July 31, 2009
We could see that you weren't yourself And the lines on your face did tell It was just as well You'd never be yourself Again . . . . . . stars in your eyes free from the life that you knew . . .
My Daddy is dying. He's been dying for years now, but he's doing it in earnest these past few days. I thought I was prepared, I thought I'd done my grieving a long time ago. I didn't know that these last days would hurt so very fucking much.
I never realized how much he'd shaped my life, how much he'd influenced who I am, who I looked for when I went looking for a mate, how much he shielded me from my mom's pyschosis. I didn't realize how much he'd meant to me, how much it would hurt when he left me.
He was my Daddy. That sounds juvenile, but let me explain. Dad is that guy who pays the bills and yells at you when you piss your mom off. Daddy is the Man. Daddy is taller than the sky, stronger than the storms. Daddy picks you up when you fall, he scares the monsters out of your closet.
Daddy makes the world safe when you're small and scared, Daddy bails you out when you're not so small but just as scared and don't know how to fix the mess you've just made.
I wasn't his blood, I wasn't his son, but he raised me like I was both, and more. I have never known a day in my life when I didn't know deep down where you don't think about it but where it really counts, that my Daddy was there to fix it all if it went wrong. And that day is coming, soon--oh, fuck, it's happened already, but as long as his body was here and breathing I didn't have to deal with the knowledge. Sometime in the next few days, the next few weeks at most, I'm going to have to put my Daddy in the ground and it's fucking killing me.
Fuck me, but this hurts. And I don't get to break down and be weak and weepy, I have to stay strong, because as I've grown up, my Mom has regressed. She's as gone as he is, and I'll have to deal with that later. I cant' deal with both at the same time, even though she's been gone for longer than he has, and will follow him very shortly into the grave. It sounds maybe callous to say this, but I have a replacement Mom in my mother-in-law, but there will never be a surrogate for my Daddy.
It's fallen to me to be the "Durable Power of Attorney", the one who has to make the hard calls, the one who has to tell the hospital to send him home, he wants to die at home, who has to deal with the hospice staff, who has to protect my mom from the predators that will descend on her once he's gone. And I know it tears him up to leave this to me, but he's too weak, too worn down, too beaten and too broken to do anything else.
And there's this horrible part in me that believes I did this to him. Intellectually, I know this is bullshit. I know that it was Viet Nam, and a life of alcoholism and uncontrolled diabetes and a botched epidural that did it, but he had his first heart attack when he was cleaning out my apartment, without any idea if I was dead, alive, brain-dead, or whoring myself on the streets of some unknown city, when he found a bottle of dirty rigs under my sink and couldn't deny any longer that his little girl had become a needle junkie.
I know this is bullshit because by the time he was paralyzed and began his long, slow descent toward death I was married, safe, sane, and pregnant with his grandchild. I know this is bullshit in my head, but my gut still feels sick and rotten with guilt.
And once he's gone, my work will have just begun. My mom is sicker, in body and soul and mind, than he is. And there's not a goddamned thing I can do about that. I can't make her stop smoking, I can't make her see that a diet of seven Cokes, three cookies, and a spoonful of peanut butter won't keep her alive much longer. I can't make her see that all of those fantastic deals on QVC aren't the bargain of the century, I can't make her spend that credit on a new set of teeth to replace the ones that are rotting out of her head instead of three new $200 handbags that are going to triple in price if she doesn't order them in the next ninety seconds. I can't convince her to not light a cigarette when she's just eaten three Vallium and a 100 mg Morphine tab because she's already burnt off most of her hair while nodding off and she doesn't have much to lose. Fuck, I can't even convince her that pissing in a coffee can really isn't that great an alternative to walking five steps to the toilet.
Worst of all, I can't convince her that my Daddy really did love her even if he didn't spend two hours a day talking about her feelings and deepest desires and what she dreamed that night. Fuck me, if I have to hear her say, in my Daddy's hearing, one more time, that he's made a "cripple" out of her by not "letting" her go anywhere when she sees quadruple out of one eye and double out of the other, I swear I might just strangle her myself before she can burn the house down around her with one more cigarette.
And this is another source of my guilt. I don't take my children to see them, their grandparents, as often as I'd like, because I don't like them to be sick for days after from exposure to the tarry air. Mom doesn't believe in the dangers of second-hand smoke (among other things, like carseats, and nutritional education), she also doesn't believe in opening windows, or the idea that dying men maybe don't need to have their abilty to analyze their every thought and emotion mocked and vilified every minute she's awake.
Please excuse me. I'm maybe not in my right mind right now. I have a one-or-two-hour window in every day where I'm not a wife or mother or daughter, but just me, Misty, and I don't always spend it wisely. These days, I spend it in mustering my inner troops, using the lull in the storm to remind myself that I will survive this, because I have no choice. Every now and then, though, I have to wallow, and spew. I'm a spewer. And right now, I'm a very sad, melancholy, and grief-ridden spewer.
Later, maybe, I'll be able to write about what an awesome fucking individual my Daddy was. And maybe even my Mom, but that will take a little more time and distance. Right now I'm just wallowing in grief and fear and this overwhelming sense that things are being left unsaid, things are being left undone, and if I were a better and stronger person I wouldn't be wallowing in my own grief but sucking it up and getting on with it.
And maybe that's the biggest legacy my Daddy has left me. That no matter how bad things get, no matter how fucked up your cirucumstances, you suck it up and get on with your responsibilities. In the morning, I'll do just that. But for right now, I'm wallowing.
Comments
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meganstuke (Megan Stuke) says...
Damn, girl. Death is just the worst. As in, I'm Ready but I'll Never Be Ready but Let's Get This Over With but Please Don't Leave Me but I'm Not Worthy but Screw You For Dying but What Next?
Most important: your daddy knows you love him to pieces.
Least important: everything else.
July 31, 2009 at 8:05 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) says...
Damn you, Megan, that was beautiful, and it got me crying all over again.
July 31, 2009 at 9:05 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ladylaw (Terry Bush) says...
The guilt is perhaps caused by the feeling that any bad thing we do has consequences - i.e. we are somehow that powerful or that guilty. I have felt that way when bad things happen - "IF only I had (or had not) [fill in the blank] then [ fill in the blank with awful thing] would not have happened." It's not logical. But it's pretty normal. That's where reason and the power of forgiveness become so important. You cannot change one moment of the past. All you can do is do better in the moment and future (or try). And you are better then that little lost girl so many years ago was. In so many ways. Your parents must have done a lot of things right. You have turned out really well. And I know they are very proud of you. As long as you are alive, your daddy will be remembered and loved. And you can pass that along to your children. And I believe that he will still be with you, perhaps even more so, after he passes. No more pain. No more suffering. But he can still be there for you, with you, and in you.
No one gets out of this world alive. And it's never easy to say goodbye to someone you love. I don't think any words can make you feel any better. Only time and a lot of love will do that. And you are loved. By many.
We are all praying for you.
July 31, 2009 at 10:46 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
bloozman (anonymous) says...
It's extremely important to take care of yourself even while you must take care of your parents. Take time for yourself, hubby, child.
You're in our thoughts.
July 31, 2009 at 12:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
DOTDOT (anonymous) says...
I went through this a couple few months ago, so I have an idea what it's about. But even so, it's a road we all walk alone.
All I can say is, if you even got ME praying for you, you better goddamn well appreciate it.
July 31, 2009 at 2:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
dolores2175 (April Fleming) says...
Wow. This is really intense. Thanks for sharing and I wish you the best.
July 31, 2009 at 4:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) says...
I do, DotDot, I do. I appreciate all the love and good thoughts and psychic hugs everyone has been sending my way lately. I may be walking the road alone, but it's a lot easier with a crowd of fans cheering me on from the sidelines.
August 3, 2009 at 7:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )