My Father My King
The blog about the death of my father.
In September of last year, I made the oft ventured trek from Birmingham to Huntsville; my dad was in the hospital. A month prior, he had fallen ill and was reluctantly administered. I had tried to visit him then, but due to Covid guidelines, only one family member was allowed to visit per day, and that was already a laxing of rules. My uncle had beaten me to it, so I called the floor nurse and made arrangements to visit the next weekend - if he was even still there…
He was.
I hadn’t seen my dad much in the past year. He had been feeling pretty bad for a while but didn’t know what exactly was wrong with him. My sister had visited with her kids, and my aunt and her grandchildren came over. That was right after the first emergency rush to the hospital - he was quickly let go, but in September of last year he was back and being kept. Before this little family reunion, the last time I had seen my father was Thanksgiving the year prior.
He was a difficult man. At Thanksgiving of 2019 he had yelled at me, somewhat viciously and seemingly out of nowhere, because I poked fun at him for telling the same story over and over again. He was a professional Television Watcher, like a lot of people that grew up in the 50’s, and had running commentary at the ready about practically any show that might be on. At Thanksgiving, after dinner at my sister’s house, we saw that the new computer animated version of the Grinch was on, and I immediately sensed the gears spinning up on a lengthy dissertation about how the live action one with Jim Carrey was “actually pretty good.” The problem was that my sister and I were already talking about something else and Dad was trying to talk over us. “You’re not listening to me,” he said, dejected.
“What?'" I retorted sharply. “You’re just going to tell us about how you like the Jim Carrey one for the 20th time.”
That’s when he unleashed. My dad always had a temper, but I hadn’t seen it in years. Becoming a grandfather had mellowed him out a bit. Divorcing his second wife didn’t hurt either. Yet this rage seemed like it had been kept in a bottle, heavily compressed, and perhaps even somewhat intentionally reserved for me. Things yelled at me at full old man volume: he was tired of me being a smartass, how I was taking this trip (to my sister’s for fucking Thanksgiving) was on his dime (even though I drove the whole way and offered to pay for gas - I think he was upset because I didn’t chip in for dinner the night before, which I actually did feel bad about, but in my defense, when the check came I was being bombarded by my very playful niece and nephew and didn’t know there was a vital exchange of currency for goods and services I needed to have all of my attention on - fucking sue me.)
Sigh.
Forgive me if this isn’t written well. I might be meandering and jumping all over the place. My tone might not reach the levels of elegant somberness one should think one should have when writing about the death of a parent. Turns out there isn’t really a guide for grief. It’s unique to all of us. I haven’t had the desire or motivation to draw or write hardly anything lately. Nothing interests me. My mind wanders. Everything seems silly. Mortality seems ridiculous.
When a parent dies it’s like a black hole envelops your whole life.
Inescapable. Intractable. Eternal.
There’s also this underlying anger I have about it - not just with him passing, but the way he was his last year. After the explosion at Thanksgiving, not wanting to upset him further, I chose to remain quiet. As an introvert, it’s easy to just retreat inward, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve started being far more assertive about what I think. I’m not afraid of anyone’s stupid goddam opinion and am more than willing to share why, but in this case, I let the angry indigent old man have the last word.
We rode home in complete silence. It’s a four hour drive. We barely said a word.
———
In September of last year I drove to the hospital and walked in the front door wearing a mask. I looked like a bandit - all black, black astrological gaiter, dark sunglasses; and it was all perfectly fine. Covid-19 is a horrible mess, not much more needs to be said about that, but it did not kill my father. He never had it as far as I know. The only way it affected him was that he was in the hospital during the pandemic and protocols were severe. I had to sign a form like normal, but also a waiver and get a temperature check. There weren’t any people roaming the hallways or in waiting areas. A few nurses and security personnel were all I saw.
I made it to my dad’s room and walked in. He was asleep in a bed with all manner of modern medical technology hooked up to him. I pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. I touched his shoulder, sharp and boney. It reminded me of the frailty of my grandfather when he was dying. Dad woke up.
“Hey…” He said weakly, feigning enthusiasm.
“Hey, how are you?” I asked
He muttered a few things then slowly, as the fugue like haze of whatever medication he was on wore off, he uttered: “Oh, I didn’t know who you were!”
It took him a few minutes to realize it was me. He explained that so many doctors and nurses came and went to poke and prod and chat and ask questions and try to get him to eat; and then they had him doped up on so many different drugs - he had no sense of time or place and couldn’t distinguish people very well.
We sat and talked for a while. He had the hospital room television going, but for the life of me I can’t recall what movie was on. My dad and I could always watch a movie together. He was a walking encyclopedia of odds and ends trivia. Movies, history, and especially factoids about United States Presidents. One of his go to stories (that he told on repeat as if he forgot he had been telling it for years), was about how disappointing Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln was.
“They should have called it The Thirteenth Amendment, because that’s what it was really about,” he’d say.
A few Christmases before, I had bought him a book about Presidential trivia. It was cheap, but after all the years of bullshit neckties and golf related junk, I think that was probably his favorite gift I had ever given him.
I attribute a lot of my artistic ability to my father. It seems to be more prevalent on his side of the family. He could draw practically anything, effortlessly it seemed, with just a Bic mechanical pencil and any old drawing pad laying around. This is one of his that I kept from his collection:
I have no idea who the old man is. After my father passed, me and my two sisters had the arduous task of sorting through his possessions. I found an actual photograph of a very similar looking old man - I think it may have been my dad’s grandfather - my great grandfather.
An entire wall of his house was covered with such artwork.
———
After a few hours at the hospital last September, a male Indian doctor walked in. At the time, my dad was fervent about being let go so he could go home. So he reiterated his desires to the doctor and was quickly shut down.
“You have congested heart failure,” the doctor said. “There’s fluid in your lungs from years of a sleep apnea that’s gone untreated.” The doctor spoke with an air of certainty and an almost bored, or perhaps tired, tone - as if the severity of this prognosis really needed to be overstated. I followed up with a few questions of my own, but was met with the same banality of responses.
My dad had been horrifically unhealthy his whole life.
When he was younger, he was very active. Tall and thin, he played basketball in high school and seemed very athletic. However, I know from my mom and other family members that he started smoking cigarettes around the same time, or even earlier. When I was a kid in the late 80’s and throughout the 90’s, I remember him smoking often, only to eventually give it up only to replace it with chewing tobacco. I’m not sure which is worse. But other than the bad habits, my dad had an atrocious diet and was frankly lazy. He never had much ambition to go outside and do things. He was a frequent gardener when I was a kid, and stayed busy taking me and my sisters to soccer practice among other dad things. However, as we grew up and moved out, he did less and less. I think it’s a major reason why my parents divorced in the first place.
A little random quote that goes through my head all the time, coined by my father, is about women. When I was a teenager, I was hopelessly emo and felt like I’d never be graced with a girlfriend. He once came in my room and said:
“You can’t just sit around here and expect them to come to you.”
It’s good advice. You really do need to get out there and interact with others if you want to make friends, much less have romantic relationships. Ironic then, that as he got older, my dad became a major recluse. My aunt once said that she would drive past his house and see his truck in the driveway. “I bet he’s just been sitting in there all day,” she said incredulously.
It seems like my father had entered a downward spiral of not doing anything because he felt bad, and therefore feeling worse and worse, rinse and repeat. I wish he’d reached out for help sooner. Obviously. Of course. But the problem with old men is that they think they know what’s best - they think they know goddam everything - and will literally die on that anthill of pride before being told otherwise. I know from experience.
———
After the doctor left the hospital room that day in September, I stayed and talked with my dad for a while longer. I tried to be encouraging. In my twenties, I had smoked pretty heavily too and mostly survived on a diet of trash food, but then I gave it all up and fell in love with a healthy lifestyle. I started running 5k’s, going to the gym regularly - I love to lift - and I genuinely feel so much better when I have small healthy meals with lots of fasting in between. When weight training, you just need to worry about getting your macro quotas, and everything falls into place after that. I tried telling this to my dad. He blankly stared at the television.
I had to go. It was late afternoon by this point. My grandmother was having a birthday dinner (she’s 87) and I wanted to attend it, with mask and social distancing of course. I walked over to my dad, who was now sitting up in his bed. I hugged him. He began to cry. I began to cry. It was probably the longest embrace we ever shared. After, I walked back to my car and sat alone in my tiny Honda in the hospital parking lot. I wept.
Today is the Vernal Equinox Twenty Twenty One.
This tree is blooming right outside my apartment. It’s beautiful. It’s white feathers have coated the ground as if a bride is about to walk down the sidewalk.
I saw my father one last time before he died. I drove up to his house sometime after the hospital visit. He was doing better, which is a really twisted theme to a lot of these stories. People get really sick and then appear to be getting better, and then… He was on a regimen of physical therapy and had an oxygen tank hooked up to his nose at all times. He could walk. I got there in time for lunch and he made me a hamburger - old school style in a cast iron skillet with nothing but a cheap bun and yellow mustard. The Essential Burger.
We sat and shot the breeze. He brought up his disappointment with Lincoln again. He scolded me for being a goddam liberal - something he never understood, as if compassion for our fellow Man is something to be ashamed of. His political leanings were just as dysfunctional as his dietary habits though, the same spoiled entitled what-about-me-ism of the Boomer generation, angry that any minority might get any sort of special treatment over the plight of the White Man; the same anger that drove him to vote for the 45ht President. My dad died before the storming of the Capitol on January 6th. I honestly have no idea how he would have reacted to it and I never will.
At one point, he looked at me with complete disgust in his eyes and asked: “What happened to you?”
I don’t hold it against him. My dad had no ambition. One can pass from this world while never passing through it. He was satisfied to live and die in Buttfuck Nowhere Alabama, work menial jobs, have a passionless career, no hobbies or interests outside of an obsessive fandom of collegiate sports; become fat and lazy and angry and as a result lose two wives and have a broken relationship with his son.
On the morning of October 31st, 2020, he woke up to go to the bathroom and had a massive heart attack. It was a Saturday, Halloween day. Alabama was playing Missouri. It was head coach Nick Saban and my little sister’s birthday.
———
It’s apparently customary to bring plants and other gifts to a funeral. I had no idea. Even my company, bless them, sent a really beautiful bouquet. These too get divvied up for the surviving family to take home. I have no room in my tiny city apartment for a plant, yet somehow I ended up with this gargantuan Peace Lily.
I’ve never had a plant before. It’s almost like another pet, just on a much slower scale of time. I like to watch it move its leaves towards the sunlight streaming in my windows in the morning, slowly adjusting to maximize it’s photosynthetic intake.
A Jewish friend of mine once told me what “Sitting Shiva” was all about. You sit with the family of the recently deceased for seven days, not only to mourn and grieve with them, but also to help guide the soul away from the family and go be with God. It’s a cleansing so that no negative energy is left and only the cherished memories remain. I’m not Jewish, but I can’t help but think that I’ve done the same with my dad. I’ve transferred his ghost into this Peace Lily.
As of the writing of this blog, it has begun to bloom.
I apologize for the profanity and the rather angry tone of this. My dad was a difficult man, frustrating to the bitter end. But I loved him and always will. He was a great father and the only one I get to have; and I was his only son. There’s been about a million times in the last few months that I wished I could have called him, even if it was to provide commentary on the surrealness of his own death, or to ask permission to sell his house or move his things. His absence will be felt from here on, a constant reminder of my own mortality and the world will only feel all the more lonely.
