It was a long week. It was parent-teacher conference week for this teacher. I had two “marathon” twelve-hour days. I taught in the morning and talked (and talked and talked) with parents all afternoon and evening. My husband is a retail manager. He’s preparing for his first inventory with a new company, so he had a difficult week, too. It was filled with ten-plus hour days. We were both looking forward to our only day off together – Friday. Yet, Mother Nature held no regard for our plans. A windstorm left us without power in the middle of the week. We persevered, though, coming home to a dark and very cold house after a twelve/thirteen hour day each day. “Certainly the power would come back on by Friday,” we thought. We slept huddled under a pile of blankets each night, our cat and dog cuddled up with us. Our “pack” was sticking it out by sticking close. The only member of our little family left on his own was our red Beta Fish Tony Beets. My husband added a few ounces of warm water to his tank before we went to bed. He hoped it might help him make it through the cold night.

Tony Beets was a “replacement” pet. Our first Beta fish was a beautiful blue fish named Billy Abbott. Billy was named after a character on our favorite daytime drama Young & the Restless. Billy Abbott, may he rest in peace, was the lone casualty of an extended power outage three years ago. From the start, unlike Billy Abbott, Tony seemed more like a “fighter” than a “lover.” Within the first 24 hours in our house, Tony Beets survived being flung onto the floor by our cat. He also lived through being picked up by human fingers. After my run that day, I sat down in the dining room to drink a glass of water. I noticed what looked like a flower petal on the floor. “That’s weird,” I thought,“I don’t have any fresh flowers around the house right now.” Upon closer examination, I realized it was the fish! I scooped him up and placed him back in the tank. I was certain he wouldn’t survive the trauma…but he did

For some reason, we lose power at least once a year. We live in a neighborhood that consists, mainly, of elderly retirees. These lovely people seem to have grown wise to the inevitability of such power outages. They also seem to have a financial situation that has allowed them to circumvent such events. Many of them own a heavy duty, no-joke backup generator. My husband and I are the “kids” of the neighborhood, and we behave as such. We say to ourselves, “Wuuuut? Why the hell do we need a generator? We don’t lose power that much. Plus, we don’t have the kinda cash you need for something like that when you might use a few times a year.” So, each year, we lose power. Each year we try to “ride it out” without giving in and dropping coin on a generator…or a hotel…or any other “pussy” way out. Okay. If you’re getting the sense we’re cheap, that’s inaccurate. In actuality, we are what is commonly known in “Jim Cramer” circles, as “thrifty.” We approached this outage with the same ironclad determination that we always do. After all, we would both be at work the majority of the day anyway, so what would it matter if we didn’t have power? Those long days came and went, and we persevered. Then came Friday.

We drank ourselves numb to the cold in front of a roaring fire Thursday night. I awoke to a still frigid house Friday morning. The dog begrudgingly left the warmth of our bed to be let out for “potty” at 9 am. I read the thermostat – 45 degrees. “Shit, that’s cold! He’s a goner, I know it,” I thought, about Tony Beets. Sure enough, he lay at the bottom of the tank, motionless. “Another one bites the dust,” I thought. And there was no end to our electricity situation in sight. We went about our “power outage” plan for the day. We ate breakfast out. We washed clothes at the Laundromat. We headed home to put the clothes away. I looked into booking a hotel and kenneling the dog. On the drive home, our hope for restoration was bolstered by small signs. There was a traffic light finally back on. A neighbor’s exterior lights were lit. The small, faint light of our doorbell and the light from the garage door opener confirmed that we had power. Woo-hoo!

As I opened the door, our house coming up to temperature felt like a warm hug. I hung my coat in the entryway closet and walked into the kitchen. I saw Tony’s tank on the kitchen counter. I walked over to bid him goodbye one last time before a “burial at sea” (i.e. being flushed down the half bath’s toilet). As I gazed into the tank, I was surprised to see movement – the faint motion of one fin. I jiggled the tank. The motion continued. I took a butter knife and stirred the water. Tony’s seemingly lifeless body moved with a jolt. I added a bit of warm water to the tank. He was moving again! I threw in a few pellets of fish food. He swam to get them. Tony Beets was alive! He’d survived!

The real Tony Beets is a Dutch immigrant. He lives in Alaska and is a successful gold miner in the Yukon. He’s built his own business, which he now shares with his three grown children. As a cast member in one of my and my husband’s favorite reality shows, “Gold Rush,” he is the most tenacious of the miners. Okay. Okay. Okay. Part of his appeal, to me, is that he swears like a sailor. Another part of his appeal, though, is the fact that he does not give up. Under any circumstance, in the face of any kind of adversity, he perseveres. Today we found out how aptly named our Beta fish is. We also realized that our Tony Beets is well suited to our little family. My husband and I have both been through some incredible adversity. Our cat, a rescue animal, was the runt of the litter and unwanted. Our dog was also a rescue animal. She’d been abused and then abandoned because of a deformity to one of her eyes (one that was easily fixed, by the way). And then there’s this fiery red fish! He survived a cat’s attempt to make him her permanent “cat toy.” He lived through 45-degree temperatures for not one but TWO days. He (swear to God) comes right up to the glass whenever I talk to him using his name. He always comes right up to the surface of the water in his tank when I play pop music while I clean the kitchen. Tony Beets is not furry or cuddly or able to show his affection for us clearly. He is, however, a full-fledged fighting member of this scrappy little family of fighters.

I rolled over and looked at the clock. 10:00 a.m.? How the hell did I end up sleeping twelve hours? I guess it was my mind and my body’s way of trying to hide from this wretched day for as long as possible. This was a planned “sick day” for me. Well, it was really more of a “mental health day,” actually, and I don’t give a shit who knows. I shuffled to the bathroom to brush my teeth, flipping on the television for the mindless blather that is “Kathy Lee and Hoda,” because I just didn’t want to think. They didn’t disappoint. “Ambush Makeover” and the “All-Star Thanksgiving” cooking segment did the trick…temporarily. Winnie greeted me with the vigorous tail wags of a dog overjoyed by my unexpected presence this day. I picked at the scrambled eggs and toast I’d made. I began to lose the battle to hold back my thoughts and feelings once I started scrolling through the kind words and thoughtful messages left as comments on my husband’s post about the significance of this day. I read them through tear-filled eyes. The dam was broken, and what was left of the morning would now be spent in the ache of the here and now.

With each passing year, I think, “It won’t be like that this time. I won’t end up spending the entire day choking on tears or being completely unable to breathe through my nose all day due to sporadic episodes of violent weeping.” And yet, by the time the twelve o’clock news came around, my eyes were red and swollen, and breathing was only possible via my mouth. The newscast was a grim reminder of troubling recent events. That, combined with my own personal anguish, left my head swimming and gave me an urgent, panicked desire to escape. Running away has always been my first reaction to pain – figuratively, frequently, and, sometimes, literally. So, I took the dog and drove to my hideaway – a public nature preserve a few miles from where I grew up. It’s a place to which I’d run during the many dark times in my life. I hadn’t been there in a while, though, so I was shocked to see its new, upgraded state. Many of the trails have been paved, and it now has “right-proper” accessibility. Call me selfish, but it made me disappointed and sad. This place had always been my escape. It had been a rugged, solitary place with rough winding trails, rocky outcroppings, marshy spots to find your way around, and fallen trees to climb over in order to continue your journey. Today this place was filled with helmet-wearing senior citizens biking about, Lululemon clad suburban mommies running behind jogging strollers, and same sex millennial couples from the nearby community college strolling hand-in-hand. The place where I once found clarity amidst emotional storms was now a suburban, 5K-hosting,“linear recreation trail.”

All I wanted today was for the forest to envelope and embrace me, while I hid there to nurse a bloody wound. What I got was a healthy bit of physical activity, which is probably a good thing. I’ve let my exercise routine go by the wayside, because my mind and emotions seem determined to force my body into the hibernation I long for this time of year. Winnie loved the walk. So, there’s that. Still, I returned home, frustrated, to wait for my husband to come home from the meeting he was at in a town an hour away. We planned to go to the cemetery together. I sat, cuddled with the dog, waiting. Glancing out the window, I noticed the shadows of the trees in the yard growing longer. It was getting late, and there was no word from my husband. I had hoped the big bosses might cut him some slack, in light of the situation. They did not. I’d need to go to the cemetery alone.

On the way to the cemetery, I picked up a dozen roses. Roses were Sarah’s favorite flower and the flowers I always bring to her. Luckily, I made it to the cemetery before the gates were locked for the night. The last rays of an early-setting autumn sun peeked over the tree line and gave just enough light for me to see. It was good that I was alone. It made me feel free to release the day’s remaining tears fully and completely. I drove home stuffy-nosed and mouth breathing, with my eyes red and swollen again. I needed music. I plugged my phone into stereo jack, found the most fitting song, and pushed play. I discovered Andra Day’s song “Rise Up” long before Hillary Clinton ever played it on the campaign trail. I’m not surprised Clinton chose it. It’s an incredibly moving song, and one that I find myself singing at the top of my lungs, punctuated by violent sobs, during my long commute home at night sometimes.

You’re broken down and tired of living life on a merry-go-round. And you can’t find the fighter. But I see it in you, so we’re gonna walk it out…and move mountains. We’re gonna walk it out and move mountains. I’ll rise up. I’ll rise like the day. I’ll rise up. I’ll rise unafraid. I’ll rise up, and I’ll do it a thousand times again. And I’ll rise up, high like the waves. I rise up in spite of the ache. And I’ll do it a thousand times again…for you.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll rise up. My alarm will go off at 5:45. There’ll be no twelve hours of sleeping. I’ll get up and brush my teeth. I’ll get ready for work, pick up some Starbucks, and make my long commute while listening to the Free Beer and Hot Wings radio show. I’ll spend the day teaching. I’ll come home to eat pizza, drink a glass or two of wine, and watch Gold Rush with my husband. It’ll be just another Friday night. Underneath it all, though, will be a tender bandaged wound, healing again for the umpteenth time. Maybe next year will be different.

I have a wound, a horrendous one. Well, it’s actually a scar from a wound now. The disfigurement once made me feel uncomfortable. Today, I’ve come to terms with the fact that it makes me who I am. The wound, itself, bothers me sometimes, though. Like a bone broken years ago might ache from changes in the weather, it troubles me from time to time. The days leading up to November 10^th are one of those times. The wound begins to ache, and my attention is drawn to it. I begin to scratch it. It gets red and raw. I begin to dig at it. Once my fingernails break the thick, calloused skin, it begins to bleed. The pain is excruciating, but I can’t seem to stop myself. You might think that many years of a wound being reopened, scabbing over, and, then, ultimately, appearing healed might deter this behavior from occurring over and over again. It doesn’t. It’s almost November 10^th again, and here’s me clawing away…

It was my first year teaching in a public school, after having taught in a charter school for six years. I loved it. It was also my first time doing parent-teacher conferences, and my daughters weren’t used to me being at work until so late over an extended period of time. I was leaving school, after my last conference, when my cell phone rang. I could barely hear the caller. I got terrible reception in my classroom. “Is this Sarah’s mother?” the voice asked. “Yes, it is,” I answered. “She’s been in an accident. You need to come to the hospital,” the voice continued. My initial reaction was anger. Sarah had been grounded. She wasn’t supposed to be out anywhere. I called my husband, who was at work and told him to meet me at the hospital. I also called my father and asked him to go to my house, get my other daughter, and take her to my parents’ house, because I didn’t know how long we would be. I called Sarah’s dad, too. As I drove, it occurred to me that perhaps Sarah had been injured. Worry replaced anger.

When I arrived at the emergency room, I gave my name to the woman at the desk. I remember thinking it was odd that they sent the chaplain out to meet me. She was an older, kind lady with sympathetic eyes. She led me to a tiny room. I told her that my husband and Sarah’s dad were on their way. Once they arrived, we waited for someone to come tell us what was going on. The awkwardness of being in a tiny room with my current husband, my ex-husband, and my ex-husband’s wife was nothing compared to the worry plaguing me. It seemed like we were in that little room forever. After leaving my daughter at his house with her grandmother, my dad joined us there in the little room. The doctor finally came in. I knew there was something terribly wrong when he told me to sit down and then sat in the chair next to me. He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at me with the same sympathetic expression the chaplain had had. “Well, I’m afraid Sarah was in a pretty bad car accident, and the collision caused a very serious head injury. We tried our best, but…but she didn’t make it. I’m so sorry,” he said, touching my knee, “I’ll give you guys some privacy now,” and he left. The best way I can describe my feelings at that moment would be to say that it felt like my brain was literally giving me an “error” message. It’s a feeling I’d never experienced before and have never experienced since. I could actually feel my brain struggling to process the fact that my daughter was dead. I stood up. “No, no, no, no,” I repeated. I wasn’t crying, though. That came, in torrents, later. My husband put his arms around me. I looked up into his face. “No, no, no. What is happening? This can’t be happening.”

Everything after that point seemed like I was inside a bad dream. A nurse came in and told us we could see Sarah shortly. They were just getting her “cleaned up.” They led us to the triage room. I took a deep breath and went in. It’s an image forever burned into my mind’s eye – my child lying on a cold, stainless steel table covered up to her shoulders with a crisp, white sheet and with a small square of gauze on a corner of her forehead. My most lasting memory of that moment, though, is that, when I kissed her cheek, it was still warm, and, yet, when I took her in hand in mine (like I’d done a million times over sixteen years), it felt like ice. We said our goodbyes, but we didn’t linger. My brain had finally processed the information enough to make it clear to my heart that she was gone. A long goodbye would’ve just been torture to me. I needed to be content with the “snapshot” that would have to last the rest of my life without her. I wish now that I would’ve asked the nurse to remove the breathing tube that was still in her mouth. Because of it, the last image I have of my child is not exactly what I would’ve wanted. It was, however, the last time she really looked like herself. She looked peaceful like she was sleeping. The next time I would see her she would be a post-autopsy, embalmed shell, with her flowing dark hair the only remaining recognizable feature.

There is one thing almost as hard as losing your child – having to tell your surviving child that the person who had been her best friend her entire life is dead. That’s what I had to do once we left the hospital. Like mine, her initial reaction was disbelief. The days that followed were filled with a series of similarly hellacious tasks – picking out a casket, finding a burial plot, planning a service, greeting friends and family who were at a loss for what to say to us. Most of it was and is still…a blur, except for a handful of very vivid memories. I remember the huge cascading arrangement of roses, beautifully crafted by the same woman who’d done the flowers for my wedding just four years prior, draped over the casket. I remember seeing my father sobbing in a way I hadn’t seen since the death of his mother, back when I was sixteen. I remember the cold, bitter wind cutting through my body while the first snowflakes of the year swirled around the many mourners as we were gathered at the burial site, and I remember how deafeningly quiet our house seemed in days that followed the funeral, once everyone had gone back to their lives.

I’d like to know exactly where grief lives, within my body. I know that it entered through the wound, and it’s been inside me ever since. Even once the wound has covered over after each time I’ve broken it open, the grief is still there. Somehow it has sunken deep into my cells and gives me a persistent, low-grade infection that I’ve simply learned to live with. Sometimes, a flare-up grips me. It hits me out of nowhere and feels like what I imagine a seizure might feel like if it was expressed in emotion. I’m paralyzed and incapacitated by it, though for shorter periods of time as the years have passed. The wound, itself, heals year after year. The scar gets a little thicker and a little harder to penetrate. This reminds me of what C.S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain.

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken’. Yet if the cause is accepted and faced, the conflict will strengthen and purify the character and in time the pain will usually pass. Sometimes, however, it persists and the effect is devastating; if the cause is not faced or not recognised, it produces the dreary state of the chronic neurotic. But some by heroism overcome even chronic mental pain. They often produce brilliant work and strengthen, harden, and sharpen their characters till they become like tempered steel.”

So, I take comfort, as I look at the wound’s scar, gnarled and knotty. And I hope that the horror it represents will bring a strength I do not yet feel but someday might.

As the American presidential election approaches (and as I watch the final presidential debate), I feel compelled to express/reiterate an impassioned plea to women to exercise a basic, yet hard-won, right for which so many women suffered and died – a right that took nearly 200 hundred years for us to achieve. I’ve always considered myself a feminist. Yet, when I sat in my first Women’s Studies class at Western Michigan University, during my undergraduate coursework, I discovered that I knew little about the sacrifices that were made to gain my right to vote. Sure, I knew the names of a few “suffragettes” – Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Carrie Chapman, but I had no idea of the horrors that they, and so many others, endured in an effort to secure women’s right to vote. Ever since that day and that class, I have been committed to exercising my own right AND to encouraging other women (especially young women, like my daughter) to take hold of that right, grasp it FIRMLY, and make their voices heard. I attended a writers’ conference this past weekend. One of the sessions I attended addressed how a writer might use his/her blog to engage readership and address social issues. Sooooo, gentle readers, I’ve attached the link to a playlist (a pretty kickass playlist, I might add) that I’ve created to inspire myself (and you) as I begin writing my novel. The theme of the playlist is “girl power.” My novel is loosely based on my family’s long history of domestic abuse and how we’ve overcome it. It is my hope that you find your own meaning to the array of songs I chose and that you will feel its energy in a way that gives you strength.

Rejection. It’s a fact of life and an experience one endures regularly in some professions. My pursuit of a career in writing has only just begun, and I am already grappling with this. One thing I have already learned from my limited experience is that writers, in general, are a sensitive bunch. So, I find it remarkable that any writer, ANYWHERE, can persevere through it and actually get published. Over the summer, I was devoted to pouring my time into writing. I was committed to hitting the mark and getting published. I submitted a short story, several poems, and an essay to a few contests. Over the course of the past three weeks, I have received rejection emails from three of the five contests I entered. I’m not gonna lie. I was certain I had a winner in there somewhere, so, frankly, a small part of me was taken aback by a rejection on nearly all fronts. Moreover, I was also taken aback by my reaction to the aforementioned rejection. I was really, really sad. I felt doubt in my ability as a writer. When I began this endeavor, I had of sense of certainty that writing was my destiny…my mission…what I was put on this planet to do.  Had I been over confident? Was I mistaken in believing that writing is my life’s purpose? Am I just that full of shit? I’m still reeling, so I can’t quite say.

 I’ve experienced tons of rejection, of many types, in my life.  You’d think I’d be a pro at dealing with it by now and that this kind of email would roll right off my ego, like water off a duck’s back:   “Dear Christine, Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, our team has concluded that your piece just isn’t right for our publication. Best wishes and keep writing.” For some reason, this rejection stings much more than all those boys to whom I was invisible or those hiring managers that felt I “wasn’t the right fit.” It feels like I offered up my bare and tender soul, only to have it carelessly tossed aside and trampled.

 I’m set to attend my second writer’s conference at the beginning of next month, and I can tell you the first thing I plan to ask some of those working authors is this – “Does it EVER get easier to accept rejection?” At the conference I attended last year, children’s author Robert Burleigh showed conference attendees a handwritten log listing dozens of manuscripts he’d submitted over the years. Only a tiny fraction had been published. He also showed us a photo of a file cabinet drawer filled with pieces that he’d never even submitted. There were hundreds of them. His point? You need to write a lot to get published, and you will be rejected a lot before you ever are. It’s a sobering thought for this aspiring writer…this tender hearted dreamer. My husband worries that repeated rejection will, ultimately, squelch my desire to write. He doesn’t want to see me suffer. Might repeated rejections discourage me from trying to make a living as a writer? It might. But will I ever stop writing? The answer is a resounding NO! The truth is, I can’t stop writing.

 I’ve been a storyteller as long as I can remember. Even before I could write, even at times that I didn’t write, my mind created stories – mostly as an emotional and psychological coping strategy – but rich stories, none-the-less. Now, after all these many years, it’s like breathing. I have to do it, and I know I will always do it, whether I get published or not. Quite simply, some unseen force compels me, to write. So write, I will – whether it’s published or not, whether it’s read or not, whether it’s “liked” or not. Happiness, for me, would be to make a living as a writer. Living, for me, means that I am a writer.

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This summer I had the “pleasure” of experiencing a right of passage normally reserved for tweens, teens, and early “twenty-somethings” – namely, the extraction of a wisdom tooth. I had had one of my wisdom teeth pulled in my late twenties. It was an uneventful experience. Due to the position of the tooth, however, this most recent extraction involved surgery. The tooth was partially erupted, could decay and spread decay to the neighboring tooth, was in close proximity to a nerve, and “yadda, yadda, yadda” – you know, all that crap with which dentists love to scare the crap out of you. Luckily, unlike YouTube accounts of such procedures (i.e. “Daniel at the Dentist”), nothing really humorous happened during or immediately after my surgery. The anesthesia didn’t make me loopy or make me say or do anything funny. What I will tell you, however, is that I am baffled by how the extraction of one little tooth could be the cause of such abject, post-surgical misery. I have a pretty high threshold for pain. I gave birth to two children without the benefit of any pain medication. The pain I experienced after the removal of this single tooth, however, totally kicked my ass! A full week after the procedure, I was still using ice packs and eating Tylenol like candy. And that was after using nearly ALL the Norco they had prescribed for me. The surgeon had explained to me about how, since the tooth was quite close to a major maxillary nerve, that there might be some “nerve trauma” involved in a complete extraction. He told me I could opt to have a “crown-ectomy,” the removal of only the top part of the tooth, to avoid this, and he’d do that, if it was what I “wanted.” He said the disadvantage of that would be that the roots might end up erupting in the future and pose the same problem to my other teeth that the crown was now. Well, OF COURSE I wanted to avoid “nerve trauma,” but he could tell by my reluctance to respond that I really didn’t know what to do. “Okay, well, how about if I go in with the intention of doing the crown-ectomy, but, if the roots are loose, I’ll just take the whole thing?” he said. I agreed. Then, low and behold, after surgery, I learned that he had, in fact, removed the entire tooth. That sneaky bastard! He totally tricked me! I think he’d planned to take the whole tooth the entire time. Fast forward to a week later, and, while the swelling was pretty much completely gone and the pain wasn’t as bad as it was initially, I was certainly NOT pain-free. I looked up the symptoms of “dry socket” on WebMD but convinced myself that it wasn’t the problem. Two days later, I just couldn’t take it any more and made an appointment.

It turned out that I did, indeed, have dry socket, and, I would rather endure childbirth than suffer through that kind of pain again. It was depressing to learn that the condition happens more often to women than men, a fact that was mentioned because my husband boasted, “Well, that never happened to me!” I also learned that my “advanced age” (I’m fifty) contributed to it, as well. I asked the surgeon why my daughter had bounced back so quickly after having multiple teeth extracted in one sitting. The good doctor tried his best to answer in the nicest way possible, saying, “Well, a procedure like this is a little harder on the body when we’re not a teenager.” Great. Awesome. I ended up seeing a different doctor than the one who did my surgery. He was a really nice guy. Upon meeting him, I couldn’t’ help but notice his tiny hands. “That physical characteristic has got to be a benefit to someone in his particular line of work,” I later mentioned to my husband. “Dr. Nice” irrigated the socket and then put an itty-bitty piece of gauze treated with clove oil, of all things. As he walked us out, he told me not to worry, but I might have to come back for another application. When I looked concerned, he said that everything looked like it was healing, and he joked, “It’s okay. Your socket looks like that of a twenty year-old.” What a charmer! I wish I could’ve had him do my surgery instead of “Herr Doctor Subterfuge,” with his intimidating Aryan looks and giant mitts. My husband is convinced he’s a sadomasochistic Nazi. Within twenty minutes of leaving the office, I was pain free! Man, I didn’t even realize how much pain I was in until it was gone. I was so thankful to feel better that I almost made my husband drive me back to the office so I could hug “Dr. Nice.” I had hoped I was permanently on the mend.

After a couple days the “itty-bitty piece of clove oil gauze” came out, and I was all the way back to “crying sad face” on the pain scale. I kept waking up feeling like I’d “sleep driven” myself to Fight Club in the night. Which is a problem, because 1) I was SLEEP DRIVING and 2) everyone knows that that first rule of Fight Club is to not talk about Fight Club and I JUST TALKED ABOUT FIGHT CLUB! So, off I would go, back to the oral surgeon’s office. I knew that, with my luck, I’d probably end up having to see Herr Doctor Hurtz von Jumbo Hanz instead of the dainty fingers of charming Dr. Nice. I was just hoping that whoever I saw might give me enough relief that I could enjoy the little getaway trip to our state’s wine region that my husband and I had planned. I’d hoped to feel well enough that I didn’t have to remain wine soaked the entire trip. Okay, okay, okay. I probably would’ve been “wine soaked” the whole time no matter what.

My husband posted a picture on Facebook of me “feeling better” at one of the wineries. It was not just from my wine tasting adventures. I ended up going back to the oral surgeon’s office for another treatment the morning of our trip. As I had anticipated, I ended up having to see Dr. Nazi. The visit made me even more convinced of his sadomasochistic leanings. While gentle Dr. Nice had tenderly irrigated my poor socket with warm saline before lightly placing that tiny medicated gauze, Herr Doctor Immahertzu just whipped out a strand of gauze as long as a towrope, told me to lean my head back, and started jamming it in. I thought I was gonna pass out! After he was done, it hurt even worse. I didn’t start to get any relief until about an hour afterward, and I felt nauseous the entire time. What’s more is that he told me I had to come back to the office the following Monday. I was certain it was just so he could continue the torture, and I’m sure that after he walked us up to the desk, he had to have ducked into the next room and started rubbing his hands together while laughing a diabolically. I guess the “up” side is that, because I insisted, they gave me more Norco. So, I was okay over the weekend when the pain eventually returned.

That Monday, I went back to see Dr. Nazi so he could remove that towrope he’d stuffed into my stupid dry socket. The pain was pretty much gone at that point, and the removal of the gauze didn’t hurt me. He seemed disappointed. I’m sure he’ll be able to console himself though, maybe by lying down and rolling around in the big pile of the money he’ll get from my insurance company. I just feel super lucky that he didn’t “accidentally” push me down the stairs when I left so that he could knock out a few more of my teeth.

Most of my earliest, sweetest childhood memories revolve around my father’s mother, my grandmother, Vesta May Parker. In my mind’s eye I can see a six year-old me, by her side, at the kitchen counter, rolling out dumpling dough for Sunday supper’s chicken and dumplings. She was an incredible cook, and I loved being able to cook with her. My mother’s lack of the patience kept her from letting me “help” in the kitchen, but Vesta May actually enjoyed having me there, even when I spilled things and even when I talked entirely too much. In fact, little seemed to bother Grandma Parker, really. I’m not sure if it was just her natural born temperament or her Southern upbringing, but she was always easy-going and cheerful. Her laugh was exactly what you’d imagine a Southern lady’s laugh might sound like – high pitched and bubbly. She laughed often, and she hummed a great deal. I couldn’t tell you what the tunes she was humming were, but they sounded happy. Grandma was a welcome contrast, in my life, to my stressed-out, high-strung mother. She loved having all her grandchildren, the children of her beloved only son James, around her. Just as she had for him, Vesta May would’ve done anything for her grandchildren. I distinctly remember, after hearing me complain about not having enough clothes for my Barbie doll, she surprised me with a set of dresses she’d sewn from remnant cloth. I accepted the heartfelt gift, at the time, but I am ashamed to say that I did not appreciate it. To the nine year-old me, the clothes just weren’t as cool or nice as the store bought stuff. The adult me, however,  recognizes and finds the gesture deeply touching. To be perfectly honest, all three of Vesta May’s grandchildren were complete assholes to her. We made fun of her Southern accent, laughing uncontrollably at her pronunciation of the word “envelope,” which she pronounced “en-velop” and how she called me “Chris-say.” Sadly, at the time, we saw her as a backward hillbilly rube. Of the few regrets I have in my life, this is one.

Of the three grandchildren, I think I was the luckiest. I got to spend the first few years of my life living upstairs from Grandma and Grandpa Parker, in one of the three apartments of the apartment building they owned. An interior staircase connected our apartment to theirs, so I always had easy access to Grandma, and she was an integral part of my early childhood years. It was Vesta May who cared for me while my parents went to the hospital for my sister’s birth. I was sick at the time, and I remember rousing in the early morning hours, in a half-wakeful state, to see Vesta May refilling the vaporizer. “Now just go back to sleep,” she whispered as she stroked my feverish brow. Feeling better that evening after Vesta May’s homemade chili for dinner, I remember talking on the phone to my mother while she was still at the hospital. I would come to need Vesta May’s time, attention, and love even more once my mother came home with the baby and struggled to balance her time between a demanding five year-old and even more demanding newborn. In case you were wondering, crying newborns trump whining preschooler every time. It’s nature. It also makes sense, however, that a child who spent the first five years of her life as an “only” might feel brushed aside and neglected, and I did.

While I often had reason to doubt my parents’ unconditional love, I never had to wonder about Vesta May’s. She made certain I didn’t just know she loved me but that I felt it – always. Displays of affection my parents avoided were a certainty with her – hugs, kisses, sitting on her lap and being rocked in the rocking chair, her holding my hand. Some of the sweetest of those “sweet memories” include me, at about the age of five, sitting on Grandma’s lap as she rocked me and gently brushed my hair or the time I fell asleep with my head on her lap as I sat at her feet on the passenger side floor (this was well before the time of child safety seats) of her and Grandpa’s brown Ford LTD while we drove the eleven or so hours to visit “the relatives” in Vesta May’s hometown of South Pittsburgh, Tennesse. Yet another fond memory is of dancing with her, music from Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s telecast playing on their color console television and with my feet on hers, as she babysat me and my siblings one New Year’s Eve. I could go on and on. Vesta May Parker was simply an abundantly nurturing person, most likely as a result of her upbringing.

Vesta May was the eldest of five kids and the only daughter of Kate, “Fat Mama,” and Ewing Smith Sr. My father loves to tell anyone who will listen about how he was responsible for Great Grandma Kate’s uncomplimentary nickname. He explains that, when he was very young, it was how he differentiated between his two grandmothers – one was skinny and one (Kate) was fat. It apparently stuck. In 1927 Ewing was the police chief of South Pittsburgh, Tennessee. He made a good living, well enough for Fat Mama to be able to employ a nanny to help with the children. Then one Christmas Eve, a conflict between the Marion County Sheriff’s Department and the South Pittsburgh Police Department escalated and erupted into a gun battle so serious that the National Guard had to be called in. Ewing was a casualty of the incident. My dad actually has the notebook, complete with bullet holes and bloodstains, that Great Grandpa was carrying in his breast pocket that night, as well as an article about the event from the South Pittsburg Hustler. Yes, hillbillies do seem to love their macabre souvenirs. To me, though, it is a chilling artifact and a sobering symbol. Ewing’s death changed everything for Kate and her five children. Gone was the comfortable house. Gone was the nanny. Gone was Ewing’s good salary. A teenage Vesta May had to quit school and get a job at the nearby pencil factory. The family moved into a tiny one-bedroom house – one that didn’t even have an indoor bathroom until the early sixties, when my dad and grandfather built one for it. But poverty can be a good teacher. Vesta May learned to sew. She learned how to grow vegetables and can them. She and Fat Mama would pick wild blackberries and raspberries to make jams, jellies, and pies. She learned to clean and cook the fish her brothers brought home in the summer. She especially, though, learned to be frugal and to never let anything go to waste. She carried all these skills into adulthood, and they served her well as the wife of a poor foundry worker and as a mother.

Vesta May met and married Calvin Edward Parker, Ed as he was known to most, in 1930, when she was seventeen. Ed made a meager wage as a foundry worker, so the couple lived with Vesta May’s family. She continued to work at the pencil factory. The couple had difficulty conceiving. They’d been married six years when they finally had my Dad. Vesta May was twenty-three, which, at the time and for her social status, was considered an “advanced” age for a first pregnancy. He would be their only child and the center of Vesta May’s world.

The Depression led Ed’s five brothers, most of them also foundry workers, to move north with their families, to Michigan, looking for work. Ed, Vesta May, and James followed. The brothers, their wives, and many of their children all lived together for the first few years. Ed and Vesta May eventually bought the three-unit apartment building they lived in until they passed. Like his brothers, Ed went to work in one of the several foundries in Kalamazoo. Once Dad started school, Vesta May went to work in a bakery. I have many fond memories of sitting on the high stools at the counter of Jake’s Bakery, eating my favorite cream filled donut while watching Grandma pour coffee and serve donuts, humming and laughing the whole time, just like she did at home. At the time, I didn’t think there could be a cooler job. Interestingly, I ended up following in her footsteps, at one point in my life, doing that same thing at another local bakery, though not quite as cheerfully as she did it.

Though she worked full time at the bakery, she always had time for her family. She’d come home smelling of baked goods and yet walked right into the kitchen to make dinner for my grandfather. It was only after she’d put a home cooked meal on the table and cleaned up the kitchen that she’d roll her hose down around her ankles, slip on her “house shoes,” and allow herself a moment’s rest to watch the local news. Work never came before her family.

When I was sixteen, Vesta May got sick. She was diagnosed with cirrhosis, a disease normally associated with alcoholism. The irony is that, unlike her recovering alcoholic husband, Vesta May never once touched alcohol. Her compromised liver functioning was the result of a terrible bout of scarlet fever she had suffered as a child. Over the years, her liver slowly deteriorated until she began to suffer the full-blown symptoms of the disease. The final days before she died were excruciating to watch. I visited her in the hospital a few times, but she was unaware of my presence. I worried that she was in pain, but the hospital staff reassured us that the meds they were giving her were keeping her comfortable. My father and grandfather sat with her every day as she neared the end. It was fitting that she was alone with my dad, her prince, the morning she took her last breath.

The visitation, the funeral, and the burial were all a blur to me. As an introverted, antisocial teenager that had just lost what she perceived as the only person who truly loved her, it was all I could do to simply endure that time. The day of the funeral was a sunny but cold day. I remember the dress I wore. It was the only one I owned. I remember the big, navy blue sunglasses I wore in an effort to keep my pain private. I remember riding in the limousine to the cemetery, and thinking, “Wow, this sure is a shitty way to have my first limo ride.” My parents were uncharacteristically understanding of my grief. They knew how close I was to my grandmother. They let me miss school for an entire week, though it took me years to adjust to the loss. One afternoon, about a year after Vesta May’s passing, I came across one of her headscarves. She’d always worn a scarf when she went out, except when it was hot in the summer or when it rained and she wore a “rain bonnet.” I held it to my face. Her scent was still in it. The smell somehow triggered something deep within me. I wept and wept.

I still miss her. I miss her, and I wish she could’ve been here for the important milestones in my life. They would’ve been meaningful to her. I wish she could’ve seen me graduate from high school and from college. I know that, in her heart, she wished she could’ve finished school. She would’ve been so proud of me for what I’ve accomplished in my education. I wish she could’ve met my children. For as good of a grandmother as she was, she would’ve been an even better great-grandmother. What’s more is that my children would’ve adored her…and she would’ve adored them. Every child needs the adoration of a grandparent or great-grandparent. I also wish she could’ve met my husband (well, my second husband, that is). He’s the one person that makes me feel as loved as she did, and she would’ve loved him for that.

I like to believe that Vesta May was there when my daughter Sarah passed, waiting for her on the other side, even though she’d never met her. I imagine Vesta May introducing herself to her great-granddaughter, comforting her, and gently guiding Sarah’s confused spirit, telling her, as she so often did to me, “Everything’s going to be alright.” It’s my hope that Sarah and Vesta May are together now laughing, humming, dancing, and cooking – making Chicken & Dumplings and cornbread for Sunday suppers. Vesta May’s gentle Southern comfort soothed me as a child and continues to sustain me as an adult. If I ever find myself blessed enough to be a grandmother, my wish is that I might be the kind of comfort that Vesta May Parker was to me.

My relationship with my dad, James – Jim to most people, is complicated. These days it’s mostly a source of frustration and humor, more than anything else. As we’ve both gotten older, it’s changed significantly. When I was a child, Dad seemed pretty scary – a big, hulking figure with blazing red hair and thick, calloused machinist’s hands. Those hands, though they worked hard to support our family were, to me, not much more than instruments of corporal punishment. Dad had a short fuse. I had a smart mouth. It was a volatile combination for a parent-child relationship. So, back in the days of “spare the rod and spoil the child,” I got plenty an ass-whooping from those hands. Each of us, my siblings and me, probably has a different opinion of who James is, but I would surmise that, since mine is from the perspective of a first child, it is the harshest. I had to endure the “parental experimentation” of James and Bonnie; who, without having had the benefit of good parental role models, often just resorted to the same dysfunctional patterns with which they’d been raised. I mean, after all, what do you do with little creatures that seem to have endless, unrelenting demands and little gratitude or consideration for the needs of others, right? I often joke that if my parents had been animals, they would’ve eaten their young. Neither of my parents were the “warm, fuzzy” nurturing type. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not “bashing” or “blaming” them. When I became a parent, I came to realize that my folks had done the best they could with the skills they had. It made me determined to do better by my children.

My grandmother had had difficulty getting pregnant, so my grandparents were “older” (in the context of that time in history), when they finally had my dad. After such a struggle to conceive, my grandmother was grateful for the blessing of having a baby, and she doted on my father, who would be her only child. Until the day she died, he was her prince. In other words, he was spoiled as shit. Though age and maturity reduced his penchant for selfishness, to a degree, by and large he has remained the same. So, when he became a father, Dad had great difficulty reconciling the sacrifices of parenthood with his deeply rooted self-centeredness. The result was an underlying and unspoken resentment that I sensed from him, even at my youngest. It was painful.

The fact that I was a daughter, not a son, was also a source of unspoken disappointment. My emotional extremes, which are so typical of a daughter, were a source of frustration for him, as was my introversion. I had a very limited social life and, other than a brief dalliance the summer before senior year, I really never had a boyfriend while I lived at home. Dad’s frustration frequently got the better of him. How else could you justify someone telling his daughter (to her face) that she was “crazy” and that she would, most likely, “end up an old maid?” The subtext was clear – “no one will ever love or want you.” Ouch! Had I been remotely athletic or at all “sports minding,” my gender might not have mattered to Dad. My sister, for instance, was blessed with these traits and was, thus, lucky enough to have experienced a much different side of him because of it. Dad eventually did get his son, about seven years after me. Sadly, though, karma just couldn’t let him have his heart’s desire in full. Not only was my brother completely uninterested in sports, but he turned out to be gay…and (much like his eldest child) generally pretty weird, too. Sigh! Poor Big Jim! He just couldn’t win. I’m reminded of a saying, he likes to use, “Well, you can shit in one hand and wish in another, for all the good it will do.” That sure never kept him from wishing/wanting/expecting, though.

My dad will be the first to admit that, even these days, he wants/likes/does what he pleases and to hell with everybody else. I remember, for example, when I was growing up, he often insisted on wearing jeans to functions where it was clearly inappropriate to do so – weddings, graduations, funerals, and certain restaurants. While I’m certain that he didn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d worn jeans to his mother’s funeral. She wouldn’t have cared, though; anything her Jimmy wanted was A-Okay with her, always. It wasn’t until Dad became interested in playing golf that I witnessed him acquiesce to the expectations of polite society. Of course, initially, he was incredulous that there might be a “dress code” just to be able to go onto a golf course, but he begrudgingly complied. I guess he wanted to play golf MORE than he wanted to wear jeans in that instance. My mother had to plead with him to get him to wear the mourning suit I’d chosen for my wedding to my first husband. Dad got me back, though, at my second wedding. I had the most beautiful wedding planned at a local nature preserve. My dress was perfect. My groom’s suit was perfect. The weather was perfect. Everything was perfect. As I was waiting for the ceremony to begin, I looked out to see a disheveled man in rumpled, baggie khakis and a wrinkly, untucked polo shirt wandering across the garden. “Who is that?” I said, “Who’s that vagrant trying to ruin my wedding?” Imagine my utter shock when, upon closer look, it became clear that this “vagrant” was, in fact, my own father! Later, Dad explained that he didn’t think it mattered since it was my “second” wedding. Yup, it was my second wedding, Dad, so decorum was, of course, completely in the shitter. Even now, my dad will show up at the nursing home, where my mother now lives, wearing a shirt with stains and/or multiple holes. “Dad! Do you realize you have, like, five holes in the front of your shirt?” I’ll exclaim. Dad responds, “Huh? (looks down at the holes ) What? Well, at least it’s clean!” Sigh!

A few years ago, my mom contracted a rare strain of meningitis that left her brain damaged. Dad struggled with the reality of it. He tried to care for her at home, but his self-centeredness made him incapable, for the most part, of understanding and meeting Mom’s needs. To make matters worse, he wouldn’t listen to anyone (least of all me) about what to do and how to go about it. At this point, Mom was incontinent and largely immobile. She needed constant care, and Dad had no clue how to give it. Mom got bedsores, because he let her stay in one position too long. She suffered numerous urinary tract infections, because he didn’t change her enough. She lost forty pounds from inadequate nutrition, because he constantly relied on fast-food delivery for their meals. She was in and out of the hospital monthly. Eventually, Mom suffered both a minor stroke and a mild heart attack. Finally, after a post-hospitalization stay in a nursing home rehabilitation facility, Dad was finally willing to consider moving her to long term care, at least “temporarily.” I still don’t think he’s completely accepted the fact that Mom will never be the same again. He lives alone now, in the house where I spent my adolescence. I am certain that he never wanted or envisioned his life being this way. I’m sure part of him wishes he and Mom could’ve enjoyed their golden years someplace warm and sunny…together. But I also know that he would tell you he’s happy that he can, now, pretty much do as he pleases without having to answer to anyone.

Whenever I see my dad’s number on the display of my phone, I know that he’s calling me for a specific reason and not just to “shoot the shit,” as he calls it. So, when I answered his call one evening this past May, I knew it was not a “social” call. He told me that he’d taken himself to the emergency room the night before because he’d had an “attack.” He explained that it was found he had gallstones and he would need to have his gall bladder removed. It wasn’t an emergency situation, so the surgery could be scheduled for the near future. “They tell me I’ll need someone to drive me, for some stupid reason. I won’t be able to drive myself after the surgery!” He then proceeded to tell me that he would have my aunt (his sister-in-law) take him, but the guilt-trip subtext was clear. “It’s okay. You and your sister don’t have to disrupt your lives just for me. I know you’re busy.” What? Nope! No! I was NOT falling for that shit! “Well, that’s not gonna happen, Dad. One of us will take you,” I replied. “Oh, okay. Well, only if you’re sure, though.” Well played, old man. As luck would have it, my sister was unable to get the day off work, so it turned out that I would have the pleasure of accompanying our curmudgeon to his procedure. Then, just before the surgery date, I awoke early one Saturday morning to my dad’s phone call. “Hi! Hey, I’m thinking of driving myself to the emergency room,” I heard his voice say. “What? Why?” I groggily responded. “Well, I’ve been short of breath, and, last night, just coming up the stairs made me so winded that I had to sit on the edge of the bed for about fifteen minutes to recover.” Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit! But I calmly replied, “Dad, are you having any chest pain? Do you need to call an ambulance?” “Uuuh! No, no, I don’t think so. I just thought I’d go get checked out,” he answered. “Okay, how ‘bout if we come get you and take you?” I offered. “Oh, well, okay. If you can,” he responded, with mock surprise.

We spent the better part of our Saturday in the emergency room that day with The King of Denial. The ER doctor tried, gently, to explain to Dad that his congestive heart failure was, most likely, causing fluid to collect in his lungs, therefore making it hard for him to breathe. Dad argued. He was certain he’d just “caught” the pneumonia for which my mother had been hospitalized a few weeks earlier. To support his case, he produced his cell phone and searched for the text my sister had sent him with a WebMD entry about the strain of bacteria Mom had had. He thrust the phone toward the doctor. She read the screen but looked confused. Dad was on the wrong screen. “Oh, no. Here,” he said, taking the phone and swiping. “Uuuuh, yeah, well, it’s pretty unlikely that that’s your problem,” the doctor said. Dad ended up spending nearly a week in the hospital as they drained the fluid from his lungs and made sure he was taking his diuretic daily, instead of “as needed” as he insisted he’d been told to do. When I came to drive him home, I asked him what the doctor had determined was the cause of his condition. Dad said, “Ya know, they never really figured it out.” Sigh! Truly, denial is NOT just a river in Egypt. To this day, Dad refuses to acknowledge that he has congestive heart failure. Moreover, he’ll never accept the fact that it is a condition that simply doesn’t go away but actually gets worse over time.

Needless to say, the gall bladder surgery took a backseat after Dad’s hospitalization. He did not, however, apprise me of this fact until 4:00 p.m. the night before his scheduled procedure. He left a voice mail, “Hey, I know you got a sub and everything, but they’re saying I need to get clearance from my heart doctor, before I can have the surgery. Hope you can cancel your sub.” No, Dad, I CAN’T just cancel my sub less than 24 hours before the fact. Jesus Christ! Nobody gets how big a deal it is for a teacher to take the day off – arranging for a sub, writing sub plans. I ended up burning a sick day for nothing. I impressed upon Dad the importance of rescheduling the surgery for a day after school got out for summer break. Luckily, he listened THIS time.

“So, I just need somebody to drop me off and pick me up,” he said, about the new surgery date. Taking Dad to his procedure was no big deal for me this time around since school was out for summer. My husband, however, took the day off work to accompany me, provide support, and help. We woke early the day of Dad’s surgery, because we knew he’d be blowing up my phone, if we weren’t absolutely punctual. So, we didn’t even bother to eat breakfast. Because of the “drop me off and pick me up” scenario Dad had portrayed, we figured we’d just slip out for breakfast once Dad was in surgery. As Dad checked in, the clerk handed me a packet of paperwork and a pager. It was then that I realized we would not be going anywhere anytime soon. “Family members must remain in the waiting area or within the confines of the hospital throughout the duration of the patient’s procedure,” the packet instructed. Shit! So, we waited, for what seemed like forever. They took Dad back to the pre-op suite. Mike and I were both cranky and starving when the pager texted us to come back and join him. We sat patiently as the various specialties paraded through – the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the surgical nurse, and the nurse anesthetist. When you’re simply an observer, with no credible input, these situations can be difficult to endure. I nearly bit my tongue clean off, when I had to listen to Dad tell lie after lie. “So, you had a quadruple bypass a few years ago, right, and, because of your weight, you probably get a little winded going up stairs. Correct?” the anesthesiologist queried. “No, no. Haven’t had much of a problem since they drained that fluid from my lungs,” Dad fibbed. “Uuuuh, well, you probably do a bit of snoring, though, right?” the doctor continued. “Nope. No I sure don’t,” Dad responded. LIES! What a liar! We sat in the ER with this man for an entire day just a month ago and had to listen to him sawing logs like a buzz saw every time he dozed off. I glanced over at Mike. “It’s a good thing he isn’t wearing pants,” I whispered, “‘cause they’d be on fire right now!” Throughout Dad’s interactions with various physicians and medical personnel, his main concern was the prospect of waking up on a ventilator, which he’d been told was a possibility given his health history. The irony is that Dad remained completely oblivious to the reality of his overall health.

Once the surgical suite was ready, they ushered us out, and we left Dad to it. Since we couldn’t leave the hospital, we were relegated to a less than appetizing breakfast in the hospital cafeteria. I had been hopeful, when I’d seen a sign at the check-in desk touting the day’s “Themed Omelet Bar.” In spite of the fact that there was an actual “Omelet Chef” responsible for making said omelets, mine was lackluster. Mike’s rubbery scrambled eggs and limp bacon, from the “breakfast bar,” were an even greater disappointment. Still, we soldiered on, as the dutiful children. We returned to the outpatient waiting area and waited. We waited and waited and waited. Time passed as slowly as a poorly dubbed foreign film. “If I’d have known it would take this long, I would’ve brought a book,” I told Mike, as I was forced to suffice with the past five months of People magazines. The result? I could write doctoral dissertation about Taylor Swift, her squad, and their “goals.”

We’d been told that the surgery would take about an hour. TWO hours later, the surgeon found us and explained that Dad’s gall bladder had been incredibly infected, and that that was why the surgery had taken longer than expected. “I’m surprised he wasn’t in extreme pain,” he said. “Yeah, well I’m not. He’s a tough old coot,” I replied, editing my thoughts for politeness sake. My internal response was more like, “Yeah, he’s a hard-assed motherfucker, see. Physical pain doesn’t faze him,” remembering his lack of sympathy for nearly every childhood injury I ever sustained. The surgeon continued, explaining that Dad had lost a lot of blood, because the surgery had taken so long and that, consequently, he would have to stay overnight to be monitored. “Oh boy, he’s not gonna like that,” I said. The doctor assured me that he would be the one to break the news. A little while later, the surgeon came to let us know Dad was heading to recovery. He said that Dad took the news about having to stay well. The doctor also mentioned that he had tried to explain to Dad the particulars of his congestive heart failure condition – something I’d attempted to do during Dad’s previous health crisis. After the surgeon left, I turned to Mike and said, “Am I taking crazy pills? Isn’t that explanation of congestive heart failure EXACTLY what I told Dad?’ Mike responded, “Baby, you lack two things that that doctor has – 1) a medical degree and 2) a penis. That’s why Dad will NEVER listen to you.”

I waited, the entire day after Dad’s surgery, for the call to come pick him up. I didn’t go for my run. I didn’t go to the store. I didn’t feel like I could go anywhere or do anything for fear that he’d be blowing up my phone when the time came for him to leave the hospital. God forbid that that man should have to wait! Remember, James wants what he wants when he wants it. Around noon, I called to see what was going on. “Well, they won’t let me go home, ‘cause I can’t pee,” Dad said when I reached him by phone. “Yeah, they had to give me a catheter to drain me, and they’re talking about sending me home with it? That’s bullshit! I’m not doin’ that!” he continued. He told me he’d let me know when there was word about his release. All I could think about was the prospect of Dad being at home, on his own, with such a physically invasive device. “Oh my God,” I thought, “He’s going to get a raging urinary tract infection. He’s SO dirty! He’ll never be able to change a catheter with any kind of proper hygiene!” Ugh! I used to joke that if my mother passed first, we’d have to keep Dad in a pen in the yard because of his lack of cleanliness. At nine a.m. the next morning, Dad’s number showed up on my phone. “Yeah, I can pee now, so they’re letting me go home. You gonna come get me?” “Yes, of course, Dad, I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, aware that this meant I must leave immediately or run the risk of Dad leaving numerous voice mails demanding to know what was “taking so long” and wondering “where the hell” I was. Teeth brushed, face washed, hair up, sweats on, and I was in the car.

Dad said to call when I was ten minutes from the hospital. My previous experiences with picking up both Dad and my mother from the hospital taught me that hospital staff don’t really seem to concern themselves with urgency when you, the transporter, are waiting in the “PATIENT PICK-UP ONLY” area with fifty other inpatient drivers behind you. So, in actuality, I called about FIVE minutes before arriving the hospital. That was good, because I only had to endure the glares of others waiting to pick up their “patient” for ten minutes instead of fifteen. Dad got in the car, wearing the same clothes in which he’d been admitted to the hospital two days prior, in spite of my repeated offers to bring clean clothes from home. As he reached for his seatbelt, Dad said, “Ya know, I’m really gonna have to quiz that guy when I go to him for my follow up appointment – the surgeon, ya know.” “Whaddaya mean, Dad?” I replied. “Well, I just don’t understand how my gall bladder could’ve been infected, if I wasn’t in pain,” he explained. “Well, Dad,” I said, “I told the doctor that you were a tough old coot, and there wasn’t anything gonna make you hurt – not even a bacteria-riddled, puss-filled infected organ.” “Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, I guess not.” I suppose it’s a blessing that I inherited my father’s incredible tolerance for physical pain. It allowed me to give birth to two children without the assistance of ANY pain meds – a fact about which I feel justified in bragging. Unlike my father, however, I lack the ability to remain unfazed by emotional pain and suffering. I like to think that, unlike him, I have the heart of an artist – tender and easily wounded. I also like to think that, like him, I have the body of a warrior. Believe me when I say that nothing’s gonna keep that man down – not a tour in Vietnam, not working seven days a week for fifty years in a paper mill, not a quadruple bypass, not a knee replacement, and certainly not stupid little infected gall bladder.

I’ve only seen my dad cry three times in the fifty plus years I’ve known him. The first was at the funeral of his mother. The second was at the funeral of his granddaughter, my daughter Sarah, and the third was in the pre-op room before his cardiac bypass. He was scared. I’d never seen that emotion on him before. It was unnerving. That might’ve been the beginning. You know, the beginning of seeing him as James instead of Dad. Long gone are the days when his booming voice made me tremble with fear. Though his physical stature hasn’t changed much, whenever I see him in a hospital bed (and that’s been numerous times in recent years), he seems smaller now. He’s lost that blazing red hair. The hair that’s left is white and sparse. He often complains of arthritic soreness in the hands that once delivered his version of parental justice. Dad’s attempts to intimidate people once mortified a teenage me. Now they just make me laugh to myself, cast a knowing glance toward his target, and roll my eyes. Yes, there are still times, when he gets particularly loud and verbally aggressive, that I feel instantly transformed into that terrified seven year-old of yesterday, but those times are rare. We’ve both come a long way. I’m reminded of lyrics from Bonnie Raitt’s song Nick of Time: “I see my folks. They’re getting on. I watch their bodies change. I know they see the same in me, and it makes us both feel strange. No matter how you tell yourself, it’s what we all go through. Those lines are pretty hard to take when they’re starin’ back at you. Scared to run out of time.” We’re all scared to run out of time. We’re scared to be forgotten. We’re scared to be remembered as something other than what we really were.

When Dad is gone, I will try. I will try to remember him as James the man – not James the authoritarian parent, not James from the memories of a traumatized child, and not James the father who was impossible to please. What good would it do me to do otherwise? After all, in the end, we’re all just doing the best we can while we’re here on this planet. Right? You did the best you could, Dad, and it’s cool. So, when I think of James I will think of his charm – a trait acquired from being raised as the apple of a sweet Southern lady’s eye. I’ll remember the generosity and hospitality that were generated by that same Southern upbringing. I will think of his crass but clever humor, a product of unapplied intelligence. I will look at my daughter’s incredible artistic talent and see the full genetic expression of his artistic ability. I will think of his fierce loyalty, which forged friendships that spanned nearly a lifetime – from grade school to final breaths. I am who I am because he was who he was and is – the good and the not-so-good. Another line from that Bonnie Raitt song goes like this, “When did the choices get so hard, with so much more at stake? Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste.” I don’t want to waste time dwelling on the not-so-good at this point in my life. So, all I can say is…Namaste, James.

“Seeing others through the definition of Namaste will help you to see the true divine spirit in everyone. By doing so you are literally meeting them at the soul level. You look beyond the surface into the true nature of every being.” – The Living Words of Wisdom.