Close. Real Close.
My father is almost dead. It's been coming for some time. He's been ill. The grumpy old WWII vet is nearing the end of his more than eight decade run. I have to go see him next week. I hope he's still there.
My sister said he sings a lot these days. Old songs from the thirties and forties. Songs she does not always recognize. My sister thinks he sings because he's scared. I think she's right. It never seemed to me like he was scared of anything.
Like I've said before. Things were never very Cleaver at my house. My father drank and was often abusive. My sisters put up with a lot of verbal crap. I took most of the beatings. I put a stop to that when I was fourteen with a length of hardwood and a lot of determination. We didn't talk very much for about four years after that.
My father had a friend who was declared 4-F for medical reasons at the start of WWII. When my father left home at seventeen to serve his country, his friend's parents gave my father an old silver dollar. It was minted in the 1890's. It was a good luck charm. My father gave me that silver dollar when I enlisted.
He finally got sober when I was twenty-five.
He has lived a sober life for the last twenty-one years. He has gone out of his way to help others do the same. Giving guys rides to meetings. Standing by the phone. Helping out as much as he can. He has not been able to attend any meetings or help anyone out for over a year now. He has not been able to get out of bed for the last six weeks.
He deals with the pain. He will not take any pain killers. He wants to feel it all, even the worst of it. They have to give him small doses of morphine in pill form at night so he can sleep. They don't tell him what it is or he won't take it. They have to make the doses very light because he's down to less than one hundred and twenty pounds now.
My parents still do not know that my wife is fighting cancer. We don't want them to know. They have enough to deal with right now.
My father is not a happy person. I don't think he had much of a childhood. His father hung himself at a very young age. My father worked delivering papers, giving all but a nickel a week to his mother during the Depression. I know they went back to Denmark for a time. They came back here again. The war came next. Hard to imagine when you really think about it.
Maybe he will have some peace. Maybe God will grant him that. Just a little bit before he dies. He tells my sister that he goes for a walk every night. It's in his dreams but it's real to him. Maybe that's his peace. All I know is I have to see him one more time before he goes. I have to do that for me. I guess maybe a little bit for him as well. I just have something I need to say.
I'll know what it is when I get there.
My sister said he sings a lot these days. Old songs from the thirties and forties. Songs she does not always recognize. My sister thinks he sings because he's scared. I think she's right. It never seemed to me like he was scared of anything.
Like I've said before. Things were never very Cleaver at my house. My father drank and was often abusive. My sisters put up with a lot of verbal crap. I took most of the beatings. I put a stop to that when I was fourteen with a length of hardwood and a lot of determination. We didn't talk very much for about four years after that.
My father had a friend who was declared 4-F for medical reasons at the start of WWII. When my father left home at seventeen to serve his country, his friend's parents gave my father an old silver dollar. It was minted in the 1890's. It was a good luck charm. My father gave me that silver dollar when I enlisted.
He finally got sober when I was twenty-five.
He has lived a sober life for the last twenty-one years. He has gone out of his way to help others do the same. Giving guys rides to meetings. Standing by the phone. Helping out as much as he can. He has not been able to attend any meetings or help anyone out for over a year now. He has not been able to get out of bed for the last six weeks.
He deals with the pain. He will not take any pain killers. He wants to feel it all, even the worst of it. They have to give him small doses of morphine in pill form at night so he can sleep. They don't tell him what it is or he won't take it. They have to make the doses very light because he's down to less than one hundred and twenty pounds now.
My parents still do not know that my wife is fighting cancer. We don't want them to know. They have enough to deal with right now.
My father is not a happy person. I don't think he had much of a childhood. His father hung himself at a very young age. My father worked delivering papers, giving all but a nickel a week to his mother during the Depression. I know they went back to Denmark for a time. They came back here again. The war came next. Hard to imagine when you really think about it.
Maybe he will have some peace. Maybe God will grant him that. Just a little bit before he dies. He tells my sister that he goes for a walk every night. It's in his dreams but it's real to him. Maybe that's his peace. All I know is I have to see him one more time before he goes. I have to do that for me. I guess maybe a little bit for him as well. I just have something I need to say.
I'll know what it is when I get there.
posted by Squarehead at 1:31 AM
1 Comments:
your gift is in writing life in this way. to the point, fully descriptive, drawing a person in emotionally.
this is hard on a whole lot of levels, i'm sure. one more thing to bear and try to make sense of. and this time of year shines a too bright, unforgiving, garish light on everything that isn't jolly and fuzzy.
damn.
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