The past five months have been undeniably the hardest I’ve ever endured but also the most enlightening.
Mortality… Relationships… The illusion of control…. Some of the bitterest and most liberating lessons include:
1: You can’t change people….
No Mao… It doesn’t come through the barrel of a gun – it comes from within and can only (at best) be inspired,… never forced.
2: Opposites attract.. but don’t stick.
Sure you can use glue – but be mindful of the people, things and situations you use as such.
3: There’s two types of motivation… The search for meaning and the search for importance.
The two (however interrelated you may think they are) are mutually exclusive.
4: You have absolutely no control over your life…. Never did… Never will…
The lie that you somehow could is the stuff entire fortunes and institutions are made of.
4.1: What you can control is how *you* : deal / deny / perceive / process, assign meaning (or importance) to *your* life.
These of course are my revelations. Your light bulbs may vary in shape, size, color and intensity. But lest we forget, (and as my recent selfish absence from the LJ community would undercore with a point side of a compass):
This is after-all my light show right?
Anyway – Just through this next wave – please remember…. I’m not selling or preaching jack-shit.
In fact – it’s my impulse to *not* share… not stuff this hard to get to… this painful … this emotionally disemboweling.
ADD-Friendly Recap about Dad-n-Stuff:
September:
Cleaning out dad’s house and setting it up for convalescence. This required the whole month, the three of us, my mom and two 15 foot dumpsters. I hadn’t heard the term: Compulsive Hoarding yet.
I went researching after a bout where I literally fell to my knees at the foot of dad’s hospital bed – pleading with him to…
“PLEASE dad… stop buying things…. There’s just no more room in the house – and we need you to save the fraction of your cash reserves which remain for the meds your insurance isn’t covering.”
10 containers of parmesan cheese?…. 24lbs of bacon… cast aluminum tractor seats, two of em, – it doesn’t matter and to audit only invites conflict. I can guarantee you’d never be able to imagine the scope and depth of what I had simply tried to ice over and call a “improvised, enthusiastic collection of various things”.
But alas… see above enlightenment codec: light bulb #1… “You can’t change people.”
October-November
Early morning weekdays… Monday through Friday… 7am radiation treatments. I enjoyed these drives a lot….
Pop and I would talk about anything and everything… A lot of stories from the past… Like being taken to a bath-house in the 60’s… (back before they were the exclusive franchise of gays – but nevertheless frequented by them)…. Managing a psychedelic rock band in college,… working a show were Alice Cooper’s band was also playing and thinking he (Cooper) was a pretentious jack-off.
Discovering that (inexplicably since he moved to Florida when I was still a baby) – my grandpa (Jim 1.0) had the exact same irresistible compulsion to meep his horn while going under the same bridges in St. Louis.. (*the kind that go under ground – not normal bridges which span “over” a road).
Radiation is deceiving.
On the outside, you just lay there in a big beige donut with your own laser show throwing lights over you… the wall.. the table… Treatments, which lasted about 35 to 40 minutes were painless… You just lay there and hear a noise that dad described as “Like listening to a military parade marching by if you had an apartment overlooking red-square”.
On the inside your flesh burns… They took him to the maximum lifetime dose of radiation a person can get. By treatment #30 and the second adjuvant chemotherapy, dad was miserable and wanted to die… literally… Chronic dehydration kept him in and out of the ER… The steroids given to him to boost his resistance to the chemo made him a monster capable of saying the kind of terrible shit that only a loved one could.
Grief can come on like what I figure an epileptic attack must feel like. You’ll find yourself perfectly calm one minute, doing something like flipping through a caregiver-guide memorizing the signs of dehydration and septic shock – and then – out of nowhere – with no context attached to it at all… you begin to cry…. uncontrollably…. it’s all you can do to “urp-it” back up into yourself and try to hold it else make a scene.
My guts hurt for a solid month from this…. so bad at one point I was convinced I had grown a sympathy tumor somewhere in my abdominal cavity.
December
Meet the surgeon and do some scans… Scans show that’s there’s been no spread – but not that much shrinkage either.
He says Dad’s not a candidate for surgery…. too many other complications… Type 2 Diabetes… Smoker (still)… Overall health…
More chemo… More emergency room trips.
Christmas has become meaningless to me…. and not in a poetic angst teeny-bop way…
NO..
I mean the kind of deep-empty meaninglessness that only middle-age can perceive.
Janurary
Dad spent most of this month recovering from therapies while I spent most of it wishing I could poop in my house. (the bathroom’s basically done now – but more on that later). Mom’s become an indispensable help in caring for dad… It’s almost like they’re back together in some respects – but.. remember bulb #1 – the irreconcilables (which I can see now so clearly as preventable / treatable) – still persist. So they’re more like friends now who get to be extra bitchy to one another.
I don’t bother myself much really in minding their cathartic dance… It’s theirs to finish or continue…. I’m simply thankful for the help – and the support.
Feburary
Re-Scan and meet with the chemical oncologist..
The tumor appears to have gotten bigger… 🙁
The lymph nodes which were involved near the stomach-liver junction have shrunk. 🙂
There’s a new lymph node that’s shown up by the pancreas. 🙁
So.. in two weeks – another Scan.
if it looks good – wait a few months – scan again.
if it looks bad – we do a PET scan.
if it looks good – wait a few months – scan again.
if it looks bad –
More Chemo.
this will be the cycle for the rest of my dad’s life.
rinse and repeat…. till death does them part.
Speaking of…
Skated over the 14th of February, our 7th anniversary as a functioning “3-person relationship”.
The stress of the situation has taken it’s toll on us… particularly between Kevin and I.
The perspective shifts and realizations of late is going to help us through it…
thanks to light-bulb #4.1 – I’m feeling pretty at ease through all of this.
Don’t go thinking I’ve figured it all out.
I haven’t….
but I haven’t felt this much peace in a long time – if not ever.
oh yeah..
peace my friends.
sorry I’ve been so quiet.
&^%$#$%^&*()_)(*&^%$#$%^&*(
fuck.. sorry – see – I had another one of those cry-convulsion attacks.
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