In memory

Today's my dad's birthday.. I think he would've been 59 if he was still alive. It's weird.. with those I was close to that have died I usually I forget their birthdays. I don't know why. And I feel so badly when I forget and that I should've mourned them more, but I think they'd rather I think of them on all the other days during the year that I do.. I dunno... they're dead, so I have no idea what they think..or even if they do.. I'm sure they do, but hoping they're too busy in whatever I imagine heaven to be playing volleyball with Ghandi or something.. well, maybe not volleyball.. Ghandi's a bit on the short side for that.. badmitten maybe.. yeah..

On the 15th it'll be 5 years ago that he died in his sleep - we should all be so lucky. His heart was just worn out. He was sick anyway.. had leukemia but was in remission, going on 5 years, but I realized that is about as long as they expect you to live when you've had it.. and his body was so damaged from every pill that was supposed to keep him from having something worse...he was basically legally blind - can't remember if that was caused by the meds or not, his hip was deteriorating from the meds he took to keep him from being nauseaus all the time and that bothered him enough he had to walk with a cane, stuff like that.. and that was besides the results of the (and please forgive any misspellings here cuz I'm no doctor) graft vs. host disease he got about 6 months after the bone marrow transplant he received from his brother near the end of my last year in college in 1995 .. for no reason, the new bone marrow didn't really like him much - most of my family didn't either so no surprise there, but he was still my dad and watching his tummy swell up to something that looked like it belonged more on a pregnant woman about 8 months along was hard. Fluids weren't processing out of his body like they should so they accumulated in the cells between the skin tissues we were told. They had to operate a few times, putting what's called a shunt in his body to help drain the fluids, except sometimes the shunt would get plugged and they'd have to go in and fix that too.. and I do believe he and Mom were both thinking positive that he'd get that new liver he was on the list for.. but I think I was the only one who was realistic enough to know if they ever called his name, he'd never survive the healing it would take from that process if he ever got out of the operating room..but I never said that outloud.

Yeah.. let me tell you, not so much fun.. especially if you knew my dad.

We were one of those families that defined the saying ‟We put the ‛fun' back in dysfunctional". If even the smallest thing got on Dad's nerves, he didn't just tell you, he yelled about it.. well after you left the room he was still going on and on.. and on and on.. he was, to say the least, a very angry person. The oldest in his family of 4 boys, he received the brunt of all the discipline from my grandfather, who, in his old age you could never imagine him being so rough, but I'm sure, when he was younger, he took the belt to my father too many times.. that's the way it was back then. And all that abuse resulted in some seriously fucked up self-esteem and lots of unresolved anger in my father and, being the redneck he was, God love him, he never dealt with that. Don't get me wrong, Dad could be the biggest sweetheart too.. my favorite memories are when he would call me Suzie Q, which had always been his nickname for me, and he'd whistle thru his teeth on the 's' or the times when I was so small he'd let me wrap my arms around his leg and he'd walk around with me sitting on his cowboy boot all giggly and pretending I wasn't really there.

He definitely had his good moments and I loved him dearly being literally, the biggest man in my life.. but the illness only heightened the bad moods and made him pretty much intolerable to be around when he was really uncomfortable and/or in pain. I hated the way his gorgeous blue eyes turned icy cold when he was mad.. I remember holidays just being so nerve-wracking wondering if something might launch him into a tirade..but, I think ultimately, he was just really, really afraid of dying.

I couldn't blame Dad for his fear.. Just a few months before in February, my mother lost her step-dad to cancer and he'd apparently been battling it for 10 years, but I didn't know about it. He seemed fine to me.. but then suddenly it escalated over the holidays and he became a shadow of himself, unable to talk and moments away from death as his whole family surrounded him saying goodbye. When he was going, my cousin was sitting next to him holding his hand - my grandfather just squeezed it and Lyle shouted to my gram. God - almost nothing is more heart-wrenching than watching your grandmother run into a room desperate, saying goodbye to the man she's loved for more than 25 years, huddled over him, holding on for dear life and telling him through her tears that it's ok.. she loves him and he can go... No really, just try to find something worse.. I dare you.. I mean, it was beautiful and amazing and awful at the same time.. I still feel very lucky to have witnessed all that, but I hated to see her so broken.

The day before my father died was Mother's Day and I'd called to say hello to both of my parents - I think I'd driven the 4 & 1/2 hour trek down to Stayton the week before for Dad's birthday so I'd just been there - and when Mom was talking to me, the usual small stuff we do, she happened to mention that Dad had been ‛weird' lately.. which isn't something she ever said about anyone so when I asked what she meant by it, she told me he'd been really forgetful, absent-minded, forgetting where keys are, that sort of thing - but sort of goofy too - also just unlike him. When it was his turn to chat with me I asked him if he was feeling ok and he actually did sound rather spry when he said, ‛Yeah I'm fine, Suzie.' We had a really good talk too.. just about nothing, but not like we'd had in a while.. it was so nice and more than that, a relief for once.

I rather like remembering that day more than the next when I was back home and Mom called my office that morning and told me not so calmly but point blank that Dad was dead. He'd gone back to bed after getting up that morning and hanging out with her for a bit before her dentist's appt. When she came back, she reminded him it was time to take his meds and there was no response, she went to his room. He was still just a bit warm, but gone. She tried to revive him and I don't really enjoy thinking of her completely hysterical calling 911 and going thru all that, but I know it happened.

About 5 years before that one of my best friends had died, fallen asleep at the wheel on his way back to Arcada from Portland after his mother's funeral (a different buzz kill story for another time) and I felt his presence for a good 2 months after that.. I can't explain it, maybe it was cuz he was so young and it was so unexpected... but I was in my father's room the afternoon on the day he died and there wasn't anything. A month or so after, I had a dream of him where he seemed so sad and in pain, but told me to look after Mom and make myself happy. I woke up crying, but instantly noticed the most interesting thing.. the room felt tingly.. like some energy had been there and the tail end of it was just about gone.. I don't know how better to explain it.. but I was so relieved to have felt something finally - some sort of acknowledgement. I didn't see him, but I know it was Dad.

At Christmas this year, Mom told me he actually appeared to her one evening when she was in the tub. She heard him call her name, she got out and saw him in the room across from the bathroom - just standing there... and he told her he was ok and not to worry. I prefer to think of him that way - out of pain, happy, and free. Again, we should all be so lucky..

I love you Pop.. happy birthday!