Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

Defying medical theories and scientific predictions, my father made it to his 80th birthday. His body reached a perfect trifecta of failure – heart, kidneys and lungs hung on by a delicate balance of medications and dialysis. One of his legs was numb for years, his spine was curved, one eye perpetually drooped from the Bell’s palsy he contracted 20 or more years before. He shrunk so much that when he held himself upright in the rectangular space inside his walker, he and I stood eye to eye. He never exercised or played sports, had been overweight for decades, ate a diet high in animal fats and carbohydrates. On the plus side, he never smoked nor drank, never drove recklessly, never participated in risky physical activity of any kind.

There is only one possible explanation for his longevity: He stayed alive as long as it took to for me to forgive him. He waited – encased in his mostly non-functional body, while bits and pieces and organs and whole internal systems failed – for his children to put down their decades-old anger, resentment, shame and pity, our distancing maneuvers, our childish, then adult-like, then middle-aged righteousness that we were above, or outside of, or immune from, the kinds of mistakes he made. He relentlessly stayed alive so I could finally grow up, forgiving both of us for things that trapped us in our earlier versions of our lives. For his beloved daughter, my father limped, caught his breath after every two or three steps, endured the humiliation of adult diapers, sat unmoving/unthinking for four hours three times a week as his blood was removed, cleaned, then reintroduced to his fragile and bruised veins. He stayed longer than he ought to have, like the New Orleans few who refused to leave when Katrina blew, staying longer than made any sense as their homes’ foundations weakened, walls and windows, the very heart and lungs of their homes went under, but still they stayed.

A most generous gift, this – staying alive and being here, always here, until I was ready to seek him out, place him correctly, for once, in the context of his life, rather than mire him in the context of mine. Mine, which began the narrative as a child and then added stuff in with my oh-so-mature adolescent mind, followed by my oh-so-sure-of-myself college mind . . . I have woven a compelling story, which only in part coincides with his life. Mostly, it was held together by one long rant, one seamless strain of unforgivingness that only the well-enough raised, well-enough loved can afford, for had I been less loved, less well-taken-care-of, I’d have had to forgive him and moved on and stopped relying on his eternal, relentless love and presence and assistance and loyalty to drag me out of the messes I so blithely got myself into. Poetic justice here, though – I haven’t yet forgiven myself for these mistakes, allowing the shame to pour over me like a perpetual fountain. Maybe there’s a lesson here for me, lest I drag my broken, leaky, creaky parts around until I’m 80 with the full and crushing weight of harsh self-punishment.

Some people are kept alive for years by machines, in comas or endless vegetative states. My Father simply kept living, kept watching TV, kept eating foods not on the “approved” lists, kept volunteering and ushering and showing up for weekly religious services, kept attending the Men’s club, kept volunteering on Voter Registration day, kept calling his daughter and asking how the weather is out here, how’s work, how’s his grandson. Relentlessly, patiently, awaiting the time when I would release him from responsibility for the 18 years of parenting, leaving 62 years in which he lived as something other than my father, although he was always more than a father. A pharmacist, a store owner, a community member, a businessman, a Men’s Club president, a son, a husband, a brother. A homeowner, a dog owner, a man who fell asleep in his recliner after 10 hour work days. Oh, and a father. A man who took his family on annual road trip vacations, making sure he showed us our country, from the Liberty Bell to Route 101 on the cliffs of California, driving for hours in his late model Cadillac, punctuating the drives with lunches and dinners at a destination smorgasbord, the food mediocre but staggeringly bountiful.

My father grew up hungry, a hunger never satisfied by food. It was love he craved, love that would nourish him. Instead he had parents who loved with limitations of fear and small-mindedness, a wife whose love was hard to see beneath a ferocious need to control, two successful professional children, a dog and a house in the suburbs. He attained the Jewish American upper middle class dream – with guest lists nearing 300 for his children’s bar and bat mitzvahs. He put his children through college, paid for our first cars. He was reliable and steady, the kind of reliable and steady that is hard to come by these days, when just about everyone has some kind of addiction. No porn, no booze, no gambling, no affairs, no bankruptcies, no foreclosures, no leering at other people’s wives or children. Sure, there were the couple of years marred by white collar crime, but even that can fall into place in his narrative, given all the other plot points.

I held the rope a long time tying us to people we no longer were. He may have grown up hungry, but on his last night, he took only a few bites of turkey sandwich before he turned away from food. He was no longer hungry. He has walked away from the lure of one more sweet dessert. He lived beyond his hunger, just in time for me to outlive my blame. Sated, full with the knowledge that he loved with limitations, lived with mistakes, knowing his one and only daughter loved him. Tears and gratitude, how much of these fit on a plate? How many times can you tell your Dad you love him once you finally mean it?

Go gently tonight, Pop. Thanks for staying as long as it took me to get here. I love you.