In the span of a life unexamined, you never discover satisfaction unless you're rich, I can only assume. I don't know if my dad ever felt like he did enough. I know that I feel like I didn't do enough for him. Have I written about this yet? Here, I mean. No? Oh. Here's my Facebook post from October 15, 2016:
I never could have prepared myself for this day, even though everything we were seeing gave us signs that the end was near. I said the words "He's gone" a hundred times in my mind, but hearing them hurt like nothing else I've ever experienced. He was my hero, my work ethic, my passion for doing things right, my pride and my consolation when everything else didn't work out. And it didn't sometimes. And he was there. And he taught all of us to do the same for each other. I could try anything I wanted to try because he had my back. It didn't matter if he was doing something else; If I needed him, he dropped everything and was right there for me. Yesterday I was an adult with aging parents. Today I'm a little boy who lost his dad. Dad, I hope you stay with me and guide me, I hope that you still have my back and are there for me when I need you, to celebrate the amazing things ahead and to give me some peace when things go wrong. I'm happy you didn't suffer, and that all of your burdens have been lifted. Since you passed in your sleep, I'll say what I said every time we slept under the same roof or talked to each other on the phone before bedtime. Good night, old buddy. I love you.
To this day, I don't know how I was able to put that much in perspective. I was numbed, mortally wounded, robbed of simple things like eating, breathing, any kind of basic human functioning. I didn't really have anyone. I hadn't heard from my best friend in weeks. My family was in Miami. I was alone and lost in a world that just didn't matter any more, because I had visited death so many times previously in the previous ten calendar months:
- In early January the doctors told us my mother would not survive the weekend, or even the day. This was it. She somehow survived. Thanks, doctors.
- On Valentine's Day my kitty was euthanized after 18 years of giving me someone to come home to. I was absolutely heartbroken but tried to move on.
- In May, we lost Marchan, a beautiful singer-songwriter I brought into the program and championed as much as I could. She was only 23. I was a pallbearer at her funeral and was, over time, affected deeply in ways I couldn't have predicted.
- Then came the losses of JD at Hard Rock, another tragic loss of a young man. I was surrounded by the whole Hard Rock family grieving the loss and then in the midst of his family, who impressed on me this crazy idea that you could be out and about in the world only days after losing a loved one. I didn't know how they could do it. We paid tribute to him. They cried and celebrated his life. His parents danced.
- And then there was Perry, who shared a love of music and the a cappella movement with me. We shared links with each other on social media. We talked about how far Pentatonix had come. He was always so appreciative of things other people would consider boring and routine. I never knew how bad his fight with Cancer was.
Neither his cremation nor death certificates were as hard to receive and process as was the simple act of holding the small black box with his ashes inside. For all of his experience, his travels and adventures, his pursuit of my mother and quest to bring the family to America, the sum of his life experience ultimately added up to a small bag of white/grey ashes with his name printed on a label. Is that what we're all headed towards? I asked every photo I saw of him that question.
Dad, if there's an afterlife, I have a few questions:
Do you have any regrets?
Was it all worth it, even the moments when we were angry at each other?
What about that time we drove up the coast to see the space shuttle launch? Was that as good a memory for you as it was for me?
When it was too difficult to shave or groom yourself, and we teamed up to clean you up and took care of you...did you appreciate those moments the way we did?
In your last moments, were you ready to go?
I'm going to be asking these questions, I suppose, until the day I die. And so goes the loss of a parent, someone who knew you were coming, prepared for the beginning of your life, kept you from hurting yourself while you learned how to walk, dressed you, fed you, fixed your broken heart with food, company, or just a simple reminder that if all else fails, you could come home and be loved regardless. The tragedy redefines family and scatters us to the wind. We have two addicts who aren't capable of those parental miracle cures. With mom's Alzheimers, there's nowhere to turn. The innocence and safety of childhood is two dimensional and filtered, shelved with old movies you love to watch and recite lines from.
That's my return to this journal, if only for a moment. It's taken me a long time to articulate it, but it occurred to me that these are stories people can't listen to, at least conversationally. I will find some other way to continue to talk about it, because it occurs to me that the end is not a bag of ashes or a certificate.
The part of the story that goes on is me.
