Alright.
It has been a year to the day since my dad died at the age of sixty from what I guess was prostate cancer. That’s what he was diagnosed with anyway. It was prostate cancer. My dad is dead, and he died from prostate cancer. Last year. To the day.
Diagnosed the same day that my wife gave birth to our son. That’s how I remember it anyway. I remember everything. It’s all I think about. I remember every detail. I remember leaving the delivery room to check in on my parents. See how my dad was feeling. As I recall, my dad downplayed whatever was going on in his typical way, so as to not distract me from the life altering experience of the birth of a child. He always shifted the focus away from him anyway as long as he lived. My focus was indeed in the other room with my wife. To this day I still believe that there was a hazy realty of my dad’s deteriorating health. Kinda like the Lakers this year. Not exactly sure what the hell was going on, sometimes I watched, sometimes I just didn’t tune in, showing moments of brilliance, agony, ultimate suck-i-tude, hope, anger, weakness, unravel, injury, then out of nowhere they are gone and I look back on what can only be deemed a tragedy.
My exercise here is not to focus on painful memories too much. Though I do want to recall them in the written word, so I can always see them.
The memories of the few days spent in the hospital. The feeling of seeing him on the bed and hearing him apologize for dying. The day we left for a few hours to eat at Jerry’s Deli, while my wife stayed with him alone in the room, dabbing his sweaty, cadaver like forehead. The smell. Trying to get him to eat a popsicle. Getting denied alternative, experimental treatment. Watching my dad get denied alternative experimental treatment. There was so much hope in this final attempt. The car ride home alone, while he travelled with my mom in an ambulance to begin hospice care. Prepping his bed in my parent’s room below the Lahaina hula-dancer picture they brought back from one of many Hawaii trips. Watching him scream and moan in physical pain for two-to-eternity hours uninterrupted. Taking off his pants to try to help him pee. Watching nothing come out. Kneeling beside him with my hands up his shirt on top of his heart and chest, never letting go. Feeling it beat slower and slower over the course of a few hours. Telling my mom to stay in the room and stop dealing with the hospice woman. That he was dying, and about to die. Her telling me not to say that. Watching his mouth open, slightly. Tilt his head up. Never letting go of his heart. Collapsing into his chest. Hearing the hospice guy ask Jesus to welcome him, and my mom telling the guy we were Jewish and to reroute him. He was home in his room for about five hours. I called my wife. I opened a bottle of Johnny Black. We drank it all. The room stayed strangely warm the entire night.
Now that I’ve written it, it’s there for me to see. I’m glad I did. These are of course the tip of an iceberg of details, but nonetheless, an accurate portrayal of the way I remember the days leading up to May 23rd, 2012.
I said I didn’t want to focus too much on these memories, though looking back at them, I am suddenly finding many of them beautiful, I’d rather like to write about what has changed for me since last May 23rd.
I said I didn’t want to focus too much on these memories, though looking back at them, I am suddenly finding many of them beautiful, I’d rather like to write about what has changed for me since last May 23rd.
There is a massive void in my life. An unimaginable, immeasurable amount of time and space that is gone. Gone forever and never to return. I still cry. I don’t cry as much anymore, but when it hits, it hits hard. I look at my son every day and am beyond disappointed that he will not get to experience a guy who probably would have been the craziest mother fucking grandpa ever. A guy who should have lived to have 100 grandchildren. I look at my mom and am so sad she is not with him. I am not so much sad that she is alone, but just sad that she is not with him. When I am with my wife and son, I feel my dad’s presence. When I walk in my parent’s house, I feel him. When I am with my mom he is there. When I go anywhere, I feel him. I see him buzzing around my hummingbird feeder every morning outside my kitchen window. We have espresso every single morning. I am with him when I am with Jerry and the Dead, and Dylan, and Prine and Buffett and Beethoven and Mozart and Tchaikovsky…it’s endless.
Over this past year I have spent a lot of time with my family. We have grown closer. We talk a lot more now. We always did, but it is different now. We are members of the worst club in the history of the universe, and we are not unique in this way. But it still doesn’t make it any better knowing this.
I love my mom and my brothers and my sister in law so much. I love my wife and son more than anything that has ever existed in the history of time. I love my extended family. I have a job that I actually like. One year has gone by in a blink of an eye. It was yesterday I was kneeling beside him, holding his beating heart. I can’t even imagine. I can’t ever forget. One year, gone.
What will the next year hold? When will this void begin to brighten up? Will it ever? I doubt it. It will always be black. But the wealth I have in the living memory of my dad has made me the richest man in the world. When he left, he left a dent in the universe. When he left, we all left. But we’ve come together as something else. Something new. Something great. We will all meet again someday. I will cherish every waking moment I have left with the people I love.
For now, I am grateful to have my family, my wife, my son, and countless, magnificently colored hummingbirds dive-bombing each other from sunrise to sunset, in a symphonic dance for the sweet organic cane sugar nectar that sits in the magnolia tree in my backyard.
