…when you least want, sometimes even least expect it to. When it’s been awhile since it’s bothered you. When it feels like things have calmed down a little.
In the middle of the bike path today, I was suddenly caught by the thought that my dad was struggling so much harder than I was to breathe. It was like a hot fist reaching into my guts, goring me without aim or care, just tearing in wherever it could. I was wrenched suddenly, mercilessly, it seems; I tripped, I almost fell, I finally sat and, with my head between my knees, felt the tears flooding my face, completely shocked. I was not expecting this. A few minutes ago I was absolutely enraptured, enveloped in love for the place that I lived, the town I was in. I was smiling my usual cheesy-huge runner’s grin, dogging the miles, gearing up for the last big push. A few minutes later and I’ve hit the wall. It’s been years since I’ve hit the wall. I’ve been endurance training long enough to know how to avoid doing it, how to keep it from messing with me, how to avoid its entrapments. This was a different wall.
Emotionally, I’ve always been…sensitive, I suppose, would be the nice way to say it. Melodramatic, overemotional, ridiculous, obnoxious, absurd, rude, and monumentally emotionally challenged, to be a bit more honest or at least, to the point. Hey, I know my challenges (I think!), for the most part, and I try to work with them. Believe it or not, I don’t like being a drama queen all the time. I have never been particularly gentle with news of my father’s condition, when people ask, because it’s very true: he’s not doing well. He’s suffering a lot. He’s…
I can’t commit to paper what I’m afraid to admit to myself, to own up to, to fully understand on my own. I caught my reflection in a nearby window yesterday while I was talking with my brother; my eyes, green like his, had darkened, brow furrowed, eyebrows like swooping wings over my eyes, trying to hide them, it seemed, trying to keep me blind, keep me ignorant, keep me faithful. Keep BJ, my brother, the oldest of all of the siblings in the family, faithful, stubborn, true to himself. And thank God for BJ: true to himself, he admitted fully: they had no idea what was going on, but he needed to be taken to the hospital in Chapel Hill, the specialist center for his cancer. The regular hospital in Pineville wasn’t going to cut it. He needed more specific care. They didn’t know what was wrong with him.
A man is brought into a hospital, he can’t breathe, he can’t eat, he’s lapsing in and out of consciousness, he’s trying to pull the tubes and needles from his skin, pluck the clothing from his body. He’s trying to get out of bed, get up, get out, go home. He’s restless and urgent and doesn’t know reality from surreality from unconscious. His brain is affected, his mind warped by drugs and struggle and fighting, and now, from lack of oxygen. His oxygen levels are too low in his blood, in other words, his blood is too thick. It’s too dense, and it’s not delivering the right things to the right places anymore. His wife, his youngest daughters are up with him through the night, barely sleeping, if at all, trying to reason with him and he probably barely recognizes them. He’s shutting down. His blood is drowning him. Killing him.
I would read this and think, oh, what a sad story. What a terrible thing. What an ordeal. Except it’s not a sad story, or a terrible thing, or an ordeal. It’s my father, dammit, this is my father. That’s my dad; he has four daughters, one son, one daughter-in-law, two sons-in-law. His oldest child isn’t 38 yet. His youngest is barely 23. He has seven grandchildren, and they’re not stopping there. The oldest of them is still in single digits; the youngest is but a few months. They know him as “Poppa”. We know him as “Dad”. This man is a Taoist, a Christian, a writer, a rebel, a Yankee, a liberal, a championer of civil rights and a hero to his children, to his grandchildren. To many others’ children and grandchildren too. He’s my favorite coach, trainer, adviser, confidante, supporter, my first love and one of my best friends. Fucking figure it out already.
I don’t care what you have to do, but stop standing there looking at the scared kid and the shattered wife and do something. Fix him. That’s what hospitals are for, right? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Don’t you understand that this mess in front of you is a man, a father, a patriarch? Someone’s child. Someone’s parent. Someone’s best friend. Someone’s heart and soul and we are all putting everything we’ve got in you, you people, running around this place, these glaring white walls, these charts, these frowns, these red-exhausted eyes. Wake up, get up, get moving, fix him. Fix him. Why are you still standing there? Why haven’t you done something already? Why haven’t I?
