"EASY WRITER"
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Hello, Dolls.
I’m sorry, kids. This will not be a âfeel-goodâ blog. It’s pretty much the antithesis of that. I have spent a lot of the past year wanting to write this, but I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I love you all, but this blog is mostly for me. I am often able to work out a particularly difficult situation by organizing my thoughts in a blog, so that’s what I’m doing. I beg your pardon, but as always, you are free to hit that âBackâ button.
As some of you are already aware, my father has Stage Four lung and bone cancer. He’s been sick for over three years, but the continual waxing and waning of his health has made it feel much closer to thirty. The last year has seen him come back out of remission and begin his steady decline towards membership to âThe Choir Invisibleâ. And while my family is no stranger to this asshole disease, our experience with cancerous family members has always been very brief. (There’s a knock at the door and Cancer just walks in, bitch slaps a relative and then drags their corpse out the door.)
My father’s experience has been much more lingering.
Back in June, somebody that I once cared a lot about vocalized his opinion on what was going on in my life as far as my ailing father was concerned.
After telling me to go fuck myself, he said that I âhave it so easyâ, because while I was whining about how miserable it is to watch my father die, he was doing the REALLY difficult stuff, like paying a cable bill.
Well, time heals all wounds (especially where ex-lovers are concerned) but being told that I had it easy by someone who knew the specifics of this entire situation (as well as my father) was something that has stuck with me ever since. That miserable sentence…It has echoed through me every single day. My father was the closest thing to a âDaddyâ that my ex ever had, so his callousness was surprising to me, even by the low standards that our mutually abusive relationship had established. After receiving that voice mail, I completely and permanently disconnected what caring remained for that man and got back to the work at hand.
And let there be no doubt to those of you who have not gone through a situation such as this one, it is hard work. There’s nothing about the experience whatsoever that is easy. And OF COURSE the hardest part of the burden lies with the poor individual who is afflicted, but I sometimes wonder if the general populous will ever really understand the side of the story as told by the primary care-giver. We are not allowed to be hurt, because the person we are caring for hurts the most. We are not allowed to be sad, because how can our sadness compare to the sadness felt by the one we love? We are not allowed to be tired because we have strength when the one we love most has found his depleted.
Well, I AM hurt. I AM sad. I AM tired.
It’s hard for me too, y’all.
For several months now I have made a concerted attempt to keep a stiff upper lip while spending nearly every waking moment of my day watching my father get sicker and sicker. That’s hard work for a basket case such as myself. My first response to one of those miserable Sarah Mclachlan ASPCA commercials is to draw a bath with a toaster. Having to see my once-strong father look up at me with the same broken eyes as a homeless beagle is hard. Watching a six foot-three inch man who hasn’t weighed less than 230 pounds in forty years quickly resemble Gollum from âThe Lord of the Ringsâ is hard. Watching the same man who put food on the table every day of his life become unable to eat a fucking slice of toast without throwing up in such a manner that Linda Blair would blush…THAT is hard.
Waiting rooms are hard. It may seem that there’s no task on this planet easier than sitting in a chair and waiting for a name to be called, but when your father’s hourglass has so few grains of sand above in comparison to the virtual Sahara below, watching time slip by while simply waiting is hard. Realizing that you have read very issue of âBetter Homes & Gardensâ and âSouthern Livingâ published since the introduction of the printing press isn’t so hard, but discovering that you haven’t absorbed one paragraph of material written within them is discouraging at least.
Chemotherapy treatments are hard. Sitting in a room filled with occupied recliners and gurneys as two dozen men, women and CHILDREN have poison slowly pumped into their hairless moaning bodies for three hours every week for months is hard.
Scat is hard. As I am anosmic, I can’t smell poop (or anything else for that matter) so I guess it’s not as hard as it could have been. What was hard was realizing that the same brawny man who had changed my diapers now depended on me to collect and dispose of his own fecal waste. Ask me to change a baby’s soiled diaper and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Having to clean the Exxon Valdez spill from my Daddy’s pajamas as he cries because he’s watching his body go rogue on him? THAT is hard. Watching your father become dependent on a catheter is hard. Seeing that the bag looks like a TYPE O donation to the fucking Red Cross because of insertion trauma is harder.
Emergency rooms are hard. I think everybody knows that. But when you make weekly visits to them (at the request of a man who’d sooner walk through fire first) only to be told by the doctors, âMaybe you should just go homeâ (with an implied, â…to die because there’s nothing we can do hereâ) is hard. Harder still is watching a hospital full of trained specialists basically tell your trooper of a father that he should quit trying to survive and embrace the inevitable. Being told that a Beanie-Baby from the gift shop downstairs and a hospital Chaplin are probably going to be able to give him what he requires more than medical attention…that is hard.
Having your father (who you’ve seen cry three times in your life before this illness rampaged his body) take your hand between sobs as the two of you sit alone in a Mayberry emergency room to say âgoodbye and I love you, sonâ…that is hard. That is very hard.
Watching your father become reliant upon a cane is hard. Watching him become reliant upon a walker is harder. The only thing more difficult than watching your father become reliant upon a wheelchair is watching his mobility become so stunted that it requires paramedics and a gurney.
Wait. Scratch that. It is actually a more difficult situation to swallow when you realize that your father can no longer go to the hospital and that the hospital must now come to him. My Daddy’s mobility isn’t even restrained to a bed as he is no longer able to so much as roll over in it. His mobility is now utterly and totally non-existent.
That’s hard.
As of yesterday, hospice care has finally been called in. That has been hard for me. Discovering that I am no longer qualified to care for my father is hard, painful and feels like being disqualified from a race that I ran harder in than any other in my life. As expected, it is like forfeiting a battle I never had any chance of winning. That’s still hard.
What’s hardest?
What is hardest of all is the personal understanding that I am now having to look at euthanasia in a whole new light.
I have made it very clear that I am okay with the idea of euthanasia. If a person is so ill that they feel as if they can’t manage another moment and want to end it all, it is perfectly reasonable to allow them that final respect. If I ever find myself in such a situation, I want you all to know right here and now that my wishes are very PRO euthanasia. I’m all for it.
I just never thought that day would come…to my father…in a hospital bed in the den of his own home.
Months ago, my mother made an unusually poignant ascertation of end-of-care cancer patients (of which most of her family has been.) She said, âHospice came in and put my sister on a (morphine) drip. As she got sicker over the next few days, her pain got worse, so they increased the amount of morphine being given to her. Eventually, the amount of morphine was more than her body could stand, so it wasn’t really the cancer that killed her so much as it was the medicinal morphine. Isn’t THAT euthanasia? So, I guess, I’m okay with the idea.â
Me too, Mama.
You know what’s harder to deal with than a father with cancer? Knowing that the only way to prevent him from suffering unimaginable pain is to kill him with medicinal kindness.
Hmm. Well…
The next person that tells me that I âhave it easyâ gets a fucking broken jaw.
I’m a different man since most of you saw me last. My selfish and superficial perspectives have changed (mostly for the better, I think…all things considered) and I don’t take a damned thing for granted anymore. I realize now how easy that I have always had âitâ. I see how blessed I am in simple things like breakfast with my Daddy (even though breakfast with my daddy is me inhaling an Egg McMuffin while he inhales 3 liters of oxygen.) Do I think I received the fuzzy end of the lollipop by having to watch my father dissolve before my very eyes to learn this lesson? Yes. I kind of do. But this was a lesson intended for my journey with my Daddy.
There will never be enough campy analogies and bitterly-worded prose to express my feelings for what it feels like to take your crippled father by his boney hand and walk him through Hell, but I thank GOD ABOVE that I was able to be a part of this experience with him. It sucks from start to finish, there is no doubt. But I have learned so much about the value of life, of family and of TRUE love in a manner that I have never been allotted before…
… and I am grateful.
Your Favorite Demi-Blonde,
The Divine Grace
