He’s dead ... my father ... lifeless, hollow, dead.
My first experience with a therapist was at the age of 13. My father had just died from a harrowing seven-year battle with cancer, a battle I would ultimately come to recognize as one of the most significant and certainly defining moments of my young life. It would serve to be a catalyst, a key ingredient to the person I would become.
Silent, sober, glazed, I sunk into the worn velvet sofa, the tearstained domicile of heart wrenching human agony. The façade is calm; the only evidence of anguish would be saved for the petals of an innocent victim, a crimson poinsettia that methodically would become the lacerated outlet of my pain. I feel her sympathetic yet, clinical and analytical eyes summing me up. I don’t want to be here, I want reprieve, I want to melt into blueness of the sofa, blend into the flat, silent, inanimate walls, walls that have absorbed multitudes of heart wrenching epics of malaise.
… Hours earlier …
I’m in the room, the poem, “DON’T QUIT”, my father’s mantra, is taped to the dull beige wall above his bed, the edges are worn, it’s ripped a little from being moved from hospital wall to hospital wall through the years. The deafening respiratory wheezing is erratic yet constant; we’re drowning in this aching cesspool of disease. But it defines life is still present. It defines that my father is still alive, so we sit, we wait, we hold on to each breath. I have been here hour after hour, day after day, night after night for the better part of the last three months. In reality, I’ve been here for seven years, when not in the physical, fully in the emotional. The hospital is an all too familiar environment, oddly homey to all of us. The room is scattered with our life. A keyboard, magazines, photos, Dad’s guitar, a soapstone carving of a seal he’s crafted, all here, all in an attempt to feel any peace. The penthouse stairwell landing is a makeshift sleeping area that we fight for amongst the siblings. I generally lose because I am the youngest but it’s better than sleeping upright in the chair listening to that strained struggle for breath from my Dad or being removed from the doctors lounge for their impromptu midnight meetings. Doctors, nurses, porters, administration, housekeeping, parking attendants, patients, their families, everyone within that sphere, all of it is “home.”
Seven years prior we had been given the news. I remember the day. I was 6 years old. My mother was in the hospital room with my father and had, as I would later learn, just been given the “news” herself. As I waited in the dimly lit hallway, glancing around at the unfamiliar and sterile surroundings, I remember feeling both excited to see my Daddy again and a little nervous as to why we were in this strange place to begin with. Daddy had just been really tired and required some tests, whatever that meant. I had no concept of what I was about to hear.
“Your father has cancer”; those were the words. And then more words ... blah, blah, blah ... the words continued but few were as impacting as the word; “cancer.” “Can I catch it?” I asked. “No,” the response came. Hmm, Cancer, I wondered what that was. I looked over at Mom, her eyes were puffy, she had been crying, she was very sad. I was on one side of the bed, holding my Daddy’s hand, like I always did, he squeezed my little fingers, looked into my eyes and smiled at me. My mother was holding his other hand, small gasps escaping her lips, tear filled eyes. “Your Dad will be having some treatments to make the cancer go away,” they said. “He will be losing his hair” ... STOP, SCREECH, HAULT!!! I was 6 years old and instantly horrified! What did they mean, he’d be losing his hair, why is he losing his hair and where is it going? My Dad was going to be bald??? They continued, “It could come back in any color.” “Like pink, or purple or red or blue,” I quizzed, eyes wide with innocent apprehension. Their indulgent “sure” seemed to give me some small peace that I longed for at that moment but I knew, I knew by the look in their eyes and the strain in their voices something was wrong, very wrong. Their obligatory attempt to convince me made it undoubtedly obvious that my life would never be the same. I knew the hair didn’t matter, but was unable to comprehend the scope of the sadness of the reality that would become our life, my life.
He was given 30 days to live. My mother, bless her soul, was just 36, and would be left to raise a family of five alone. The course of my life from this moment forward would be altered forever. The subsequent seven years, cycles of 30 to 90 days to live, would prove to be an unimaginable journey ... fear, insecurity, rape, loneliness, lack of identity, rape, hardening, pain, rape ... yet, the brush strokes, and mediums were layered; opaque textures veiling a stark and sombre reality, the canvas appearing bright, a guise brimming with fun, friends and popularity.
Dreading the last buzzer of the day at school had become mainstay. What would I be going home to? I turned 7, 8, 9 … the years went on, some questions remained the same, some different. Would I be alone, would that old lady with the weeping mole be there again, or would I be shipped off to whoever would take me, knowing I may be with them for often more than a month. 10, 11, 12 … the pain continued … would my parents be home, would the chemo induced nightmare have Dad slumped over the porcelain, convulsing, heaving, regurgitating nothing, would he remember me today, would he get lost driving if he could even drive, would Mom be crying, she always cried, would the ambulance be backed up to the door with Dad crawling to the stretcher as a form of pride? 13 … would Mom and I survive?
He was dead. The excruciating sound had ceased. The agonizing gasps for life that accompanied each passing second for the past month stopped. That last breath of life had been taken, leaving a silent, still, deserted form laying there, my Dad ... dead.
I didn’t know it then, but I was now part of a new “Club,” a club that was, as I would come to find in later years, unlike any other. Neither prestigious, nor chic, but a “Club” nevertheless, a club that would give both a bearing and a direction into the person I would become, a club that opened so many open doors leading me into the lives of so many others.
