Today was supposed to be my Now What day. I took the LSAT yesterday, and my plan was that once that
was over, I’d get busy making concrete plans for what’s next, what do I do now,
how do I get my life sorted out and back on track? I’ve got a business plan to formulate, and a
book proposal/publication plan to think out, and a magic tournament I aim to
win, and plans to make for quality time with my kids for the rest of the
summer. I was going to wake up today
bright and bushy-tailed, and get back to the business of taking on the world…
But the LSAT took a lot more out of me than I expected. I knew it would be physically and mentally
draining, I KNEW that, but I went in doing it as kind of a lark, and wasn’t
expecting there to be an emotional toll, as well. I (told myself) that I just wanted to take it
so I’d know what it was really like and could do a better job of preparing my
students and tutoring clients. I still
have half a mind to try law school, but I knew that I could just show up and
get the kind of score I needed to get into any of the local schools that are
feasible for me to attend, but I still felt like I should practice a little,
and did invest half a Sunday working on that.
(That sounds pretty arrogant, but
I do teach the class, and I’m not one of those ‘if you can, do, if you
can’t teach,’ kind of teachers. And for perspective,
the local schools don’t ask for much above the 50th percentile; they’re
just happy to get competent people who want to enroll.)
That being said, in the moment, while it was happening, and even
more so after it was over, I discovered that something inside of me is still
fighting for a stupid dream I had (Harvard, baby) that is no longer an option, but
that I apparently haven’t quite managed to let go. I obviously didn’t practice enough to make
sure I hit that mark, because even though I know I can correctly answer every
damn question on that test, IF I have enough time, it’s an endurance ordeal,
and a time-management nightmare, and you have to seriously prepare for that
part of it. And I deliberately didn’t allow
myself do the work I’d need to pull it off.
Because I knew it wouldn’t matter, and it wasn’t a good investment of my
time, and (I think now) that obtaining that magic score would just cause a
dramatic and pointless mental crisis over Lost Things that I can’t get back. So I didn’t really try, I knew I wasn’t
trying, and I thought I’d be OK with that, but I feel pretty awful about the
whole thing now; I was fooling myself again.
And I could handle that, and observe it and process it, and not let it
disrupt the Now What game, if that was the only thing going on, but there are
other Lost Things that I have to deal with first. Now What has to wait until tomorrow.
It’s my daddy’s birthday today. If he was here, he’d be turning 68, and if
the universe made sense, if anything was fair, we’d have spent the morning
finishing a cake (carrot cake was his favorite,) and loading up a picnic for some
kind of barbecue extravaganza, probably at Benson park, where the kids could
play in the water and fight over the pouch couches (and we could go diving for
our lost GoPro, but that’s a different tale…) and he could try to teach them how to fish, and the grownups could play
cards, and we’d have a grand old time celebrating with Poppy, and we’d all end
up sunburnt (especially Poppy) and exhausted but entertained. He should be spending the summer helping the
oldest boys fix up busted cars, and admiring the girls’ drawings, and I’m sure
Jester would have got him roped into playing Magic by this point, and they’d be
scheming up ridiculous, terrible nonsense commander decks. He never even got to meet the little one, but
I imagine they would swing together, and she would make him play Barbies and chatter
his ears clean off. Poor baby doesn’t
have any grandpas, which is so hard for me to fathom, because my
grandpas were pretty much the most important people in my life when I was her
age. She doesn’t know what she is
missing, but I do…
Because he’s not here. It’s
been almost 9 years since he’s been here, but he SHOULD be, and that’s what I
have to get off my chest. It’s the You
Can’t Pass Go until you do this thing THING, and name this thing, and feel this
thing, and say this thing “out loud.” So,
here it goes, this is what I have to say:
My dad was the kindest, most patient, understanding, and
self-sacrificial person I’ve never known.
He was funny, he was sweet, he was creative and resourceful, and he had
all of these big dreams, a lot of which I never even knew about until he was
gone. He wanted to open a little
restaurant one day. That’s the one that
floored me, because it shouldn’t have been a surprise. He cooked most of what got cooked in our home,
and he always volunteered to work the kitchen at our Girl Scout Jamborees. His camp name was Cookie, I thought he was just
trying to be involved. I never realized
how much he loved it, and if I had known, I might have skipped out on grad
school to stay home and do that with him, because that would have been so much fun. (And since neither of ever managed to learn a damn thing about business or money, it would have been an epic financial failure; but still, it would have been fun.) But I didn’t know, I didn’t have a clue what he wanted, because he never really spoke up for himself, and he was always so damn busy…
My whole life, my dad was busy, taking care of everyone
else. When I was a kid, he went to
school and worked; when he finished his degree, he just worked for people who often didn't appreciate him, and he always had these god-awful long commutes. And most nights (it couldn’t have actually been most
nights, but it felt like most nights) he’d get home, eventually we might have
dinner, and then he’d be out until the wee hours of the morning working one of our damned
constantly-busted cars, trying to diagnose weird noises my mom was bitching about, rebuilding transmissions, keeping our Frankenstein's monster cars alive. He had every parts store in the region’s
number memorized… And he’d have work he brought home to do, and he’d run around
catering to whatever nonsense my mom dreamed up, and at some point they both got involved not with helping, but actually RUNNING the softball league, which sounds like cool parental involvement, but was really parental abandonment because it was a MASSIVE time investment in a hobby that my sister was already done with, and that I was wrapping up, because it took up all of their nights once it started; they were always off in meetings somewhere, or on the phone getting yelled at by coaches and parents, or organizing tournaments that neither one of was a part of, and that’s where things were when I left home...
And nothing ever got easier for him. His kids didn’t succeed at this whole growing
up thing the way that we should have. He tried
to start his own engineering business, but that didn’t work out. He at least got a big house to mess around
with and work on, and room for a shop, and he was building a random forge and trying
to figure out how to get permits to run a smithy...
The year before he died, things were especially hard. He was exhausted, and I could see it, and I
was worried but I didn’t know what I could possibly do, except for try not to
add more things to his load. He was
doing every damn thing for everyone, for my mom and my sister and her kids, and
his mom, and his mother-in-law. He’d
work all week, and almost every Saturday, at least, head out to Grandma’s house
in Rowena to work on projects for her. And
when that wasn’t happening, my mom would send him to Grandma Nick’s house to do
projects for her (that she, at least, didn’t like to ask him to do. She felt like he had enough and didn’t speak
up. My mom would get mad at her and scold
her for that, and say “Jim can do it, why didn’t you say something?” and assign
him another chore.)
He did all the cooking at home, all of the shopping, he made
my mom’s breakfasts and packed her lunches, and ran the laundry back and forth up the stairs. He did, by himself, almost all the chores
that needed to be done, chores that other people in the house were perfectly capable
of doing for themselves. And he came
down to stay with me a few times when things were bad in California, and I was
all on my own, to help me with the kids and my stupid car, and to make sure I
was OK. But HE wasn’t OK, I knew he wasn’t,
and I was so scared. I told my friend a
week before he collapsed that I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack
any day, and I didn’t know what to do except worry, and I still feel bad that I
didn’t try to do more.
He was tired all the time, he had something going on with
his back and was in a horrible amount of pain, and was trying some crazy
experimental (dangerous) traction therapy to help with that. He was starting to develop food sensitivities. And some asshole doctor told him that his problem
was low-testosterone, so he was apparently taking supplements for that (which is
bullshit, because he had a congenital heart defect that almost killed him as a
child; and that stuff is definitely NOT good for the heart.) And most of all he was WORRIED all the time
about his stupid kids, and the messes we were making, about my sister’s
dependency issues, and my divorce apocalypse, and the hurt we were inflicting on each other, and he didn’t
know what to do about any of it, so he just keep doing. I can’t even describe how much guilt I feel
over stressing him out so much. I did my
best to not ask for things from him, and to let them all cast me as the straight-up
villain in our family drama, not to explain myself, not to defend myself, just
to let them all hate me if they needed to, so at least (I thought) my poor
daddy wouldn’t feel like he had to choose sides. But it wasn’t enough… I don’t know what I
could have done that would have been enough, and no one else seemed to notice
that it was a problem.
At his funeral, my mom’s stupid “best friend”--this crazy
lady who had been hanging around since I was a kid, who I’m not even sure
actually liked my mom at all, but was CLEARLY in love with my dad, and fawned
over his every move and word and breath of air, even though he found her very
obnoxious and did his very best to avoid her—anyway, this lady gave an extended
eulogy about how he was the perfect Christ-like man, the best man who ever
lived. How he gave everything of
himself, and never asked anything in return.
(There was also a pointed critique in there about what she really thought of
my mom and how she treated daddy. It was
incredibly awkward, but I can’t say it wasn’t accurate. It was just incredibly bad timing.) And Diana was right, in a lot of ways; he was
infinitely loving and infinitely giving, right up until his last breath, but he
was those things to a fault.
He never told anyone “no,” he never said “not right now,” he
never said “I’m too tired,” or “why don’t you try and do it yourself first, and
I’ll help you if need it,” or “I actually had something else I was hoping to do
today, can we do that tomorrow?” He
always sighed and said yes, and then he got to work. And they, THEY, I guess we, never
stopped asking him, demanding things, finding new projects for him to work on, making
new problems for him to solve. So what
happens when you take a really nice man, with no boundaries and no sense of his own worth, and
throw him in with a bunch of vampires? What happens is that they will eventually
bleed him dry.
And that’s exactly what happened. My dad didn’t intentionally sacrifice
himself to save us, he just got used up. I remember that stupid day like it wasn’t even yesterday,
like it was still today, like somehow it’s still happening, like it’s always happening
right now, all the time, and I can’t stop it or fix it or change it, it just IS, and it
always will be.
It was a 100 fucking
degrees in Troutdale, and supposed to get hotter. We had planned to go down to Springfield to
visit my uncle, but it had been a busy, grueling week somehow, and I was
exhausted, and my parents came over (I was staying at grandma’s with the kids, getting
ready to head back to Santa Barbara in a few days) and he asked me what I
wanted to do, and I said “Daddy, it’s so hot, and I’m tired, can we just stay
home and relax?” And that’s what we were going to do. I figured the kids could play in the pool out
back, and we could hang out, and I could finally get a chance to show him my
travel pictures and recount my adventures in Italy and stuff like that.
And then for some stupid reason, I don’t even know how or
why it came up, my mom decided that he should fix Grandma’s swamp cooler and
get it running again. We talked about
just living with it for a few more days, or making things easy and just going
out and to buy an air conditioner, because it needed parts, and no one even
sold swamp cooler parts around here. But
she got it in her head that it needed to be fixed, and started calling different stores and said “if I can find the parts, I’ll go get them, and if not, we’ll buy an
air conditioner.” She struck out over
and over again, I was really hoping common sense and fate would win, and then she finally found
some hardware store up in Sandy that had the stuff and decided she was going to
go up and get whatever it was, so he’d better get to work.
The stupidest thing about all of it was that Grandma didn’t
even want the damn thing fixed, she wanted to make potato salad and play cards,
and didn’t want any more time invested into this swamp cooler that had been kicking
around since like 1952. She was prepared to
go without, or get something easier to deal with, but no one could win once my
mom got determined. So I sent the kids
out to play in the pool, my dad started working on it by himself, because I
have fuck-all idea how to fix a swamp cooler and it looked like a one-man job,
and the temperature continued to climb…
I told him to be careful and take it easy and drink water, and he took
an alarming amount of Advil or Tylenol or something, and drank some water and said he’d be fine. He even got a bandana soaked in cold water and tied it around his neck, he would be fine... And this whole time, I was just SO frustrated and so angry about what was
happening, I wanted to scream. It was taking everything I had not to just
unleash it all on my mom. But I felt
like it wouldn’t change anything; it would just be more drama, and the swamp
cooler was still going to get fixed even with a fight. So
when my mom got back from Sandy, I said I was going to the store, and went off
to get a soda and chain-smoke and brood and cry for a while, while I tried to
compose myself and get ready to go back in.
I was gone maybe half an hour. I came back to find a firetruck outside the
house, lights flashing. My heart dropped
and I knew what happened before I even made it to the door. My dad had collapsed about 15 minutes after I
left, the boys saw him and screamed out, my mom tried to do CPR. If I had been there, I could have done it
better, because her mobility issues made it very hard, if I could have done it
and not passed out from fear… But I’m
usually pretty good in situations like that, and if I had just been there… But I wasn’t.
The paramedics arrived very quickly, but his heart had stopped and he
wasn’t breathing, and they didn’t think they could fix it. They kept working on him, though, for about
3,000 years, or 20 minutes, or somewhere in between. I called my ex and told him to come over and
get the kids RIGHT NOW, because I didn’t know what was going to happen and they
needed functioning adults. They got his
heart started again, they got him breathing, but the paramedic told me it had
been too long, and that the only thing we could hope for was a miracle.
But we didn’t get one.
He hung on for a few days in the hospital while they tried things to
cool him down and get things going again, but it was too late, and I never got
to tell him about Italy, and he never got to teach the boys to drive or fix
their cars, or see the girl’s drawings, or play magic with Jester, or meet my baby
girl, and we aren’t having a birthday party for him today, and my kids don’t
have their Poppy, and I don’t have my dad, and it’s my fucking fault. Not entirely, but it is partly, you can’t convince
me that it’s not. For not fighting the
fight with my mom, for not just going to Springfield, for being so stressful,
for bugging out and running and being there to perform CPR… And it’s their fault,
too, for pushing him so hard, for taking advantage of him, and not caring for
him, and bleeding him dry. And it’s his
fault, too, for not speaking up for himself and saying no. “Not today.
Just buy a damn air conditioner so we can look at pictures and play
cards and enjoy the day,” and now there aren’t any more days.
I had some point in mind, some reason I had to write
this. I wrote about parts of it once before, but I was compelled to delete it by lawyers, or my mom, or something way back when. But I think it's something that is not meant to stay deleted. And I something I was thinking today about why it’s so
important that people learn to stand up for themselves and speak out for
what they want, and that there’s some better way than either submitting to
everything, or bailing and hiding out. And
something else about how worried I am about my Uncle, how he’s gotten stuck taking
on this same role, and I don’t know how to bust him out before he gets used up,
too, because they will use him up, and anyone else who lets them. I feel like that’s where I intended to go
with it, but there was a lot more in there that wanted to come out, and it took
over. I miss my dad so much. I hate that he’s not here. I know so many people who had no dads, or
shitty dads, or absent dads who have somehow managed to hang around on the
edges of people’s existences, just taunting them with the fact of their ongoing
disinterested existence, but I had one of the BEST dads in so many ways, and I
barely got the part of life where I really got to know him as an adult, and see
him be an awesome grandpa, and all of that, and it fucking sucks, almost too
much to bear, but I usually manage, just not on this particular day.
I’m done, though, for now.
Whatever lessons are supposed to come out of this, whatever I’m supposed
to do with it can’t happen today, because it’s his birthday, and I have to finish
up this grieving nonsense, and get my head on straight to go to work. And, it sounds like, go play some Barbies. They are going on an epic camping trip in the
living room, and I apparently play some integral role in the trip’s success. Yay, Barbies, someone's got to do it.
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