The Old Man Who Missed His Life
My Dad is 75 years old today. I am happy that he has reached this age with wonderfully good physical health, if a somewhat poor outlook emotionally. I excuse him because, frankly, I know that this would have been a much sweeter milestone to celebrate had he been able to share it with my mother.
Now, as a widower, this day just doesn’t carry the same kind exhilaration and joy. When I called him this morning to wish him a happy birthday, it was close to 11 am. He said I had woken him up. He blamed the gloom of the day, the chill in the air and the comfort of his bed for the lingering. It saddened me to think that, having reached this age with such a spring in his step and such energy in his bones, he would drag around in an abyss of non-existence. I think my dad is in that place where you find you have lost everything that made you whole. You are unable to find your piece of earth in the world and no place is your place anymore. Neither here, nor there are you right and ok. Neither with nor without are you happy or content. Whether right or wrong, you just can’t correct it from the pain. Though you accept, or deny, it is always there, a weighted burden in your atmosphere.
I think my father expected, hoped, dreamed, believed that on his 75th birthday, it would my mother’s lovely face that would greet his first morning’s light, as he rolled on his side to find her form there beside him. Tragically, he arrives to this day a lonely man, having lost her two years ago despite his courageous fight to keep her alive. However, no amount of care, no level of devotion, no exhaustion of his body could keep her here any longer. Alone now and confused about the decisions he must make, fearful of the places he must travel to, frightened to adhere to change, and insecure in steps that he takes, he tries – some days failing miserably – to make his way in what remains of his days with some semblance of dignity and some level of independence. Yet, he falters because he is human.
In many ways, he is like a small child now, as we once were his small children, whom he taught to walk, to ride bicycles, to throw a ball, to catch one and whose fears he quelled and whose insecurities he reinforced with his own strength to help us grow and mature. In the same manner, one would hope, he could find similar assistance in his old age as he provided to us in our childhoods of wonder and discovery. How sad that he cannot turn to us as we did so many countless times to him for the comforts of home and the familiarity of love.
It saddens me that I don’t have the means to help him more to find a place on the planet where he is ok. It saddens me that, unlike him and unlike my mother, we his children fail miserably in the patience we should have with him now. I am envious of my cousins who coddle their father, comfort him, and treat him with the utmost respect and adoration. I am impressed with the joy they find in the simplest acts of kindness towards him, in their pride in him, in their unconditional love for him. I wonder why him and not my own. I wonder where things went wrong and why. I wonder if it is faith in God or each other that ties the knot for them and seals it with melted wax. I wonder when we broke ties with God and to what extent He has abandoned or forgotten us, as we have Him. Our culture is not one to place a parent in a home when the burden becomes too much. In fact, burden is not even part of that vocabulary. That is something we picked up here. Our culture is one where a lifetime passes in communal living where the grandchildren and great-grandchildren learn from the elderly, who are passing on valuable life lessons, before passing away. And that is how families are built and how they form lineage because past and present weave into one another in stories and habits and ideals we pass on and on and on through our words and actions. Would I want my child to treat me this way when I am old because it is how I treated my father, or mother? Would I be hurt by this child, whom I held so dear and who now holds me at arm’s length because I bother her, or him? Would I cry quietly into my pillow at night because I know I am not wanted, but I’ve no place else to turn to? Would I be so sad and scared that I would pray for death?
I can’t make excuses for anyone or myself. I won’t make them, because I wouldn’t be honest if I did. I just hope that with what time we have left with him, we do right by him and not let ourselves be influenced by anyone else. I hope that in the choices we make we recall my mother and what she would have done and how she would have handled things. I hope that we remember that before anyone else was in the picture, it was just we four there for each other all our lives.
My dream is to be able to reach his age in a similar physical condition, but with a more emotionally peaceful mind. However, I am not delusional. I know what the medical books say about people like me. I know that my life expectancy isn’t bright or promising. I know that everything I have been through looms on my horizon. However, I also know that when they wrote those medical books, they had yet to meet me. I know that I have a strong and positive mind with boundless optimism. I know that I never dwell on what they say and never set limits on what I can or cannot do. While I am not reckless or insane, I am daring in some respects. I know that even at the lowest points in my life, I am already thinking about what I am going to do WHEN, not IF, I get better. I have a tremendous amount of faith in God and Science and I know that things in medicine improve with age – like fine wine, one might say. I know that things are infinitely better today than just a couple of years ago. Things are leaps and bounds better than they were when I first got sick as a little kid in 1981. Therefore, I always see the promise of great tomorrows. I envision the kinds of medical miracles we witness in the science fiction stories of the past. Fiction usually stems from fact and in science, I expect that it can go both ways. I fully expect to be rocking in that chair, side by side, with Joe as I celebrate my 75th. I am stronger than I look and I have a hell of a lot to do here before I leave.
In his 75 years, my Dad survived a semi-reckless childhood of leaping off the pier in the back of his home into the warm Atlantic Ocean with his brothers, in lieu of a bath at home. Boys will be boys, after all. He and his brothers climbed trees, fished at dawn with their dad, tormented their sisters, rode motorcycles as teens and young adults and played hard all their lives. They played barefoot soccer in the streets of Colombia kicking that ball without breaking a toe and making anywhere their field. They scarped around for imaginative games, rough, and tumble fun. Once, as an 11-year-old boy playing near a construction site, a piece of plywood with a rusted nail in it hit him in the head and the nail became lodged in his skull. He survived that. His mother was a midwife, he told me, and came up with some crazy concoctions to keep her kids healthy, among them was injecting them with liver enzymes. I guess something in there worked because - except for his little sister Clara, who died in childhood from what I can gauge to be Scarlet fever - his siblings are all still alive and kicking. Clara was also a victim of medical malpractice. The doctor who came to visit and care for them injected her with the wrong thing. As the story goes - my grandfather chased him with a gun for miles. Never caught him, but he never practiced medicine in that town again, either. My father survived something else, something much more heroic. In 1992, he gave me a kidney. He was 62 and a casual smoker. He gave that up the day he decided to donate and the day the doctor challenged him to. He never went back to them. He gave me a kidney when it meant being cut across the middle in a barbaric way. He survived and here he is at 75 and that to me is strength and heroism.
I liken my Dad’s recklessness with my bouts with illness – a total abuse of body and mind that only serves as proof of strength and endurance of the person afflicted by chance or choice. Today I see his attempts and claims of independence and of being all-knowing to the shame and fear of knowing (more than ever before) that he doesn't know as much as he once thought he did, because isn't that part of the wisdom of old age - is that you don't know half of what you thought you did and you know without a doubt that the time to learn it is almost gone?
As I mentioned early on, my dad is a physically strong and healthy man. If the cards are played right and the changes are made quickly, there is hope and expectancy of a good many years left on his sands of time. Wouldn't it be an awful shame if what he ultimately died of was a broken heart?
Who could imagine that of the limitless boy with hopes and dreams like everyone else, would emerge a frightened old man with aimless days and nights. What, other than returning his kind-hearted bride to him, could we do to bring back the light and joy to his teary, lost eyes? What other explanation can we agree upon to explain his untold fascination with returning repeatedly to the place of his birth, his homeland, and his familiar surroundings? Other than stating the obvious, that what he wants most of all is to be in the place where he remembers being the carefree boy and young man he once was because, if for nothing other than grasping at a vanishing hope, he wants to find that boy and bring him home.
Now, as a widower, this day just doesn’t carry the same kind exhilaration and joy. When I called him this morning to wish him a happy birthday, it was close to 11 am. He said I had woken him up. He blamed the gloom of the day, the chill in the air and the comfort of his bed for the lingering. It saddened me to think that, having reached this age with such a spring in his step and such energy in his bones, he would drag around in an abyss of non-existence. I think my dad is in that place where you find you have lost everything that made you whole. You are unable to find your piece of earth in the world and no place is your place anymore. Neither here, nor there are you right and ok. Neither with nor without are you happy or content. Whether right or wrong, you just can’t correct it from the pain. Though you accept, or deny, it is always there, a weighted burden in your atmosphere.
I think my father expected, hoped, dreamed, believed that on his 75th birthday, it would my mother’s lovely face that would greet his first morning’s light, as he rolled on his side to find her form there beside him. Tragically, he arrives to this day a lonely man, having lost her two years ago despite his courageous fight to keep her alive. However, no amount of care, no level of devotion, no exhaustion of his body could keep her here any longer. Alone now and confused about the decisions he must make, fearful of the places he must travel to, frightened to adhere to change, and insecure in steps that he takes, he tries – some days failing miserably – to make his way in what remains of his days with some semblance of dignity and some level of independence. Yet, he falters because he is human.
In many ways, he is like a small child now, as we once were his small children, whom he taught to walk, to ride bicycles, to throw a ball, to catch one and whose fears he quelled and whose insecurities he reinforced with his own strength to help us grow and mature. In the same manner, one would hope, he could find similar assistance in his old age as he provided to us in our childhoods of wonder and discovery. How sad that he cannot turn to us as we did so many countless times to him for the comforts of home and the familiarity of love.
It saddens me that I don’t have the means to help him more to find a place on the planet where he is ok. It saddens me that, unlike him and unlike my mother, we his children fail miserably in the patience we should have with him now. I am envious of my cousins who coddle their father, comfort him, and treat him with the utmost respect and adoration. I am impressed with the joy they find in the simplest acts of kindness towards him, in their pride in him, in their unconditional love for him. I wonder why him and not my own. I wonder where things went wrong and why. I wonder if it is faith in God or each other that ties the knot for them and seals it with melted wax. I wonder when we broke ties with God and to what extent He has abandoned or forgotten us, as we have Him. Our culture is not one to place a parent in a home when the burden becomes too much. In fact, burden is not even part of that vocabulary. That is something we picked up here. Our culture is one where a lifetime passes in communal living where the grandchildren and great-grandchildren learn from the elderly, who are passing on valuable life lessons, before passing away. And that is how families are built and how they form lineage because past and present weave into one another in stories and habits and ideals we pass on and on and on through our words and actions. Would I want my child to treat me this way when I am old because it is how I treated my father, or mother? Would I be hurt by this child, whom I held so dear and who now holds me at arm’s length because I bother her, or him? Would I cry quietly into my pillow at night because I know I am not wanted, but I’ve no place else to turn to? Would I be so sad and scared that I would pray for death?
I can’t make excuses for anyone or myself. I won’t make them, because I wouldn’t be honest if I did. I just hope that with what time we have left with him, we do right by him and not let ourselves be influenced by anyone else. I hope that in the choices we make we recall my mother and what she would have done and how she would have handled things. I hope that we remember that before anyone else was in the picture, it was just we four there for each other all our lives.
My dream is to be able to reach his age in a similar physical condition, but with a more emotionally peaceful mind. However, I am not delusional. I know what the medical books say about people like me. I know that my life expectancy isn’t bright or promising. I know that everything I have been through looms on my horizon. However, I also know that when they wrote those medical books, they had yet to meet me. I know that I have a strong and positive mind with boundless optimism. I know that I never dwell on what they say and never set limits on what I can or cannot do. While I am not reckless or insane, I am daring in some respects. I know that even at the lowest points in my life, I am already thinking about what I am going to do WHEN, not IF, I get better. I have a tremendous amount of faith in God and Science and I know that things in medicine improve with age – like fine wine, one might say. I know that things are infinitely better today than just a couple of years ago. Things are leaps and bounds better than they were when I first got sick as a little kid in 1981. Therefore, I always see the promise of great tomorrows. I envision the kinds of medical miracles we witness in the science fiction stories of the past. Fiction usually stems from fact and in science, I expect that it can go both ways. I fully expect to be rocking in that chair, side by side, with Joe as I celebrate my 75th. I am stronger than I look and I have a hell of a lot to do here before I leave.
In his 75 years, my Dad survived a semi-reckless childhood of leaping off the pier in the back of his home into the warm Atlantic Ocean with his brothers, in lieu of a bath at home. Boys will be boys, after all. He and his brothers climbed trees, fished at dawn with their dad, tormented their sisters, rode motorcycles as teens and young adults and played hard all their lives. They played barefoot soccer in the streets of Colombia kicking that ball without breaking a toe and making anywhere their field. They scarped around for imaginative games, rough, and tumble fun. Once, as an 11-year-old boy playing near a construction site, a piece of plywood with a rusted nail in it hit him in the head and the nail became lodged in his skull. He survived that. His mother was a midwife, he told me, and came up with some crazy concoctions to keep her kids healthy, among them was injecting them with liver enzymes. I guess something in there worked because - except for his little sister Clara, who died in childhood from what I can gauge to be Scarlet fever - his siblings are all still alive and kicking. Clara was also a victim of medical malpractice. The doctor who came to visit and care for them injected her with the wrong thing. As the story goes - my grandfather chased him with a gun for miles. Never caught him, but he never practiced medicine in that town again, either. My father survived something else, something much more heroic. In 1992, he gave me a kidney. He was 62 and a casual smoker. He gave that up the day he decided to donate and the day the doctor challenged him to. He never went back to them. He gave me a kidney when it meant being cut across the middle in a barbaric way. He survived and here he is at 75 and that to me is strength and heroism.
I liken my Dad’s recklessness with my bouts with illness – a total abuse of body and mind that only serves as proof of strength and endurance of the person afflicted by chance or choice. Today I see his attempts and claims of independence and of being all-knowing to the shame and fear of knowing (more than ever before) that he doesn't know as much as he once thought he did, because isn't that part of the wisdom of old age - is that you don't know half of what you thought you did and you know without a doubt that the time to learn it is almost gone?
As I mentioned early on, my dad is a physically strong and healthy man. If the cards are played right and the changes are made quickly, there is hope and expectancy of a good many years left on his sands of time. Wouldn't it be an awful shame if what he ultimately died of was a broken heart?
Who could imagine that of the limitless boy with hopes and dreams like everyone else, would emerge a frightened old man with aimless days and nights. What, other than returning his kind-hearted bride to him, could we do to bring back the light and joy to his teary, lost eyes? What other explanation can we agree upon to explain his untold fascination with returning repeatedly to the place of his birth, his homeland, and his familiar surroundings? Other than stating the obvious, that what he wants most of all is to be in the place where he remembers being the carefree boy and young man he once was because, if for nothing other than grasping at a vanishing hope, he wants to find that boy and bring him home.
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