Disclaimer: This is going to be a long one so get comfortable. I am actually writing this a day early because I don’t know if I am going to feel some kind of way tomorrow and won’t have the desire or opportunity to write.
Well today is an extremely crucial day for me. Today is my fathers’ birthday. For those of you who don’t know my father passed way on December 11th 2006. Today he would have been 69 years old, probably the favorite number for a Scorpio like him. Now I feel very …indifferent about how I feel about the passing of my father and the events involving my family surrounding it. My father was a diabetic who did not take complete care of himself, even with the constant pleading from my mother, other family members, doctors and me. My father was also had his foot amputated in 2005, a major obstacle for our family. Now when it comes to my family and close friends, whom I consider family, I am extremely protective and emotional. So any tragedy that they endure I endure as well. But I was there every step of the way. But when I look back at the tumultuous relationship my father and I had while I was growing up I have mixed feelings and emotions.
PAST:
Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my father. (I refuse to use past tense because I still do love him) It’s just that our relationship hadn’t always been as strong and consistent as it had grown to be. Being the youngest of my father’s children and him being in his forties when I was born, he was done raising KIDS and his dealings with me were more reflective of two adults rather than a father and son. My father did not come to my basketball games, track meets, baseball games, theatrical productions, choral concerts, or even my baptism. I resented my father for a good part of my adolescent years. I was lucky though, I had a father that was in home unlike many of my peers. I guess I should also be lucky because I am the only one of my father’s children who had him present, in home, for my entire life, which I will touch on in a little while. But on the other hand he was many times there physically and not mentally like I needed him to be. Plus with my father being ill by the time I hit the 6th grade I WAS an adult. My father would neglect to take proper care of his health, which ultimately caused his death. I can not count the number of times that I would come home from school and have to fix my father something to eat because he had not eaten or taken his medication all day. Or the number of times that I found my father almost comatose on the floor due to his glucose level dropping dangerously low. I basically had to man up and take care of him since my mother was the only source of income for our household, which meant that I did not have the same experiences that my peers did because I had far greater responsibilities that they had. This behavior continued throughout my life. Waking up in the middle of the night in high school because his blood sugar level had dropped because he hadn’t eaten and having to call the ambulance or even go to the hospital and then still go to school and function properly. It was really rough and it took its toll on me and how I viewed my father. It got so bad that I used to tell people that he was my stepfather and had them believing it to. He just made me so upset and at that time I could not understand why he was doing that to me and my mother. Years later my father confided in me that he was going through a depression because many of his friends were deceased and he was only one of a few left. Plus with society changing drastically from what he was used to he became very introverted and just stayed home, which annoyed the hell out of me. I never wanted to invite anyone over because my father would just be there all the time. My resentment grew for him as he distanced himself from me. Unlike many of my peers’ parents, my father would be absent from being involved in my extra curricular activities. Now for any one who knows me I don’t fancy sports too much, especially playing them. God only knows that if they hadn’t given me Health class twice that I would have failed gym. But I participated in them because I wanted my parents, two sports buffs to be proud of me and cheer me on like the parents I had seen on TV. But my fathers’ involvement never exceeded picking me up and dropping me off. Even they way he would talk to me would perplex the hell out of me. When I turned 16 he told me that whenever I got a job the he and my mother was not going to pick me off or drop me off and that if I wanted to work I had to get my own transportation to and from work. WOW! When it was time to apply for college my father told me that I did not have a choice and that I was going to college but I had to figure out a way to pay for it because he wasn’t! WOW! When I would practice at home for auditions he would come in my room and say, “I hope your not going to sing it like that!?,” (And for the record my range is sick!) or when I expressed interest in going to a performing arts school in New York he straight VETOED that 1! Needless to say he was cut-throat with me. I just became acclimated to him being present daily but as distant as a cousin you only saw once every 5 years. For years we went back and forth, always loving him but many times not liking him. By the time I was going to college I just figured that my father was set in his ways and would not change no matter how much I wanted him to and if I did not accept that then I would never have the relationship that I wanted to have with him. Going to college helped a lot. I missed him like crazy but relished in the fact that I was on my own. But while I was in college I still had to deal with going back and forth with my father. For starters on the 1st day of my life at the University of Connecticut my family dropped me off and threw up the deuce and kicked rocks back home, unlike the other parents who walked their children around campus and helped them buy their books. I mean granted I had been in academic programs at UCONN since my freshman year in high school and even the summer before I went to UCONN I still wanted them to experience that part of my life with me. Even when my health declined in school my father did not take the trip with my mother to come and check on me, but my grandparents did. Many times I was laid up in the hospital and wanted to see him and he just wasn’t there. Not to mention that he had only been to visit me in school 4 times in my four years. Day 1 of school, 2 additional brief, and I am talking about less than 30 minutes, and graduation day. After I finished college my fathers health continued to decline and he was even treated for depression but here is the kicker, my father was a behavioral health counselor for adolescents for years, so he knew all the information and strategies that they doctors was providing for him. Plus when given the opportunity and platform to showcase his intellectual superiority he shined, I guess that’s where I get that from. But still he would always return to his non-compliant ways of living. Now I must admit that once I was in college our relationship grew stronger and my father would often vocalize his pride in the man and individual I had become and was evolving into. I loved seeing his face light up when I would bring home A’s on papers that I had done, or hear his voice filled with happiness when he would tell me that he was proud of me and that he was happy of all my achievements. For many years I was scared to disclose anything to my parents, who had always said that I could bring them any issue and we would handle it as a family. But since our relationship was not always the best I decided to keep a lot to myself and just dealt with a lot internally. But it had gotten a lot better at that point and I was able to share so much more with him once I was out of the house. But post under grad when I returned home due to the failing health of my grandparents I saw my father slipping into the same patterns and now that I was grown I refused to enable his behaviors. I was tired of telling him to eat and him not eating, I was tired of telling him to take his medication and him not taking it, I was tired of spending late nights at the emergency room for the same thing, I was tired of knowing the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff on a first name basis. I was just tired! I then decided that I would distance myself from him that way when the inevitable happened I would not be as emotionally scarred. For the past two years my father was in and out of rehabilitation facilities, learning to use his prosthetic leg and getting his health together and I was wearing myself down and continued to alter my life to accommodate my father, and realized that I was doing exactly what I wanted him to do for me but he never did. Then at the end of last year it happened. My father once again did not eat or take his medication and he became ill. Instead of fighting with him to eat or go to the hospital I let him be sick. Finally after 3 days I called the ambulance and what I thought was going to be a routine hospital stay turned into my fathers last days in the land of the living. I knew something was wrong when I got a very unfamiliar call early in the morning from the doctor asking if I wanted to honor my fathers wished in his medical files to not resuscitate if something were to happen. I then got my mother together and went to the hospital and saw the state my father had put himself in. Almost non responsive and nothing like the man I knew and loved. While returning from test and being prepped for the evening my mother and I were asked to leave so that the hospital staff could prepare him. We went home and not 15 minutes after leaving and whispering in my fathers’ ear for him to keep fighting and I loved him I was informed that he had passed. That’s when I was reacquainted with my kitchen floor. Life as I knew it would never be the same.
Present:
The events surrounding my father’s death taught me a lot. It taught me that my friends are my world. When making the phone call to inform them my father had past, friends that were an hour away were there in the ICU with me in minutes, telling me that I would make it through. My friends shared my pain as they had grown to love my father as I loved him. My friends comforted my mother, who was holding me together. I, the individual who had been holding my family together, morally and financially, had reached my breaking point and wondered if I was going to end up in the basement of the hospital in the Psychiatric ward where I had visited my father on two occasions. It also taught me that although I had put so much emphasis on family in the past, I was putting them on a pedestal that, during the next week I would permanently remove them from. While going through this whirlwind, I had to pay for my father’s funeral arrangements out of pocket due to him not having an insurance policy, although I had stressed to him its importance. My own bothers declined to help, stating that since I reaped the benefits of living with my father and having him being a permanent figure in my life they did not feel responsible financially. Needless to say I have not spoken to four out of my five brothers since that day and have no intention on doing so for the remainder of my life. My friends once again stepped in and helped me financially for some of the expenses that I could not afford. They were there for me in ways I can not articulate. My father always said that I picked good friends and I must agree. I also learned that I am so much like my father that it’s scary. I never really though I looked like him until he passed and saw the physical similarities. I laugh like him, smile wide like him, have his deep baritone, I use his sayings all the time, I am outspoken like him, I am emotional like him, I am passionate like him, I adopted many of his philosophy’s, I dress like him, and even went into the same field as he did. I have not cried about my fathers’ death since the day he passed. At this point in my life I have lost so many people that I am all cried out. Now I press on and know that I have so many memories to look back on with him that were happy that I am proclaiming to not focus on the negative aspects of out relationship. When I decided to accept him and his way I decided to not hold that against him and move on. I feel fine and from time to time tear up because I miss him dearly but I know that one day I will see him again walking towards me with his deep hearty laugh and a blinding smile. But like my mother said I need to have my moments so I am just waiting here for it to hit me, I just hope that it doesn’t hit me when I am behind the wheel because lord only know my insurance is high enough.
Jaret
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