death to this toddler (‘He’s dead.’) is gonna experience it himself, pretty soon now.
OK, so he wasn’t much with words, but sometimes the look on his face spoke volumes.
One time, years ago now (think I was 9), he’d come home from work. In those days he rode the bus.
He’d just talked with this lady that he’d been riding with for months. Right after they said their daily g’byes, a bus hit her, splattering her remains all over the street.
Dad had a terrible look fixed to his face.
He couldn’t eat.
‘arm here, leg there’
He kept reliving it, over and over.
‘I’d just talked to her’
Mom seemed a bit cold about it, like the lady was a possible affair of Dad’s.
I imagine her mind went places like ‘he probably talked to her more than he talks to me’.
‘yer not gonna eat?’
‘can’t’
‘fine’
Him and I visited grampa when he was wasting away in the nursing home.
The place wreaked of pee….old man pee….old woman pee (shudder).
The facility was remarkably clean, but I guess all that pee had permeated the walls.
You sorta got used to it…sorta.
Hours after we left I’d still get an occasional whiff of old person pee.
There grampa was, in the railed hospital bed, sunken toothless mouth open, hardly breathin’.
I don’t know how Dad did it.
He’d stop there every day after work, and ‘visit’ his dad, bringing me on the weekends.
Dad would get right in his ear…
‘DAD, DO YOU REMEMBER GARY?’
Grampa may have moved an eye lid.
I noticed he still had muscular arms,
his neck still thick as a bull’s.
Everything else was dissipated, atrophied, large hands curled up like he was writing something.
He stayed that way for months it seemed.
My dad is bald now.
Third of six weeks of chemo.
A real salvo.
He can’t keep food down…or up.
It’s a crap shoot.
No, really.
He craps with the regularity of exhalation.
Peeing out his hind end, basically.
It’s a gamble too.
Waste away while the cancer gnaws at yer guts, or attack and see who/what wins.
It’ll be down to the wire….at 90.
His wife just called.
He’s back in the hospital.
Getting pumped with electrolytes…….and chemo.
He loves life so.
I can see him lingering like grampa.
Wonder if I’ll visit his bedside daily, like he did for his dad.
I feel I should.
He’s been a really good dad.
A nice man.
A simple man.
Hard worker
Determined
He’s always presented a rosy outlook, somewhat like a salesman.
Without knowing it, I’ve kinda studied him.
We’ve never really had any heart to heart talks.
I don’t think I’ve missed anything.
We’ve had talks, it’s just that he’s always been the one doing the talking.
Dad, I look at you there, a bit shriveled, somewhat vacant eyed, I wonder, wonder why you struggle so. What’s left for you that’s so precious?
I think about you and me, so many years ago now.
Visiting grampa in the nursing home.
You, yelling in his ear.
Hoping for a sign, a flicker of recognition.
Him, shallow breath. Not moving a muscle.
I can only think that the prevailing reason for the struggle is the love of life itself
