My dad’s been sick and I’m not feeling angry

I got a call on a bright June evening

I got a call on a bright June evening when my mom was in town. I was buying her dinner at the restaurant I work at and she was crying, telling me about how my dad used to cheat on her with that woman who used to drive me around in her Mini Cooper. My mom said it was really messed up, said the woman’s husband was sick with cancer while the affair took place. How she didn’t find out about the cheating until years after she divorced my dad. 

On the phone my dad’s wife told me my dad’s in severe condition and is going back in for emergency surgery early in the morning, as soon as the surgeon can see him. I tell my mom, wonder if I should fly back to California. I calculate that I won’t make it back before he goes into surgery, decide to just stay put. 

…

My brothers and I each took shifts spending time with my dad in the hospital while he recovered. I went last. When I arrived from New York for my five-day stay, he was only sleeping halfdays. He was out of the full body restraints and the mittens. He didn’t think he was being kidnapped by enemy forces from the army anymore and he wasn’t attacking the nurses. He was calling me his sister’s name. 

Almost as soon as I arrived, his wife left the hospital. He immediately lifted his shirt and pulled open his bandage to show me his scar. It ran centrally, from his pelvis up to the middle of his ribcage. The skin of his stomach made a large pucker held together by four toggle button closures. The closures were put in during the emergency surgery to hold him together after his initial wound burst open and his insides started coming out after all the thrashing and straining during his withdrawals.

To the left of his scar was his colonoscopy bag. I listened to it belch and fill with air and shit throughout the day, panicked at each burp that it would pop and spill across his open wound. When he or the nurse or I emptied it, the room smelled like stomach acid and shit for five minutes. On the side of the bed, my dad’s piss collected in his catheter bag, hung pitifully. 

I watched my dad sleep and drink his protein shakes and take as many slow laps as he could with his walker around the hallway until he almost passed out (three). 

…

I was there to help move him to the veteran rehabilitation center where he would stay for three months. His transfer was delayed two days because they couldn’t confirm they had the right colonoscopy bags and wound dressings. Finally, we left the hospital.

Before we went to the rehab center, we stopped by the house, against doctor’s orders. My dad said hello to his dogs and went to go look at the yard that he loved to take care of, said it looked pretty good. He sat in an armchair and cooed softly at the dogs as he petted them and we tried to keep them from licking his wounds or scratching at the bags. We got him back in the car and headed to the rehab center. My dad winced at every bump and we had to pull over on the side of the road for him to empty his shit. 

…

When we arrived, they told us they didn’t have the colonoscopy bags or wound dressing. 

We labeled all his clothes and filled out the inventory form. The person helping with intake told us over and over they were not liable for personal belongings. 

They brought him into a room with two other men, separated by curtains. His bed was in the middle and I couldn’t sit on a chair on either side of him without protruding into the curtain and his neighbor’s space. He and his roommates shared a TV and my dad didn’t like what was on it. I told him tough luck. His wife asked if there was another room. 

We got moved to another wing to a room with a man named Gary. Gary was a nice guy that told the staff he was going to sue the shit out of them for lack of ADA compliance if they didn’t let him leave to go visit his elderly parents each day after his treatments. He wasn’t around much. 

The floors were sticky and the sheets felt like tissue paper. I didn’t trust that they ever washed the blankets and there was a hole in the bathroom door where a knob should be. In typical fashion, my dad settled into his polyurethane mattress with genuine gratitude, completely unbothered by the state of his surroundings. In this wing’s hallway, a woman’s voice radiated at all hours of the day and night, begging for help and mercy. At first my dad said that’s going to be annoying but eventually he started saying poor woman. 

I had to leave my dad for a while to speak with the social worker to ask if the supplies had arrived, to try to find the nurse we had been told specialized in wound dressing, to find out how my dad could get more medication if his pain levels went up. No one knew what I was talking about. 

When I came back, my dad’s bag had started leaking and I found a new nurse, asked if she could help clean and replace it. She said she’d never done that before but her dad had one too. She applied a bag loosely and the shit immediately spilled out the sides. She tried again, using our second to last bag and we deemed it good enough for the night. 

In the hallway, she asked my dad’s wife and I if he was a drinker, said her dad was too. My dad’s wife told her she’d appreciate it if she could encourage him to see a psychologist, was worried about his handling of emotions without booze. She warned the nurse that he would lie about it, but the medical records show that he had admitted to drinking a handle of rum a day before they removed the abscess in his colon. The nurse said she was a traveling nurse and this was her last day here, but she would do what she could. 

I stayed until visiting hours were over. Before I left, I tried in vain to explain to the night nurses what I had learned at the hospital — how to redress the wound, how to burp his bag so it didn’t pop, what bags we needed to order. 

I went out to my rental car and collapsed, weeping against the wheel until my breath tried to suffocate me and I needed to stop and drive myself an hour back to my dad’s house for the night.  

…

I couldn’t sleep and got out of bed early to walk the dogs before visiting hours began. I wove through paths filled with wildflowers that scraped my legs and itched me as I brushed against them. As I started up the hill, I noticed the size of an oak tree ahead. There were so many oak trees around me growing up that I never really saw them, like I never really noticed the mountain hanging above in the background of my hometown until I returned. After so many years of living in New York, an oak seemed mystic. I stared up at it from the bottom of the hill: impossible, ancient, unmoved. 

…

When I came back the next morning my dad was in a fresh set of pajamas. I asked him how the night was. He said his bag had exploded and he was covered in his own shit, all over his clothes and blankets and wound dressing. He pushed the help button and no one came. He started yelling and no one came. Finally when the morning nurses were on, someone came and changed his sheets and pajamas and wound dressing and shit bag and emptied his catheter. He said the pajamas they took off of him weren’t labeled yet and he was scared they’d get lost in the wash. Heat spread up my chest to my neck and choked me. I looked at his wound dressing and saw two inches of open wound closest to his bag exposed, sticking out from a too-small bandage. I told him I’d be right back. 

I stood in the hall and tried to breathe. Someone walked by me slowly with their walker and said I was beautiful, God bless me. I closed my eyes. 

I opened my eyes, saw a nurse down at the end of the hall and moved across to her, afraid the floor was moving out from under me. I opened my mouth to speak but only tears came out. Sorry, I muttered. I’m worried about my dad, was all I could say. 

…

The next time I saw my dad after the rehab center was the best Christmas I’ve ever had in my life. He had been home for a couple months and his catheter was out. He was starting to gain some weight back and could easily change the bag on his own. 

After we went out to lunch, my dad excitedly presented my brothers and I the only gifts he’s ever picked out without the help of a partner: three identical, men’s large, gray, J Crew sweaters. He gave us each a Hallmark card in which he scribbled Merry Christmas! Love, Dad. He smiled proudly. We put on our sweaters and took a picture.

He didn’t drink, just consumed 80 mg of THC and gently passed out on the couch while we watched Home Alone. All day, he kept saying, “You bet,” which he never said before and I found to be the most endearing thing to ever leave my father’s mouth. When we woke up in the morning, he had been up for hours, cleaned the kitchen from dinner the night before. He played piano and sang while we drank our coffee:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings. These are a few of my favorite things. 

When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad…

After breakfast, we walked and biked along the wildflower paths past the oak tree at the park while the dogs trotted along. My brother turned to me in quiet disbelief. We’re having a normal Christmas, he whispered. I laughed. 

…

A few years ago, before all this, when I wasn’t talking to or seeing my dad, someone very wise told me that before we come into the world, our souls choose our parents as the teachers we will need for this lifetime. My dad taught me so much about important things in life: how to keep up with my big brothers, how to stand up to bullies, how to talk to new people anywhere I go, how to survive long road trips, how to make my own fun, how to sleep pretty much anywhere, how to swing dance, how to have confidence in the kitchen, how to have confidence — period, how to celebrate being alive and being together, how to invite everyone to the party, how to ask for what I want, how to swim in strong tides, and how to believe deeply in myself. 

It’s easy to think about all the things that’ve happened and get mad. It’s easy to wish things had been different growing up. And I do. But I always return to the things that I handpicked my dad to teach me before I came earthside, that half of me that came straight from him, and then I don’t feel so bad.