Today my PT visited me and we got to talking about things. I’ve lost a lot of weight recently as the result of a new drug, Synthroid I’m taking for recently discovered hypothyroidism (I’m starting to look too gaunt, I think) and I told her that I’d once weighed a ton more. Like a fucking boatload more. She asked me if I’d been through something traumatic that made me eat my way through my feelings, to which I replied without skipping a beat, “Yeah, my Dad’s suicide.”
All of a sudden I was lost, back in those moments of that cool January morning years ago. It was a holiday in the US, and forgive me as I can never keep them straight, but perhaps it was Veterans Day. I’d come over, since I didn’t have work. I seem to remember mentioning I would be over to him when we’d spoken Saturday night.
And some background here: he was a father to me and my brother, but a stepdad to my much older siblings, my brothers were very close to their own dad, a hunter and fisher kind of guy. My sister was never close to her own dad, so despite the fact that she was just 11 years younger than my Dad, who was 10 years younger than my Mom, my sister was quite close with my Dad. My own full brother was close to no one, went to college at 17, then grad school, then went to get his PhD in Particle Physics and Quantum Mechanics. He’s now a multi-millionaire working with Intel. He had nothing to do with my Dad once he left home, never accepting a dime from him.
None of my brothers accepted the fact that my Dad was gay, which is something my Mom knew all along. She met him, he was her Psych professor, a Mensa member and over many cups of coffee he admitted to always wanting to be a father. I think it was unwise for a mom with 3 kids to start over again with a gay man, but as it was explained to me, she had hopes of having brilliant children with him. Thus my brother and I were born, while my half siblings were all teenagers.
Growing up, I idolized him, even when he came out, and I had many gay uncles, many of them also Psychiatrists, and he’d take me to spend time with them. The discussions were always so lively! After work, my Dad was often fond of telling me about patients he’d seen that day, then he’d ask me what my diagnosis would be and how they should be treated and/or medicated. He’d explain why I was wrong, when I was, but many times he’d humor me and say he might have to re-think his patient’s treatment plan.
My Mom and I were not close, ever, though once I became a mom she moved back to CA, bought an expensive house near the beach and she took care of my daughter some days after school.
That January morning, I unlocked the door, called out to him, but got no immediate response. I figured he was downstairs in his theatre, as he was forever making adjustments to the lighting or his snack room. However, he wasn’t there, and in the next room I only found his current lover, a handsome 40-something Middle Eastern Actor that’d been in several movies, still sleeping in his over-the-top Louis XIV-style bed + satin sheets.
I crept back upstairs to the middle floor, where the absence of the smell of coffee was palatable, so I put some one. I had never mastered the espresso machine he had so I had to settle for what I knew how to make. I figured, well, it’s unusual as hell, but he could be still sleeping.
I checked the garage. Since retiring, my Dad had several hobbies, one of which was collecting vacuum cleaners and fixing them up, even if they were in working order. He made them into turbo-Hoovers. He was also very tech savvy and always had something new that he was working on. He was not in his garage. Both his car and motorcycle were in the garage, so I knew he was home.
I went back inside, grabbed a cup of coffee, and took it out on the deck. It was a beautiful, though somewhat chilly day. Ordinarily the site of the sea and birds off his deck was a warm and inviting sight, but today was different. I remember feeling that something was off.
After a few minutes, I crept from the living room up the stairs to his 3rd floor master suite. “Dad?” I said passively, but got no answer. I pushed open the door to his bedroom to find him.
He’d been recovering from a broken neck, an event that he said happened as the result of a fall on his stairs after lots of Diazepam, plus a heavy night of drinking. He was still getting supplemental nutrition via a jejunostomy tube.
The sun was streaming in and the sliding glass door was open. Sounds of seagulls were audible. He was laying peacefully in bed. He wore a yachting outfit: a light blue windbreaker, white slacks, docksiders and a sailor’s hat that had slipped off to the side of his head. Pinkish-red punch had dribbled from his lips. He was watching TV, or more specifically porn. I moved his right arm, while crying, “Dad, Why?!!!” and his arm, already stiff with rigor mortis, quickly slapped his side, while his hand gripped the remote. I sat there in that moment, and talked to him, about the book we were working on, about how I’d hoped that he’d be there to see my daughter grow up, about all the things we hadn’t gotten to do that we talked about. As sick as it sounds, I was his daughter, but also like a female, almost “wifely” companion. We traveled together, drugged together, cried together. I was in charge of taking care of him when he got drunk and either barfed or injured himself since age 6 or 7 as my Mom was forever on business trips for APA. Once I could drive, I’d go to his house whenever he’d injured himself, and I grew up believing this was my role in life.
Since his death, I’ve had a difficult time keeping jobs, wanting to see my friends as often and keeping plans, and as
@dalpat077 described a bit earlier, being able to see anything beyond a trail, a brown hill, and a bit of green, where others talk about the beautiful meadow and hills and a sunny day. I don’t know if that will ever return. These things are now matter of fact to me, and I no longer see the beauty in such things. I still enjoy an empty beach, and I love the waterfowl my Dad taught me to feed, and later pick up. I love cemeteries still, especially those where he took me picnicking.
So now, he’s with me in a box in my living room. But it’s not what you’re thinking of, I could never bring myself to pick up his ashes, so the cemetery mailed them to me. I have never opened that package from the cemetery. I haven’t been able to. So he’s in a postage box. I also never had a funeral for him. I couldn’t accept his death. So I guess some of those death rituals are undone. I honestly doubt I’ll ever be able to open that postage box. Nothing has destroyed me more in my life. Nothing.
If you get nothing else from my story, I have just 2 words I want you to consider:
Collateral Damage
And certainly more deserving of a better response such as this weak and inane two-liner response of mine. And maybe some further clarification of my previous post to which you so kindly and thoughtully replied.
