Take Two
I started to write yesterday, but I changed my mind. I've started to do a lot of things lately, then changed my mind. Truth is, I don't want to do much of anything.
I blame it on others. My wife requires a lot of my attention when I'm around. She has been having trouble moving lately, so I'm needed to fetch and carry for her. I'm also needed to do things she can't do at the moment. Lastly, she needs me around and paying attention for companionship. She can't get out much and has few friends, so when I'm around she needs me to pay attention to her.
Those are my primary excuses for not doing any more in my life at the moment than I have to, and not even that if I can get away with it. I've often been a bit lazy. If I could describe a perfect day for me it would involve me not doing anything at all. Maybe I'd read or play golf (alone) or just sleep. Television is good for vegging out. All I need is something to grab my attention, and I can forget about anything and everything.
I think of myself as lazy.
My dad is now officially in hospice care. He's on a morphine drip and some oxygen, but other than that he's not doing anything but dying. I want to be there, but it would be irresponsible of me to go, my wife says. I can't do anything for him, which is true, and she needs me here, which is also true. But I want to be there.
Why is that? I mean I don't even much like my dad. It's a long and convoluted history, and I've worked through a lot of the emotional issues in the past twenty years to the point where I don't hate him anymore. The last few years, I've found him pretty pathetic actually. He was the bully of bullies in my life when I was young, and now I see him as what a bully always turns out to be: a pathetic little man.
I don't hate him anymore, but I don't know that I love him either. I think (perhaps in my conceit) that I know him better than anyone else in the family, yet I'm not sure that I 'get' him. Maybe that's it. Maybe my problem is that I've never fully gotten what he's been about; perhaps because he himself never fully got himself. (I think we mostly don't.) And now he's dying, and I'll never get him.
What do I mean about not getting him? I mean understanding what it takes to persuade him to consider things differently than he has. Understanding what makes him tick enough to help him. But he's never been much for being helped. He's always been part four year-old saying, "I can do it myself." But, of course, he never could. None of us can.
Sometimes I think that for me Dad has been less a good example of how to be in the world than he has been a good bad example of how not to be. A lot of times I look at my life and see where I came to a fork in the road similar to the one he came to, and I chose differently. And I'm happier with my choices than either of us have been with his choices. I think I can ask myself, "What would Dad do?" and when I've figured out the answer, simply do something else.
As my wife is fond of pointing out, though, I'm a lot like him. I know I've caught sight of myself in the mirror and realized that I'm standing like him or walking like him. And sometimes I talk like him. I know that I can argue like him because I infuriate others in the same ways that he infuriated me all my life. He has lacked self-confidence all his life, and so have I.
How can any two men be as smart and a stupid as he and I have been? We're both mentally smart and emotionally stupid. We neither one ever got over ourselves or rose to our potential in any area. I don't think he ever figured out the meaning of life, and I know I haven't.
Today would have been Mom and Dad's 57th wedding anniversary. From what I'm told, he won't die today, but nobody knows for sure.
Maybe that's the secret meaning of life: Nobody Knows For Sure. He used to say, "Do something even if it's wrong." But then, of course, he would whack me upside the head if I did it wrong anyway. Maybe that's what he learned. He would never talk much about his upbringing, but he was the child of an alcoholic, just as I am. And he was the older brother, just as I am the first born. Maybe he, too, had caution beat into him and initiative beaten out of him.
Whatever the truth is, I'll never know, and I'm sad and angry about that.
I blame it on others. My wife requires a lot of my attention when I'm around. She has been having trouble moving lately, so I'm needed to fetch and carry for her. I'm also needed to do things she can't do at the moment. Lastly, she needs me around and paying attention for companionship. She can't get out much and has few friends, so when I'm around she needs me to pay attention to her.
Those are my primary excuses for not doing any more in my life at the moment than I have to, and not even that if I can get away with it. I've often been a bit lazy. If I could describe a perfect day for me it would involve me not doing anything at all. Maybe I'd read or play golf (alone) or just sleep. Television is good for vegging out. All I need is something to grab my attention, and I can forget about anything and everything.
I think of myself as lazy.
My dad is now officially in hospice care. He's on a morphine drip and some oxygen, but other than that he's not doing anything but dying. I want to be there, but it would be irresponsible of me to go, my wife says. I can't do anything for him, which is true, and she needs me here, which is also true. But I want to be there.
Why is that? I mean I don't even much like my dad. It's a long and convoluted history, and I've worked through a lot of the emotional issues in the past twenty years to the point where I don't hate him anymore. The last few years, I've found him pretty pathetic actually. He was the bully of bullies in my life when I was young, and now I see him as what a bully always turns out to be: a pathetic little man.
I don't hate him anymore, but I don't know that I love him either. I think (perhaps in my conceit) that I know him better than anyone else in the family, yet I'm not sure that I 'get' him. Maybe that's it. Maybe my problem is that I've never fully gotten what he's been about; perhaps because he himself never fully got himself. (I think we mostly don't.) And now he's dying, and I'll never get him.
What do I mean about not getting him? I mean understanding what it takes to persuade him to consider things differently than he has. Understanding what makes him tick enough to help him. But he's never been much for being helped. He's always been part four year-old saying, "I can do it myself." But, of course, he never could. None of us can.
Sometimes I think that for me Dad has been less a good example of how to be in the world than he has been a good bad example of how not to be. A lot of times I look at my life and see where I came to a fork in the road similar to the one he came to, and I chose differently. And I'm happier with my choices than either of us have been with his choices. I think I can ask myself, "What would Dad do?" and when I've figured out the answer, simply do something else.
As my wife is fond of pointing out, though, I'm a lot like him. I know I've caught sight of myself in the mirror and realized that I'm standing like him or walking like him. And sometimes I talk like him. I know that I can argue like him because I infuriate others in the same ways that he infuriated me all my life. He has lacked self-confidence all his life, and so have I.
How can any two men be as smart and a stupid as he and I have been? We're both mentally smart and emotionally stupid. We neither one ever got over ourselves or rose to our potential in any area. I don't think he ever figured out the meaning of life, and I know I haven't.
Today would have been Mom and Dad's 57th wedding anniversary. From what I'm told, he won't die today, but nobody knows for sure.
Maybe that's the secret meaning of life: Nobody Knows For Sure. He used to say, "Do something even if it's wrong." But then, of course, he would whack me upside the head if I did it wrong anyway. Maybe that's what he learned. He would never talk much about his upbringing, but he was the child of an alcoholic, just as I am. And he was the older brother, just as I am the first born. Maybe he, too, had caution beat into him and initiative beaten out of him.
Whatever the truth is, I'll never know, and I'm sad and angry about that.
posted by Tom | 1:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home