It's Been Tough
Regular readers of this website have likely noticed that I have not been posting as frequently as usual. That’s because I am in mourning for my father, who died at 77 on June 13th.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of my dad in my life. He was an oasis of ebullient acceptance in the ungodly hot desert of life. My mother abandoned me as a baby. So my dad was all I had.
Because I’ve been blessed with autism, ADHD, and bipolar 2, I find the world overwhelming, confusing, and terrifying. It scares the shit of me, to be honest.
To keep from being overwhelmed and melting down, I tend to focus on the crisis at hand. I try, and often fail, to live in the moment because the past is full of trauma and the future feels horrifyingly uncertain.
I consequently never processed the intense, painful emotions involving my dad’s slow, sad decline. It’s hitting me much harder than it would if I’d taken the time and energy to come to terms with my dad’s mortality and his eventual absence.
It’s hitting me all at once now. I’ve never had a loss like this before. My dad, in his own curious way, seemed simultaneously fragile and indestructible. Because he had multiple sclerosis yet refused to use a cane, walker, or wheelchair for decades out of pride and a stubborn sense of independence, my dad was constantly falling down when I was a kid.
It felt like he was forever being ferried back and forth from our sad little apartment and the nearest emergency room. My dad fell down. He bled. He hurt. And then he got the fuck up and kept going because he was strong and resilient and loved life. Also, you don’t really have any choice but to keep going, even when it seems impossibly hard.
I’m having a hard time with the finality of the loss, with knowing that I’ll never be able to talk to my dad again, or bring him a milkshake, or make him smile or laugh. For much of my childhood, my dad was my hero. He was my role model. He was the person I wanted to be.
This past month, my family has been experiencing the trials of Job. It began with my final visit to see my dad in hospice. We had at least one good day, but for the most part, my father didn’t seem to know who he was, where he was, or who I was. I will never forget one agonizing evening when he was howling in pain with an almost animal-like sense of desperation.
He was so loud that he could be heard distinctly at the other side of the nursing room floor, but when I tried to get help for my dad’s pain, I was told that it would have to wait until the nurse on staff had a break and finished some paperwork.
That howl haunts me, as does the guilt I feel about moving out of Chicago and my dad for the sake of my growing family. That’s the thing about life: you always hope that you’ll have another chance to do right by someone, but the clock inevitably runs out.
I should have been prepared. I knew what was coming. I was not prepared. Not in the least.
I wish I could have told my dad how much he meant to me while he was still alive. I wish I’d been able to come to terms with his passing. I wish I’d been able to spend more time with him. I wish I weren’t so caught up in the chaos of my own life and could be there for other people.
I was too choked up to read my eulogy for my father. So my wife, who is a much better speaker anyway, read it in my place.
When we flew to Chicago for my dad’s memorial, we were in the process of having both of our bathrooms torn up to deal with a persistent leaking problem. Since we moved into our townhouse three years ago, the plumbing has been a massive problem.
No matter how many tens of thousands of dollars we throw at the plumbing industry, the problem stubbornly persists. Every few months, a leak occurs that requires professional assistance, including tearing out toilets and other extreme measures.
When we flew to my dad’s memorial, our house looked like a war zone because everything was moved, including both of our toilets and cabinets. It was a process that dragged on interminably, making our already difficult lives much harder.
I at least took comfort in knowing that, at some point, the plumbers would be finished. It had to end, right?
The folks handling our situation were seemingly finished when my wife experienced agonizing pain in her abdomen. We considered whether it warranted a trip to the hospital.
Like many people who grew up poor, I only want to get law enforcement or doctors involved as a last resort. I’m inherently skeptical of authority figures, but when my wife called the hospital, the worry in her voice concerned me, so I encouraged her to go to the emergency room.
It turned out to be the right move. She had to have emergency surgery. If she’d waited much longer, she might have risked her life.
She at least had the consolation that when she got home, the month-long renovation would be over and we’d get our house and lives back. Besides love for her family, I suspect that’s all that has kept her going.
Today, my wife came home from the hospital. She called me when I was at the grocery store picking up painkillers for her.
“You’ll never believe this,” she began. My stomach sank. “I ran a load of laundry, and now the floor is leaking and water is pouring from the ceiling.”
I hoped she was kidding. She was not. We were told that they’d need to rip out the toilets and tear everything apart all over again to conclusively see what the problem was.
And the kicker? Today is our anniversary. As the parents of neurodivergent children, life is so exhausting that we barely have the energy to remember our anniversary, let alone celebrate it properly.
It’s been tough! You gotta laugh to keep from crying.
I look forward to returning to the Happy Place on a more regular basis shortly, but, as you can hopefully see, I’m dealing with some heavy shit.
Hopefully, July will be less apocalyptic, but I find myself alternating between dealing with life’s never-ending blows and bracing myself for what’s to come.
UPDATE: In the two hours since I posted this, my phone broke.
I can’t win!
My sister and I set up a GoFundMe for an academic prize in our dad’s name here
You can pre-order my upcoming book, The Fractured Mirror, here: https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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