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thehefnerThere's one thing I fear I hadn't made totally clear over this whole ordeal with my father. Or maybe I had, but reading over several of the comments to me from the last few days, I feel that-- for all our sakes-- I should isolate this particular issue.
Y'see, I just visited him in the hospital for the second time, whereupon I realized what's going to be the hardest thing of all; the factor that's going to make this whole ordeal be just that, an ordeal. And it's not the cancer itself. See, in the past few days, with all the crying and the fear and the "I love you, Dad, god, I love you,"s out there, there was one factor I had overlooked. It's a factor I brought up when I wrote that whole entry about him recently.
When I saw him in the hospital for the first time two days ago, he had a breathing tube taped to his face and he couldn't talk. He couldn't even smile. He rarely turned his head or made any effort to look at look at either of us, and I wondered if he was unable to do any of those things either. When he ran out of paper on his notepad, Nita and I were almost fighting over who would get him a clean blank sheet, or one of us did while the other held the basin under his mouth so he could spit up an acrid red gloop.
She and I both did our best to remain positive. One of the first things she said when we got there was, "Well, they seem to be very attentive." Still looking up at nothing in particular, Dad then fumbled around the bed for his pencil, which I found and handed to him, and he wrote:
"LIKE HELL. THEY WOKE ME UP AT EIGHT O'CLOCK THIS MORNING AND HAVEN'T GIVEN ME A MOMENT TO REST."
Mom said, "He doesn't seem to understand that he's in the ICU. That's the place where they are supposed to be checking in on your every ten minutes to make sure you're not dead." I remembered how resentful he was of the hospital morning check-ups last time he was there, when he broke his hip ten months ago. He did everything he could, including eventually incurring very nasty bills (which he also complained about for months later), to get a private room.
I visited him again two days later, Saturday afternoon. By that time, he'd undergone two emergency radiation treatments (they insisted on calling it "urgent" rather than "emergency") and had the tracheotomy. He was still unable to talk, rarely looked directly at me, and even when I made him laugh (which caused gurgling), his mouth kept tight, never raising into a smile but instead just some thin-lipped, closed-mouth grimace.
"IT'S LIKE SOME MEDIEVAL TORTURE DEVICE," he wrote.
"But at least it's better than the alternative," I offered. To which he said nothing.
Problem is, I'm not sure I'd have anything to say to that either.
I told Mom about it; she was there in the hospital the first day, and still wonders if he wasn't furious that I brought her along. I told her how painful it was to see that Dad couldn't even smile, and she said, "That's bullshit. He could if he wanted to. The cancer hasn't paralyzed his mouth, you saw that yourself. He can open his mouth, he can spit, he can stick his tongue out, and he absolutely could smile. But he's too busy sulking and being hateful. Did you notice how you and Nita and the nurses, all of you were doing everything for him, and he didn't react at all? He may not be able to say 'Thank you,' but he could write, or nod, or gesture, or do something, anything, to show his appreciation. But no. Because his whole focus is on his misery and hatred and self-pity, just like he's always been."
And y'know, it didn't occur to me. I just though, hell, the guy has cancer, maybe he's allowed to be a bit impolite. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Mom had a point. More than that, I realized what we were going to have ahead of us in the coming months.
Remember how I said Mom taught me to laugh at life's misfortunes? I mean, I'm a walking open wound anyway, but at least the wound's always fresh. If it weren't for Mom, my open-wound nature would be festering, constantly and forever. It's because of her that I'm as healthy, sane, and mentally strong as I am.
Dad never had someone like Mom growing up. You can easily see how the years of living under a manipulative alcoholic affected him. He has a great sense of humor, no question about that, but the man has absolutely zero appreciation for irony. In the face of misfortune (his or even my own), all he knows is stewing and entitlement and resentment.
Furthermore, we're talking about a man who's driven everyone away from his life, save for an ex-girlfriend who gives him way more than he ever deserves... and me. Mostly it's because he's a deeply paranoid, distrustful man who would rather live in abject squalor than let strangers (Hispanic strangers, no less! Egads!) into his house to clean up. A man who chased away his few surviving friends for no other possible reason than he doesn't want them to see what he's become.
At the same time, this is also a man who stopped showering more than once a week, not even when we got a shower chair installed. A man who could easily, EASILY have a better, more-comfortable-yet-more-fulfilling life if he'd move to a one-story house, use a wheelchair, stop drinking, or even use a fucking walker (he's too vain; he uses crutches instead), just as a start. A man who stopped seeing doctors and taking medication for the gout and bleeding infected sores on his feet, claiming they "didn't work." Maybe so, or maybe he just didn't like hearing how alcohol makes gout much, much worse.
He had taken to wearing a plastic Safeway bag on his foot--not even tying it on, just dragging it loosely--to keep the blood off his carpets. Think about that for a moment.
My point is that I am forced to wonder... what are we doing all this for?
He could have a life, if he wanted to. Even with the cancer, he could still have a wonderful quality of life. But he won't, because he never wanted it in the first place. He wants to resign himself to his misery and self-pity, to passive-aggressively wait for death, but then to scramble and hide when it comes a-knockin'.
So why? Why are we going to have to go through possibly years and years of his bitterness and anger, struggling on a long road of recovery, for what? What kind of life are we trying to save, here? It could be a life, a real life, but he never wanted that! So why? What's going to be the point of all this pain and suffering and struggle and money and time and effort?
And that's when one possible answer comes to me. To spend more time with him. To savor a few more of what we've had these past two years, which have been the best our relationship has ever been.
Maybe. Maybe that's what's it's all for. But remember, we had those good times because I only saw him for a couple hours, once a week. When he had finally decided to make the most of the time I gave by being pleasant, rather than playing his games. But now, all I see is that ugliness, and which is far worse than his glazed eyes, emaciated frame (both of which he had long before the cancer), swollen throat, shaggy unshaven face, and the sucking, gooey tracheotomy.
Y'know, if I were in that situation? Or Mom or Edd or Gordon? We'd all be laughing. We'd be crying too, crying together and leaning on each other for love and support, but we would absolutely be laughing. We laughed our way through Grandpa's Alzheimer's (which he did too), and we'd laugh our way through whatever happened to us. No matter what. I bet the same could be said for many--perhaps most--of you reading this.
We could handle cancer. It's handling Donald Hefner that's going to be the hard part. He's the only man I know who could make "rage, rage against the dying of the light," seem ugly and ignoble.
So I don't quite know what I want, exactly. It's just... I don't want him to get better... any more than I want him to get worse. I think the one thing I know I want is that... I want this to be over. One way or another.
Mom and I will be making cookies and stuff for the nurses and doctors in the ICU. She says they're gonna need all the love and thanks they can get, since he's going to be a hell of a patient.
"Like Hell."
Y'see, I just visited him in the hospital for the second time, whereupon I realized what's going to be the hardest thing of all; the factor that's going to make this whole ordeal be just that, an ordeal. And it's not the cancer itself. See, in the past few days, with all the crying and the fear and the "I love you, Dad, god, I love you,"s out there, there was one factor I had overlooked. It's a factor I brought up when I wrote that whole entry about him recently.
When I saw him in the hospital for the first time two days ago, he had a breathing tube taped to his face and he couldn't talk. He couldn't even smile. He rarely turned his head or made any effort to look at look at either of us, and I wondered if he was unable to do any of those things either. When he ran out of paper on his notepad, Nita and I were almost fighting over who would get him a clean blank sheet, or one of us did while the other held the basin under his mouth so he could spit up an acrid red gloop.
She and I both did our best to remain positive. One of the first things she said when we got there was, "Well, they seem to be very attentive." Still looking up at nothing in particular, Dad then fumbled around the bed for his pencil, which I found and handed to him, and he wrote:
"LIKE HELL. THEY WOKE ME UP AT EIGHT O'CLOCK THIS MORNING AND HAVEN'T GIVEN ME A MOMENT TO REST."
Mom said, "He doesn't seem to understand that he's in the ICU. That's the place where they are supposed to be checking in on your every ten minutes to make sure you're not dead." I remembered how resentful he was of the hospital morning check-ups last time he was there, when he broke his hip ten months ago. He did everything he could, including eventually incurring very nasty bills (which he also complained about for months later), to get a private room.
I visited him again two days later, Saturday afternoon. By that time, he'd undergone two emergency radiation treatments (they insisted on calling it "urgent" rather than "emergency") and had the tracheotomy. He was still unable to talk, rarely looked directly at me, and even when I made him laugh (which caused gurgling), his mouth kept tight, never raising into a smile but instead just some thin-lipped, closed-mouth grimace.
"IT'S LIKE SOME MEDIEVAL TORTURE DEVICE," he wrote.
"But at least it's better than the alternative," I offered. To which he said nothing.
Problem is, I'm not sure I'd have anything to say to that either.
I told Mom about it; she was there in the hospital the first day, and still wonders if he wasn't furious that I brought her along. I told her how painful it was to see that Dad couldn't even smile, and she said, "That's bullshit. He could if he wanted to. The cancer hasn't paralyzed his mouth, you saw that yourself. He can open his mouth, he can spit, he can stick his tongue out, and he absolutely could smile. But he's too busy sulking and being hateful. Did you notice how you and Nita and the nurses, all of you were doing everything for him, and he didn't react at all? He may not be able to say 'Thank you,' but he could write, or nod, or gesture, or do something, anything, to show his appreciation. But no. Because his whole focus is on his misery and hatred and self-pity, just like he's always been."
And y'know, it didn't occur to me. I just though, hell, the guy has cancer, maybe he's allowed to be a bit impolite. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Mom had a point. More than that, I realized what we were going to have ahead of us in the coming months.
Remember how I said Mom taught me to laugh at life's misfortunes? I mean, I'm a walking open wound anyway, but at least the wound's always fresh. If it weren't for Mom, my open-wound nature would be festering, constantly and forever. It's because of her that I'm as healthy, sane, and mentally strong as I am.
Dad never had someone like Mom growing up. You can easily see how the years of living under a manipulative alcoholic affected him. He has a great sense of humor, no question about that, but the man has absolutely zero appreciation for irony. In the face of misfortune (his or even my own), all he knows is stewing and entitlement and resentment.
Furthermore, we're talking about a man who's driven everyone away from his life, save for an ex-girlfriend who gives him way more than he ever deserves... and me. Mostly it's because he's a deeply paranoid, distrustful man who would rather live in abject squalor than let strangers (Hispanic strangers, no less! Egads!) into his house to clean up. A man who chased away his few surviving friends for no other possible reason than he doesn't want them to see what he's become.
At the same time, this is also a man who stopped showering more than once a week, not even when we got a shower chair installed. A man who could easily, EASILY have a better, more-comfortable-yet-more-fulfilling life if he'd move to a one-story house, use a wheelchair, stop drinking, or even use a fucking walker (he's too vain; he uses crutches instead), just as a start. A man who stopped seeing doctors and taking medication for the gout and bleeding infected sores on his feet, claiming they "didn't work." Maybe so, or maybe he just didn't like hearing how alcohol makes gout much, much worse.
He had taken to wearing a plastic Safeway bag on his foot--not even tying it on, just dragging it loosely--to keep the blood off his carpets. Think about that for a moment.
My point is that I am forced to wonder... what are we doing all this for?
He could have a life, if he wanted to. Even with the cancer, he could still have a wonderful quality of life. But he won't, because he never wanted it in the first place. He wants to resign himself to his misery and self-pity, to passive-aggressively wait for death, but then to scramble and hide when it comes a-knockin'.
So why? Why are we going to have to go through possibly years and years of his bitterness and anger, struggling on a long road of recovery, for what? What kind of life are we trying to save, here? It could be a life, a real life, but he never wanted that! So why? What's going to be the point of all this pain and suffering and struggle and money and time and effort?
And that's when one possible answer comes to me. To spend more time with him. To savor a few more of what we've had these past two years, which have been the best our relationship has ever been.
Maybe. Maybe that's what's it's all for. But remember, we had those good times because I only saw him for a couple hours, once a week. When he had finally decided to make the most of the time I gave by being pleasant, rather than playing his games. But now, all I see is that ugliness, and which is far worse than his glazed eyes, emaciated frame (both of which he had long before the cancer), swollen throat, shaggy unshaven face, and the sucking, gooey tracheotomy.
Y'know, if I were in that situation? Or Mom or Edd or Gordon? We'd all be laughing. We'd be crying too, crying together and leaning on each other for love and support, but we would absolutely be laughing. We laughed our way through Grandpa's Alzheimer's (which he did too), and we'd laugh our way through whatever happened to us. No matter what. I bet the same could be said for many--perhaps most--of you reading this.
We could handle cancer. It's handling Donald Hefner that's going to be the hard part. He's the only man I know who could make "rage, rage against the dying of the light," seem ugly and ignoble.
So I don't quite know what I want, exactly. It's just... I don't want him to get better... any more than I want him to get worse. I think the one thing I know I want is that... I want this to be over. One way or another.
Mom and I will be making cookies and stuff for the nurses and doctors in the ICU. She says they're gonna need all the love and thanks they can get, since he's going to be a hell of a patient.
"Like Hell."
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Date: 2007-05-29 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 05:45 pm (UTC)/a bloody brawl
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Date: 2007-05-29 05:53 pm (UTC)