April 3,2009

So I am going  to try to figure out if this will save or not.  It may not.  This is only a test .

The whole idea of driving a laptop is foreign to me. In fact this morning I am surrounded by everything foreign. It’s quarter till eight and relatively quiet in the house, with only the hum of Dad’s “mixer” or whatever the hell you call it that occupies a permanent spot in the living room about eight feet from his chair. While the llasa apso of questionable sanity ceaselessly gnaws on her various stunted body parts I am trying to quiet my rational mind. I am hoping to successfully hold back the tears – the screaming in my spirit. Dad should rise in about an hour. Always a man of fatal routine he now sits up at nine….or so. Taking twenty minutes to down ten or twelve different pills, he will then ask me to close my eyes so he can pee in a bottle. He’ll put his robe on, his watch and rings, and glasses and then start the trek to his recliner which is only about twenty feet away from his bed. He’ll pause for another ten minutes to catch whatever breath afforded to a man who’s lungs only function at 10% and whose diaphragm no longer rises and falls like that internal tidal force we all take for granted. I’ll get him coffee with splenda and a bowl of cereal. The TV will go on – his steady mental IV of news and demolition and catastrophe. He may read a bit. Hopefully he will doze like he did yesterday, and if I trust this POS laptop, I may work on a novel or two.

Last night was difficult, ok it sucked. Dad had a cranial sacral treatment. Basically a massage to realign one’s polarity I guess – when you’re terminal and the highlight of your day is having someone put oil on your feet and rub your temple who am I to challenge the validity? Unfortunately the lady was late, so things didn’t wrap up till after 7:30. Then I fed him dinner – and he did his final nebulizer sometime close to ten. And then we reverse the morning routine.

I spent the next two hours listening to him clear his throat via a handy dandy baby monitor. And then there were the phantom sounds  bells from the grandfather clock chiming almost inaudibaly but not on the hour and half hour.  And the conversations….with no radio or TV to support them. Perhaps I was having aural hallucinations. The house, for all its pleasantries is haunted. I’ll get to that later. But being the creature of fatal routine that I am, I awakened at five with a sore spot in my throat (Dad keeps it cold. Like a meat locker. Or a morgue. ) and thoughts that were anything but pleasant. After the dear hubby called at 6:15 – I got up, showered, put laundry in the washer, fixed the spawn breakfast and lunch and started the coffee. Eric has school today, and Dave is off to enjoy a day of showfest….which I will miss completely because my dad cannot be left alone. Perhaps it is the fear that enshrouds the man that makes the tension palpable – and verbal in the darkness. And I with my broken heart and Christian cheese am no more lion than the scruffy dog who is still munching parts of herself no Human would ever touch with a tongue. Today will be a long day unless I am able to lose myself somehow in  random fiction coursing through my cortex. I find myself watching the rise and fall of his chest, checking his eyes to see if they’re open or closed, and bracing my attitude when he asks me to do something that is already automatic, like lock the door. 

Suffice it to say, I didn’t want to do this for so many reasons which I suppose must be rooted out like unrepentant sin from the stony ground of a beating heart. I keep telling myself that while much of we sapient creatures conditionalize love into something less than perfection – he is my dad and that is enough to merit my unconditional love for him. But then there’s all the emotional junk from forty odd years of a relationship to consider. Random things like being chased out of my bed, being forced to sit behind him while he “wagged his dog” at me….and even though I could totally outrun him now I still remember and he conveniently doesn’t. How nice. Even though my experience tells me – people don’t change unless something changes them from the inside out – my dad will vehemently defend his change. That thing he calls the truth – scattered all over the house in small black corrupted books of pseudo scripture: what ache lingers in his heart now that he is totally dependent on his apostate child to bring him his breakfast cereal and bottles of oxygen? My spirit cries out to just make contact, a touch, a prayer all forbidden by the wall of religion he has built around himself. He took the oath and drank the koolaide years ago. Now he waits to sleep but hangs onto the hope that somehow I will suddenly believe that Jesus and Michael are the same and “christendom” is a monster veiling the eyes of my pastor, friends and family.  I have rehearsed in my mind so many responses should the subject inevitably rise between us like so much backed up sewer water. Even now, my mind avoids the thought – distracted by sounds of stirring from the bedroom. I just want to go home and be with my family, my boys, my barking dogs, and the sunlight that filters through the livingroom window. Without the roar of machines in my ears and the constant tension of watching my dad struggle to breathe…

I was told I should write out all the pain, all the anger because it would help me deal with this four day span of house arrest with dad. But I don’t even want to go there. It seems pointless to dredge for carcasses when you know what you snag and drag to the surface will be even more putrid than what fell thrashing in to the pit years ago. Why see it again?