Before I write what I think I'm about to write today, I thought I should post some background on what's going through my head right now.
I wrote this in January of 2005. ..just after I found out that my father was fighting a losing battle with prostate cancer:
For starters, I've been given permission by someone very special in my life to quote his wise words in this post because they are just so fitting at this moment. So, at least I'm giving credit where credit is due. So from the mouth of my friend, Kyle...
*Why do we saintify people once they die? It's utter bullshit. In my mind, if you were a prick when you were alive you're still a prick once you're dead. People shouldn't be rewarded simply because their life ran it's course. It's not like they did some great thing to exonerate themselves from their past deeds. Their heart just fucking stopped. Woo Hoo, big fucking deal. That's like congratulating a baby for shitting itself.*
Right now, I'm faced with the unenviable task of dealing with my father's certain death. He has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and hasn't been given much hope for the future. It's been said that the best they can do for him now is to make him as comfortable as possible and try to prolong his time as much as modern medicine will allow. He has, however, opted out of the prolonging part. So now, we just wait.
He and I have never gotten along. I suppose we are what happens when the consumate staunch military man with southern ideals and an unquestioning love for his country spawns a daughter whose nickname in high school was "hippiewoman". I have always made sure to be everything that he despised. I guess I chose to dissapoint him, but to be fair, he dissapointed me first. I suppose that what I've become is the most obvious result of one of my earliest memories of him being this:
Christmas of 1978 I was given a large yellow Barbie camper. At age 5, what girl wouldn't love that? It quickly became my favorite toy and countless hours were spent driving Barbie crosscountry on adventures too numerous to mention. But alas, my joy was never meant to last. Along with being Mr. Army Man, my father played guitar and sang in a country music band. And on nights when he played...he also drank (we will not delve too deeply into his alchoholic tendencies and the havoc they have wreaked over the years, but, for the purpose of this story, it does at least have to be mentioned in passing). One night I was awoken at 2 AM by a strange crashing noise and the faint sound of what may have been running water, crawled out of my Holly Hobby canopy bed, and crossed the hall (at this point I should note that I passed the bathroom on this journey) to my playroom. Switching on the light, I was horrified beyond belief by the sight of my drunken father standing there with one hand on the wall and the other cradling his penis as a yellow stream of piss issued forth into the designer interior of none other than my Barbie camper. In his drunken stupor and without turning on any lights, my father had somehow mistaken my playroom for the bathroom and my favorite toy for a toilet.Thankfully, his eyes were closed in what I can only assume was rapture at the long awaited release of his swollen bladder and I could save him the embarrassment of turning to see my wide eyed expression as I stood in the doorway in my yellow jammies. I quickly shut off the light and hurried back to the safety of my bed where I lay sleepless and sobbing until my mom's beloved cucoo clock chirped the hour of 4. No more adventures for Barbie.
I've never mentioned this particular memory to my father or in his presence, but it has haunted me to this day. Until that moment, my father had been my hero. Tall and rugged, standing in the field on my grandparents' North Carolina farm wiping sweat from his bald brow as he bent to pick an ear of corn and hand it to me fresh from the stalk so that I could bite into it's juicy sweetness, he had been, to my young mind, the perfect image of a real man. And in one life altering moment, that image was shattered.
Over the years our relationship grew more and more distant and sometimes, on the rare occasions when we did interact, hostile. If he had an opinion, I disagreed with it. If he fought with my mother, I always took her side. No one questioned the reasons for this behavior. It was just the way things were.
And now, as he lies in bed weak to the point of exhaustion, unable to work or even enjoy his favorite pastime of fishing, I find myself regretting so many things that I've said and done (such as the time I called him a pompous, overbearing, heartless, militarized bastard with a gun fetish and the overwhelming need to prove his manhood by hunting small defensless creatures when he returned from a hunting trip with several dead bunny rabbits slung over his shoulder. In my defense on this one, he had also returned to the news of my untimely pregnancy at the tender age of 17 and his first response had been to tell me to get an abortion) and lingering on the pleasant memories (such as the time, the same year as the Barbie camper incident, when he actually took me along for one of his shows and, halfway through the final set, pulled me up on stage to sing Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue", thus birthing a love for music and singing that I carry with me to this day).
Over the years I've seen my father to be many things. He's been a hero (serving his country in Vietnam and returning home only to discover that a part of him remained in those dense jungles), he's been a drunk, he's been an adulterer, a liar, and a hero again (when one of my numerous boyfriends broke down my door in a jealous rage and tried to beat the hell out of me as I crouched holding my infant son). But now I see my father to be something I've never seen him to be before...weak and helpless and at the mercy of a disease that's quickly draining the life from his 62 year old body. And with this realization, a thought occurs to me.
No matter what else this man has been, he is, first and foremost, my father. He gave me the gift of life and now I'm watching his be stolen from him. I must stand by helpless to rescue him the way he rescued me when that boyfriend was pummeling my exposed back with punches as I hunched over my son in a protective pose. And I'm sad. Not just sad, but angry...angry at what life stole from me in that one moment when the warm liquid hit the surface of my favorite toy, angry at what I stole from myself as I cursed him for something I truly believe he was too drunk to even remember doing, and angry at the cancer that's eating away at the body of the strongest man I've ever known.
No, I'm not "saintifying" him, as my dearest Kyle so aptly put it, but rather I'm finally taking the time to see the good with the bad. Yes, my father may be a prick, but he's my father...and I will always love him for that if for no other reason.
Don't wait until someone dies to see the duality of who they are. Many times even the most prickish of bastards holds some kernel of goodness inside. For my Dad it was the sparkle in his eye as he baited my hook for me because I refused to puncture the skin of the helpless earthworm on my own and the proud grin and chuckle he emitted when, on my first cast, I caught a 3 pound catfish and reeled it in all by myself. To his credit, although it took me begging and gazing up at him with tears in my young eyes, he threw the catfish back, foregoing one of his favorite meals. He ended up eating baked beans and corn on the cob with a cheese sandwich instead of fried catfish...all for the love of his daughter.
No one is perfect. Not even our heroes. It's about time I realized that.
You cried at my wedding, Daddy, and I had never seen you cry before...had nearly thought you incapable of the emotion it takes to do that. I watched the tears stream down your face as you danced with me and that time the look of pain on your face wasn't from my feet being on top of yours. Looking back, I think maybe it was because they weren't.
That was six years ago, and we haven't danced since. Dance with me now, Daddy. Twirl me around as if I'm as weightless as a feather until the music runs out and give me butterfly kisses...one last time...
And I wrote this after returning home from his funeral:
Yeah I'm back...it's been a long time I know but I've had some things to work out in my life and it hasn't been easy to put them into words. Bear with me because, like childbirth, this may be painful as this post spews forth from my proverbial womb, tearing and scratching at my tired flesh. Next time, again as in childbirth, I'm certain it will be easier, but for now, I'm not looking forward to writing this...
First of all, I must share that at 9:32 AM on the morning of August 12th, 2005 my father, William Harvey Godfrey, died at home in Sanford North Carolina of complications stemming from prostate cancer. Attending him at his bedside were his daughter (that's me) and two grandchildren, his youngest brother Eddie, Eddie's wife Theresa, and William's longtime companion Rhonda. Yes, dear readers, it happened. My father survived three tours in Nam, a tree falling on him (crushing his right leg, fracturing three ribs and two vertebrae in his back, and collapsing a lung), and raising me...only to have his life ripped from him by a disease that caused his body to whither away slowly and painfully while his mind remained aware. He wasn't the first loved one to die of this illness and, if family history has anything to do with it, he won't be the last...but he was the most important.
Since that day I've spent alot of time searching my soul for answers. And now, the why and the how no longer matter. What matters is that it happened.
That morning I awakened at 8:45 AM having slept in after spending two monotonous days on the road to N.C. to be there for him. Per my usual routine, I immediately went outside and lit up a cigarette. As I sat puffing away and watching the rays of morning sun peek through the trees behind my Uncle Eddie's guest house, tears filled my eyes. This was going to be the day and I knew it. I had known it the evening before when I walked through the door, sat down my suitcases, and taken his skeletal transparant hand. (Yes I said transparant...unless you've been that close to someone at the end of their life you have no idea what it is like. You can nearly look through their skin and see the muscles and veins working beneath it...you can hear every heartbeat, sense every breath...feel the clockwork miracle that is life slowly tick to an end. There is a humming in the air, as of some ancient machinery that is running down, all the power drained from it's batteries.) I finished my first cigarette and lit another from the butt, not wanting to go inside yet...unable to face what I knew was coming and not wanting everyone inside to see the tears that I couldn't hold back. By the time I was able to gather enough courage to go to his bedside, Eddie and Theresa were there praying over him, bibles in hand. I shut out their pleas to a God who isn't mine and silently pleaded to myself...please take him...please end this madness, this pain, this abomination, this affront to all that life should be. I stroked his forehead, caressing a bruise there left from a fall he had taken the week before in the hospital after his legs had become too weak to hold him. This was someone who had given me life...who had picked me up when I fell...who had, in his own way, influenced everything I was ever to be...lying naked beneath a sheet because he had soiled himself and no one had bothered to redress him. His eyes, glassy and clouded, looked up at me unseeing and I whispered to him that it was alright if he wanted to let go...if he could no longer stand the pain...if he had to leave me. I wouldn't be angry or hurt. I would understand. I leaned down and kissed his forehead, telling him one last time that I loved him. For a second, his hand tightened around mine before his head turned slowly toward the ceiling and one last breath escaped his lips.
There was a long, agonizing moment of silence. The hum I had sensed the evening before was gone. The gears were no longer grinding. The machinery, rusty and old and unrepaired had finally come to a stop. I looked toward the door to the room where my children lay sleeping, unsure if I should wake them and allow them to see their grandfather like this or wait until after the hearse had come to take him. Eddie cried out, took my father's other hand, and began to cry. Theresa ran to the phone to call the hospice nurse. I just stood there watching as all the activity took place around me. As nurses came, pronounced him dead, and cleaned up the body. Finally, before they could take him away, I woke my children and allowed them a moment with him. Standing there, watching my daughter cry and kiss his cold cheek, watching my son shuffle his feet and stare at the empty shell he had once called Grampy, I suddenly felt the world spinning around me, my lungs felt constricted, I could no longer catch my breath. I fumbled with the doorknob, threw the door open, ran into the yard, looked to the sky, and cried out. There were no words..only the high, keen, screeching sound of anguish...of something important coming to an end before it should have. In that cry was everything I had always wanted to say to him and had never been able to...everything he had ever taught me...and everything I had never learned. I dropped to the ground and tore handfuls of grass from the soft earth, holding them in my open palm and watching as the wind carried them away.
Everything moved quickly after that. Family arrived bearing huge platters of food that went largly uneaten. Old friends stopped by to give their condolences. I smoked cigarette after cigarette until I finally had to send Greg into town to buy more. I watched my children play with cousins they had never met before now, thinking to myself how Dad would have liked to have seen this...the family all come together as one despite all of our differences. My soul ached.
Driving home after the funeral, Greg silent and graven behind the wheel of his truck, my daughter sitting ashen faced in the backseat clutching the flag given her at the funeral after the 21 gun salute beside her brother who, for once in his life sat quietly watching the trees and mountains go by outside his window, all I could think about was the fact that it was over. The people from the hospice had come to pick up the oxygen tanks and his hospital bed. They had flushed his leftover medication down the toilet like some final offering. I stared at mt wrist where I had worn his favorite watch since Rhonda had emerged from the back bedroom the morning of his death and handed it to me. After we die there is so little left of us. A handful of trinkets, a few drawers full of clothes, some spent shotgun shells from the 21 gun salute at the funeral in he bottom of a purse, a few pictures tucked away in a photo album. It's almost as if we had never lived at all. My father had become just a memory to all of us who knew him. A gleam of sunlight on a bald head, a flash of slightly crooked white teeth in a smile, a voice on the 45 record album I keep in my closet (a recording of a song dedicated to my mother the day they were married).
In the end that's all we are. Someday my children will make this drive with their own offspring. I wonder what they will be clutching in their arms...what they will have stuffed into the bottom of purses and pockets. I hope it's something good.
Thank you, Daddy. You've left behind more than a box of clothes and momentos. You are a part of each of us. I see you in my son's eyes as he jumps playfully into a pile of leaves I've just raked. I see you in my daughter's stubborn concentration as she sits hunched over her math book after dinner every night. I hear you in her voice as she sings along with the radio. I feel you all around me...in the air I breathe, in the earth I walk upon, in every decision I make and every road I travel. You will not be forgotten.
I love you...
Now, stand by for the latest burst of emotion...coming soon to a blog near you.
