I got so caught up writing about my dad yesterday that I didn’t fully explore the topic of not being able to “go home again.”
While my dad is “alive” (not that it’s much of a life at the moment), my mom is stuck in a holding pattern in her life. While this sucks for her on so many levels, there is one way that it is good for me. (More of the selfish thoughts, here!)
While my dad is still alive, my childhood home remains mostly the same. Small changes will happen, as is normal in a house, but it is still very recognizably the home in which I grew up. And I love being able to go back to it: the bookshelves stuffed with books whose spines I have perused all my life – histories, scientific studies, histories, philosophical works, histories, biographies, histories, more histories – and my mom’s vase collection, my dad’s Japanese statues, the bust of Plato … and that’s just the room I’m in now! All over the house are the things that made up “home.”
After my dad dies, my mom can’t keep this rambling old house by herself. She is going to have my older brother, his wife, and their three kids move in. She will take the small apartment on the second floor where my grandfather used to live, and the house will be theirs to redecorate as they choose. The physical building will remain in the family, which is nice, but the home of my childhood will be gone forever.
Coming back here can be hard. Sometimes I can feel scared that I never left – never moved across the country and started my own life. But even though I needed to leave this nest, and was so happy to at the time, the fact that it has been still here for me to return to, to take little sips of memory, to take comfort in the fixed center that waited for me.
Soon that unchanging anchor will be gone. Each time I come back to it could be the last time. As I walk around the house, I try to drink in the images, the feel, the memory-seeped atmosphere. It will break my heart to loose this – and since that change will come when my father dies, it will be one heart break added to an even deeper one.
So this may be my last time “home.” I am hoping that my dad will keep on through one last family Christmas together, but that is really a selfish hope, because he doesn’t enjoy life day-to-day, and to hope that he’ll suffer through three more months just so I can have a good Christmas is really pretty inconsiderate and insensitive of me. But even if he can’t really enjoy it, it would be wonderful (for me) if when we opened our gifts under the tree, he was sitting in his chair and watching, like he always has been for my whole life.
But what gift do you buy for a dying man (who doesn’t even enjoy his beloved dark chocolate anymore)?
He saw now that you can’t go home again — not ever. There was no road back. Ended for him, with the sharp and clean finality of the closing of a door, was the time of his dark roots, like those of a pot-bound plant, could not be left to feed upon their own substance and nourish their own little self-absorbed designs. Henceforth, they must be spread outward — away from the hidden, secret, and unfathomed past that holds man’s spirit prisoner — outward, outward toward the rich and life-giving soil of a new freedom in the wide world of all humanity. — Thomas C. Wolfe
I’m at my parent’s house right now, and my dad is snoozing in the chair beside me.
But “snoozing” is a comfortable word, something any one of us might do. Looking at my father, I am not comfortable, and I don’t think he is particularly, either.
His sleep right now is not a disco-nap, getting ready for a night on the town. It’s not from an exhausting day of hiking, either. It is an exhaustion caused by his tired heart not pumping enough blood through his body – it is neither restful nor healthy. It is only marginally better than being awake, because at least he is not aware of how badly his mind is decayed, how weak his body is – and how trapped he is in both.
His breath is not even, and his jaw hangs open. His swollen, weak hands rest uselessly on his lap. He used to be such a proud, vibrant man, and to see him thus reduced breaks my heart constantly. I’m only here for two weeks, but it will take everything out of me. My mother is continuously around the man who used to be her husband, but is now just a shell of the man she loved, who cannot do anything around the house to help her (just takes up all her time in caring for his physical problems), and doesn’t even remember vast chunks of their life together. She is still alive, still a part of the world. He is mostly gone – all that is left of him is pain and difficulty, anger and frailty … and an occasional flash in his eyes of the man she once loved. Those flashes make it all the worse – sometimes his eyes lift of their clouds, and he smiles that mischievous and irresistible smile, and that brief glimpse of him makes the pain all the more intense, knowing there is still something of him trapped in a failing mind and body, and unable to give him a final goodbye, since he has not entirely gone.
It’s so terrible to wish that someone was really gone, to hope not to see that spark of them again in this life. Of course, of course you do want, selfishly, to have them back, to have one more lucid meeting. But also of course, you selfishly want the pain to end – your own suffering, that is, and even wanting their suffering to end still smacks of a selfish craving because their suffering causes your own. So nothing you feel is not suspect, not tainted by guilt.
And my guilt is all the worse because I don’t like my mother, and while I know it is my duty as a daughter to support her (and that’s why I’m out here right now) it’s something I must force myself to do, and the real reason that I do it is so that I won’t have regrets later. If I didn’t come out to see my dad while there was still time and he still could recognize me, I’d regret it that opportunity was lost. And if I didn’t support my mom and help her in these hardest of times, she wouldn’t be the only person I didn’t like.
So all my thoughts are selfish, and even while I hate that fact, I still can’t help but feel the way I do. My sister pointed out to me a few days ago that what I needed to do, once I have gone back home across the country, is call my mom often and provide a strong shoulder and understanding ear. “But,” I thought in a panic, “I’ll hate that! I don’t want to do that! I don’t want to talk to her all the time!” And of course, I felt as horrible as I should feel, for indulging in my dislike of my mother at a time when what you need to do is buckle down and put your personal shit aside. But the sad fact is that I won’t be just calling my mom up out of the blue to check on her because she is in my thoughts. I will be calling because it’s been X number of days since I spoke with her last, and I have to check in and give her support, and I need to get it over with.
Heh. Well, at least I’m not pretending to any false virtue! Yay, that’s one personality flaw that I’m not exemplifying!
The fact of the matter is that I am needed here, yet I am still going home at the end of this week. My mom could seriously use the help keeping the house running, and having someone to talk to who isn’t deaf and in the early-to-middle stages of dementia. And my poor father has responded so well to my being home, and has shown some real signs of improvement when I talk with him: if I were to stay here and spend a couple hours talking with him every day, it might have a significant effect on slowing his mental disintegration. I know all this, and still I look forward to this week being over, and my husband coming to take me away for a weekend of hanging out with friends, and then back home to our comfortable life. I know all this and still I’m not changing my plane ticket and just staying out here until the bitter end. And my dad is very bitter indeed, and I don’t anticipate he will “go gentle into that goodnight” in the slightest – it will be hard for him and everyone around him, just as these past few years have been….
I don’t know how many of you know of the SNL skit “Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey,” but it’s painfully funny. Below is an example….
I like to laugh at myself (exercises in humility being a good thing at all times) and so when I find myself wandering internally in deep philosophical journeys, even as I continue with such thoughts, at the same time I keep such “Deep Thoughts” in mind, as:
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: “Mankind”. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words – “mank” and “ind.” What do these words mean? It’s a mystery, and that’s why so is mankind.
(Before I went into any discussion of the profound deliberations I’ve been up to, I felt it important to know that all of this is seasoned with the above grain of satiric salt!)
So, from the moment my Master was hit by that fucktard who just had to try and overtake three cars so he could get home a minute faster (which, obviously, was a total fail on so many levels) I’ve had serious ruminations happening in me brainpan. I’ve worked them all out to my satisfaction, but I thought I’d write them down anyway. Maybe to remind myself of them someday, or maybe they will actually help someone else somehow/somewhen.
My first thought in my “crazy train” of contemplation was actually on the way to the hospital to see my Master before his emergency surgery. The drive seemed to take forever, and my father-in-law was trying to help by being very British and keeping the conversation light, and so he was telling me about the places we were driving through. I couldn’t scream, “Shut up and drive, faster, my husband could be dying, or about to die, and I don’t care if that church was built in 1491!” so I said, “Ah,” and “Really?” at appropriate places, meanwhile trying to deal with the thoughts that were racing through my head.
The one that started off the chain was, “I can’t deal with this! How can people deal with the uncertainty of life?! The person you love, your other half, can be killed by someone else’s carelessness in but a second! How do people deal with this?!”
Two answers flowed in over the hours and days that followed, and I’ve refined them since by talking to my Master (who really is my moral compass*), and some friends.
Answer the first: There ain’t nothin’ you can do, baby, so you just make the best plans you can, and when shit happens, you roll up your sleeves and muck the shit as fast as you can to keep the boat from sinking (yes, into the metaphorical stream of shit. I enjoy mixing metaphors…).
That’s the most basic answer: you deal with it because you have to, and there’s nothing else you can do, except fall apart and be useless – and I don’t consider that an option.
Now, I’ve had lots of help from lots of amazing people over the past couple weeks, and I’m not downplaying that in the least. One of the ways that you deal with problems is by accepting the help that you actually need. Pride and self-sufficiency are lovely, and they are why I got out from my father-in-law’s to the guest house as fast as I did, but you need to be able to let go of them when they would just get in the way of the best possible outcome.
So, the way you deal with things is by not running around, wringing your hands, and crying, “How do people deal with this?!”
However, if that just isn’t enough for you – and there’s nothing wrong with that, because, honestly, it’s hard as fuck – then there is religion. I don’t care what kind of God/s you subscribe to, from the Three-In-One package deal, to a cadre of incestuous Gods-with-flaws-that-make-you-look-like-a-saint, to a big amorphous-yet-benign “Universe” – this is the answer if you just don’t like the idea that life comes down to “Shit happens.”
Religion gives you a reason – and since things like loved ones dying, or natural (or unnatural) disasters, or simply those awful days where everything you do goes horribly wrong, are so damned hard to accept and understand, getting a reason for them that you can derive some comfort from, or give you a place of strength to work from is not a bad thing.
So it can be “God’s Will,” or “This was Fated,” or whatever you like, and whatever gets you through the crisis and the day.
And that is half the point of religion. When things get so hard you feel like you simply can’t deal with them, you have the faith that you are getting help from Someone, or that at least, despite all seeming evidence to the contrary, things are supposed to be going this way (you’ll just find out the reasons later – later being possibly in this life, after death in Heaven or wherever, or in your next life). It really is much easier to deal with a problem if there is more to it than the random and chaotic “Shit Happens.”
(In case you are interested, the other half the point of religion, in my ever-so-humble opinion, is community. You get a group of people who care about you, and help you, and who share in important transitions in life. And they can help confirm the comfort of the first point of religion, since you generally join a community who believes similar things as you do.)
So, driving over to the hospital, I saw my choice was “Shit Happens, So Deal,” or to reach out to religion of some sort.
Being me, I chose “both of the above,” because I like having my cake and eating it, too.
I rolled up my sleeves and got on with Shit Shoveling – and, without actually feeling any need to believe in God, I got out the cross that was given to me at my Master’s and my wedding (it was his grandmother’s) and put it on. It was a physical comfort – and it actually helped me a lot because when I went to go think something superstitious and stupid over the following days, I’d hold onto the cross and say to myself, “If you are going to resort to that sort of thing, you have to be consistent and just stick to this one!” which kept me from a lot of self-torture (“What if I could just have hugged him for a few minutes longer before he left for work, and he would have avoided the fucktard altogether…”) because, as I am not willing or able to accept the basic tenants of Christianity, there is no good reason why I should allow myself to wallow in any other sort of superstitions. (This is not to be taken as an insult to any Christian reading this, BTW. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and all….)
All this rambling may not seem like I’m covering any new ground, thought-wise, but it’s very big for me because it means I’ve finally found the way (for me, personally) to deal with the hard stuff in life, which I’ve really been kinda unclear on before this. I’ve tried on various forms of religion, starting actually when I was about twelve years old, and I’ve spent a long time looking for the comfort for which everyone longs.
Sadly, of course, and it’s just so me, but in the end I don’t actually choose that comfort at all. I’ve chosen the “Shit Happens,” doctrine, and all my years of studying and thinking about religion have led me to that, so it’s an entirely informed decision. (Well, if you can call “nothing else makes sense to me,” informed!)
In the end though, letting go of the feeling that there must be an answer, a reason, or even at least someone/something who’s got a handle on this (even if I don’t understand it), letting go of that feeling is a comfort of it’s own. The release of the thought, “What can I do to understand this,” to the understanding that, “I can’t understand this, but I don’t have to understand it to act in such a way as to get through this as best as possible, and be satisfied, looking back at it, that I did the right thing,” well, that’s a comfort in it’s own right. It’s not the easiest path, but it’s the only right path for me.
Ironically, it’s a wonderful phrase with the word, “God” in it that sums this up best for me. It’s from the Cadfael series, by Ellis Peters, and it goes a little something like this:
Expect the best, and walk so discreetly as to invite it, and then leave all to God.
To me, “and then leave all to God,” means “don’t cling to fears for the future, or even the idea that you have any real control over that future.” The whole quote reminds me that I just have to make the best plans I can, wait for those plans to not “survive contact with the enemy,” and then try and win anyway.
*It is really important to me that my Master is someone with whom I can discuss theology, philosophy, and matters moral and mortal, and he always teaches me something, shows me a point of view I had not considered, etc. I needed a Master who I could look up to in that respect, as in all others.
series, by Ellis Peters, and it goes a little something like this:
