The summer after my mom died I quit my job and spent three
months in Croatia. By the time I got home, the attorney who was the executor of
my mother’s estate had successfully dug her talons into everything. I had no
control over my home, or who lived in it. The first week back I was working
in the garden to take my mind off growing frustrations with the attorney. New
tenants (selected by the executor) came into the yard with their German
Shepherd who promptly charged me and bit me multiple times, including a solid
chomp on my thigh. An hour later it was still bleeding so I headed to the ER.
Unbeknownst to me, dog and cat bites can be the source of serious infections
that lead to amputations or even death. The Indian doctor cleaning out the red punctures
in my leg assured me I had done the right thing by coming to the hospital and
described in great detail how an infection from a dog bite had spiraled into an
amputation he had performed in that very ER. I spent the night hooked up to
antibiotics in a cold, white room, feeling absolutely alone. My sister was
across the Atlantic Ocean, my mom was gone, Joe had left for the evening, and
I’m fairly certain I didn’t even attempt to call my dad that night.
My parents’ divorce shouldn’t have created the gigantic fissure
that it did. After all, my dad, Roy, still lived in the same town. But predictably
when you go from seeing someone everyday to seeing them a few times a week,
once a week, the relationship changes; something is lost. Or I guess in our
case, because I was a kid, a relationship that had only just begun was stunted.
My mom became an additional suppressant as her anger, frustration, and pride,
fueled a decade long campaign to make sure my sister and I always felt guilty
for spending time with him. It is one of the few things I can say my mother
truly approached in the wrong way.
With my mom gone, the shallow nature of the relationship my
sister and I had with our dad was exposed and we all grappled with how to move
forward. We were not orphans, of course. But there were moments when it felt
that way. I think my dad maybe felt too much time had passed to salvage
anything and for me, I never felt like anything I did was satisfactory to a man
who was, and still is, essentially a genius. And like many intellectually
gifted people, he has never had issues explaining engineering concepts or
anything technical, and I mean anything, but telling me he loves me or even
that he’s proud of me, has never been easy. Minus the genius part, I know we
have many similarities.
I was released from the hospital the next day. The executor
of the estate called to inform me that we wouldn’t be asking the tenants to
leave because the house needed the income and I would have to “just deal with
the dog.”
Three months later, my stepmom was out of town for the
weekend and I had made plans to go to dinner with my dad Friday night. I called
him early that evening but he said he was feeling really tired after a long
week and as a side note, he mentioned how annoyed he was that their gigantic
orange cat, Charlie, had once again bitten him. He said we’d have dinner the
next night. After several attempts I finally reached him the next evening and
found out he had slept most of the day and the hand the cat had bitten was
swollen. We said goodbye and I hung up the phone. And then it hit me like a
shovel to the back of the head. I called him back and said I’d be there in 10
minutes to take him to the ER. I had never really challenged my dad’s knowledge
in the past, but I explained to him with absolute certainty what was happening and
he was in too much pain to protest.
We sat in the ER for several hours as I watched the redness
that had engulfed his hand spread up his arm. Seeing him in any pain was a new
experience (had I ever seen him in
pain before?), but something more unsettling was accepting a role as his
advocate. When my mother was sick I put all my trust in doctors who I realize
now didn’t have all the answers. But I was too uncomfortable and insecure to
push back, to be an active advocate for her. It took about five years after her
death for the guilt from that silence to dissipate. As I watched my dad squeeze
his eyes shut once again from the pain, I got up and walked over to the ER’s
gatekeeper. I had already politely checked in with the young woman a few times
and she had politely smiled back and told me he would be seen as soon as
possible.
I felt a vicious desperation as I leaned over the counter to
lessen the distance between us. “I understand my father isn’t bleeding or
unconscious and that’s all you really care about,” I took a breath to steady my
voice. “But I know exactly what is wrong with him and I’ve been sitting here
for hours watching the infection spread up his arm. If he ends up losing his
hand, or his arm, because of your fucking ignorance, it’s going to be on you.” She
raised her eyebrows. I felt the tears flood my eyes. She picked up the phone; I
walked back to my dad before I could hear what she said. A few minutes later I
was watching a doctor unsuccessfully flush the wound. Two days later my dad had
surgery to remove the dead tissue and stop the cellulitis. The doctor said if
he had waited 24 more hours he would have lost his hand.
It was the first moment I had ever felt protective of my
father and certainly the first time I had taken responsibility for his
well-being. Over the last six or seven years I’ve come to see how lessons can
be learned from every situation, good or bad. Sometimes it takes some digging
to wrap your head around why something may be happening. As I sat in the
hospital, machines dripping and beeping around me after getting bit by the dog,
I definitely felt like throwing my hands up and screaming “what the hell!” But
it made obvious sense three months later as I sat next to my dad post-surgery,
machines dripping and beeping all around us. Maybe it was the universe understanding
that it was dealing with two obstinate individuals and it needed to be explicit.
Message received.
A week or so
after he was released from the hospital, the gauntlet was thrown down. Knowing
that I had been struggling with the executor, my dad and stepmom opted to join
me for a meeting with her. The meeting was explosive; there were accusations
and insults thrown back and forth but despite zero progress and no compromise,
my dad had slid into a role that I had been longing for him to take. He was enraged
and upset - we all were. A common anger, a new common goal, and a family found,
re-formed and revitalized. And
that obese orange cat sat on the kitchen counter, smirking at all of us.
We are a work in progress. There is no going back to fill in
voids. The time lost is irretrievable, but maybe we can pick up from a simpler
time. When Dad had me shooting an enormous basketball underhand through the air
towards a rusted orange hoop that may as well have been hanging from the moon. When
we hit neon tennis balls back and forth over sagging nets under a hot summer
sun. My dad is why I played sports, why I had the tools and
confidence to take up running. The first time I had ever been pushed to a
physical limit was biking along the Charles River and trying to keep up with
him (a cramp gripped my organs and, at age 7, I was sure my life was over). I
run the same paths almost daily now.
Like these other men who influence and confound me, my dad
kept, and continues to keep, a lot to himself. But I think we’ve crested the
hill and have entered the descent. Not one following the other, but side-by-side.
Thank you, gentlemen, for the challenge.
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