The ugly side of illness

Today I call my Dad.  I saw that his number came up on my phone yesterday, but I was having an ok day and not really feeling like listening to more depressing news about my Dad’s intake (or lack of) and how he just can’t seem to get past this point in his illness.

He answers the phone sounding like he’s been asleep.  Not just asleep, but the kind of sleep that is so deep that you are unsure if the phone is really ringing or if it’s a dream, so you answer it only half expecting a real person to be on the other end of the line.  We talk a few minutes about his health.  He reports that he’s not feeling any better.  He’s to the point where he doesn’t even pretend to be OK for his daughter’s sake.  I ask, “How are you feeling?” and he just responds in a melancholy voice, “not good.” 

I am instantly disheartened.  I have been talking to a friend today and resigned myself to ask more seriously about the antidepressant medication he was supposed to begin 2 weeks ago.  Now, I don’t even have the energy to talk to him anymore.  It’s like my dad isn’t even here now.  There’s just this shell of the man who used to be a big safe teddy bear to me.

We talk briefly about my upcoming trip to see him and my mom then we hang up.  It’s as if those few minutes took all he had to keep from completely collapsing right there on the phone.  I know my mom is at work still, but I need to talk to her right away.  She always makes it feel better.

I call and she answers, saying she’s still at work but about to finish up and go home.  I tell her how Dad sounded on the phone, and she doesn’t make me feel any better by saying, “That’s how it’s been all the time lately.”  We talk a few minutes about an argument she had with him earlier today because “He’s gotten past the cancer and through chemo treatments, and I’m not going to let him starve himself just because he thinks he can’t eat.”

She promises to call later tonight and we hang up.  The feelings are more than I can bear alone.  I call my sisters and get voicemail.  I call my husband and get voicemail.  I am alone in the car with my thoughts. 

It’s always been a fascination of mine to look at things from an outside perspective and try to figure out why people react to things the way they do.  I try to think about where they’ve come from in their lives, age, culture they grew up in.  Being a part of a family dealing with a life-threatening illness is one of those sickly fascinating times for me.  I look at my mom who becomes like Florence Nightengale-tending to the sick tirelessly.  It’s like she needs to do that to feel that she is doing something to make it all better.  My dad has never been a good patient.  He doesn’t believe in following directions for anything-including his health.  This makes for interesting battles between my parents.  Mom trying endlessly to find the newest treatment and explore all the options, making sure that Dad is following all doctor’s orders to a “T” and Dad trying his hardest to just do it his way and thinks she’s just being mean to him when she pushes.

I have become, as my husband has said, the stand-in matriarch of the family.  Since my parents’ move to South Carolina, my younger sisters turn to me for stability and Sunday lunch in the place of Mom.  I grudgingly take on this role because part of me still just wants to be a kid and wait for Mom to take care of all of us.  But another part of me feels an obligation to hold the family together and a sense of worth for doing so.  My middle sister has fluctuated from anger (at Dad for being so stubborn and not wanting to move home) to resignation.  She has said many times since the initial diagnosis that she knows this is it for Dad.  He’s not going to live much longer so why won’t he just come home so we can spend the most time with him as we can.  To which I say, understanding my dad’s stubbornness a little better than her, that it would be like saying that this cancer thing is going to get the best of him and he’s not ready to throw in the towel just yet.  The baby of the family at only 22 feels that she is getting short-changed on time with our parents.  She is unmarried and without children but hopes to do both.  She wants what the rest of us had-our parents there for these monumental occasions.

It is heartbreaking to be here in this place in life, but I know it is a rite of passage.  I am constantly on the edge of some deeply philosophical thoughts about life and death and reality.  They are like demons in the shadows of my mind.  Days like today bring them slinking out where I have to look at them fully.  They are harsh and raw and burn my eyes, but I cannot look away.  I know that only by facing them will I be able to command them back to the depths and back into the shadows so that I can keep going; keep getting up each day and loving and caring and living.

The future is my hope.  My parents are my roots and they are the past.  My children are my future.  They are the continued reminders for me that life will go on, and that I will be OK.  Or I have to be, rather.  Someday my children will be here where I am now, wondering how it is that they have become an adult and life will go on long after I’m gone.