[My dad died recently.]<first|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?first)[I remember the last days. When his arms were just skin and bruises and bones. He was too weak to stand up on his own, so I’d help him. I loved helping him. I’d stand in front of his chair and wrap my arms around him like a hug and lift him up and into bed. Or I’d move him back from bed to chair. Many times a day. Like so many hugs. [We never hugged much before that.]<transition1|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition1)[He was a good man.]<second|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?second)[When I was a kid he coached my baseball team. He coached a lot of other things too, but baseball was his favorite. He had so much time for my brother and me. And for other kids. You know, kids with parents that didn't always show up for games. Or that couldn't show up for games. And he was actually just a really good coach. Like he read books on it. [It meant something to him.]<transition2|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition2)[He was patient. And kind.]<third|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?third)[I was an anxious child and not particularly good at baseball. Or really any sport. Sometimes I’d get very worked up about things and start to cry. I’d cry about some oddly adult anxieties like the general state of the world, or a sense that I wasn't smart enough, or a concern that my family didn't have enough money. I remember years when I cried a lot. Usually right before bed. And he was always there to talk about it. It never seemed to bother him. [He never got frustrated with me.]<transition3|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition3)[And we argued a lot.]<fourth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?fourth)[Before he died I hadn’t seen my dad in a few years. I was busy. The last time I’d come home was right before the last election. We argued. We argued a lot. I couldn’t understand how my dad could support the guy he did. He acknowledged that the guy was vile, but he also thought that he was a pretty good businessman. That mattered to my dad. Business. Money. Objective measures of success. That was “how the world worked.” [Everything else was just fluff.]<transition4|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition4)[Mostly we argued about politics.]<fifth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?fifth)[We’d been arguing about politics for years. We'd sort of wander into these arguments. First as a joke like, "haha look at us we're a couple of clichés," but they became real arguments. I think he gave up on politics in the Clinton Era and preferred to think of market solutions. Economic solutions. Solutions based on numbers and details and data. And that made sense to me, but I always tried to make the case that there’d be problems the market couldn’t answer. [Again, these are clichés.]<transition5|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition5)[He’d had cancer before.]<sixth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?sixth)[About five years back. Lymphoma. He responded well to treatment and went into an immediate remission. And then we knew that even if the cancer came back, we’d have other treatment options. We could try more chemo. We could try a bone marrow transplant. We could try experimental therapies. Things didn’t seem hopeless. So when he responded well to treatment the first time, I think we all thought “yeah of course he did.” My dad was indestructible. He was ten feet tall and could beat up your dad. [He looked like Tom Selleck and he used to do kung fu.]<transition6|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition6)[He looked so much like Tom Selleck.]<seventh|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?seventh)[He’d had a mustache since he was 18. It was //the// mustache. The perfect mustache. It was better than Tom Selleck’s and we all knew it. Once I recreated a photo of him from a road race he’d run in the 80’s. I had a cutoff shirt. Short shorts. And I painted on a mustache. I mean, I had to paint one on. I couldn’t grow anything like that. I gave him a framed copy of my photo as a gift. He looked a bit confused by it. [I didn’t see him without a mustache until the chemotherapy.]<transition7|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition7)[Of course, we knew the cancer would come back.]<eighth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?eighth)[We just didn’t know exactly when. We had all gotten used to the remission. I got busy again. I stopped calling as much. And the last time I’d come home our arguments had ended in shouting. He’d had a little too much of a nightcap and we’d gotten to talking about life and the state of the world and of course that became a conversation about “how the world worked.” And then the shouting. He’d never shouted. I was surprised. [He looked embarrassed.]<transition8|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition8)[We didn’t talk so much after that.]<ninth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?ninth)[I used to call him on the phone a couple times a week. He had a really smooth voice. It sounded great on the phone. But in the years before the cancer came back, we almost didn’t talk at all. And when we did it was awkward. The conversations were short. We both felt like we needed to have them, but neither of us seemed to have much to say. There were days when I let the phone ring. [And then later, there were days when I wondered why it didn’t.]<transition9|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition9)[I lied about a few things.]<tenth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?tenth)[Well, about one thing. I didn’t get busy. I was just having a hard time. I'd had a bad couple of years and was struggling with my own mental health. I had migraines most days. I wasn’t sleeping much. And I felt like my parents were disappointed in me. So I didn’t really want to talk and I didn’t want to come home and I didn’t want them to see the person that I’d become. I looked terrible. I was gaunt. I had huge circles under my eyes. [I thought they’d be ashamed of me.]<transition10|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition10)[And I think there's some truth to that.]<eleventh|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?eleventh)[I had a conversation with my dad right before he was diagnosed again. I think he was frustrated that I had been unhappy for such a long time and that he couldn’t help me. And also… that my life had taken a bad turn. And I couldn’t seem to fix it. I think that he was trying to motivate me, but what he said was “you know I really just thought you were tougher than this.” It hurt. I had been struggling for a while at that point and had trouble functioning due to the migraines. I didn’t have a response. [I thought I was tougher too.]<transition11|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition11)[Then he got sick again.]<twelth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?twelth)[And none of the things that came before mattered. The arguments were forgotten. The tense years were forgotten. He was still the best person I knew. We tried months of chemo. And then more chemo. And then the bone marrow transplant. And then even more chemo. And then there was so little left of him that there was nothing else to try. His hair had fallen out a long time ago. The mustache had faded to a few whiskers. He’d lost seventy pounds. [I’d put on a hand on his shoulder to steady him and I’d feel only bone.]<transition12|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition12)[He tried for such a long time.]<thirteenth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?thirteenth)[The chemo was hard on him. It’s hard on everyone, but he’d done more than most. It seemed endless. I’d drive him to infusions five days a week. There were dozens of hospitalizations. He felt terrible. He had trouble eating. He couldn’t sleep. He’d been started on oxygen and was stuck with a machine on the couch. And if you looked at him… he’d only smile. He was so desperate to give the rest of us hope. I never saw him falter. I never really even saw him get scared. [Even at the end.]<transition13|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition13)[He was barely in his sixties when he died.]<fourteenth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?fourteenth)[We all knew the end was coming. He knew. And he was so calm. I remember helping him shave at the hospital. I bought razors and warmed hot towels in the sink and made an event of it. I worked very slowly. I wanted to do a good job. I didn’t want the moment to end. Then he wanted to see how it looked and I took a picture on my phone to show him. He smiled into the camera like he knew that would be the last photo I’d have of him. It is such a brave smile. He died the next day. I miss him so much. I wanted more time with him. [I can still hear his voice in my head.]<transition14|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition14)[And truthfully, I am still having a hard time.]<fifteenth|
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?fifteenth)[I still have headaches. My life is still a mess. I don’t know how the world works. I am not successful. I am not sleeping very much. And I don’t have a dad anymore. But I watched him try for years. I watched him struggle and keep hope alive and hold the world up on those bony shoulders. And I think… I think I can keep trying. I would very much like to be a source of strength for someone else someday. [I would very much like to be a person like my dad.]<transition15|]
(transition: "dissolve")+(click: ?transition15)[I (cycling-link: "miss", "love", "will always love", "wish I could still talk to", "wish I could have one more day with") my dad.][I (cycling-link: "miss", "love", "will always love", "wish I could still talk to", "wish I could have one more day with", "wish that I could have one more Christmas with", "wish that I could walk in a room and see him on the couch, just being", "wish that I could stand in the kitchen after dinner and talk and argue with", "will never have another day with", "sometimes think that I disappointed", "hope that I am someday someone like") my dad.]