My dad is old, much older than his 61 years. He lived hard when he was independent, and two decades of supervised living has slowly eroded his autonomy and independence.
About a week ago, my aunt and I had a conversation with him about his kidney health - he has stage 4 renal disease, and will soon need dialysis. I had broken the news to him a couple days before, and was surprised how much it had affected him and his girlfriend.
He enjoyed himself tonight. He ate lots of sashimi, fried salmon skin, saba shioyaki, and ribeye steak. He even had room for some cheesecake.
Still, I felt a little depressed. Across from him sat his sister, who has borne the lion's share of his administrative health maintenance, a responsibility I may, fairly soon, receive. Next to her sat their brother, the successful engineer, the one who didn't lose his career from mental illness, but still struggling to get enough hours at his current company.
It might just be me. But at all of these gatherings, I catch wisps of a wake for the living, a whispered elegy to a man who once was.
I have long thought that, when the time came, when he faced a decline from which there was no foreseeable exit, I would tell him, with as much heart and dignity as I could muster, the poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. It's a poem that has stuck with me ever since I read it in high school and tied it to my father.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
But then I thought again, and wondered whether I was really the one who needed to hear these words. My father is frail, but he loves life. He enjoys time with his girlfriend - he always, always, found a girlfriend wherever he went. He loves good food. He loves a smoke after meals. Maybe I wish him to be more curious about the world, more curious about my life, my current problems, or anything at all. But maybe he's exhausted the self-examination, and is happy living as he does.
I don't want to romanticize his life. He is pretty much wheel-chair bound. He has Parkinson's disease, and had a stroke last year. He takes about half a dozen antipsychotic medications, and another half dozen pills related to his various health issues. He needs help going to the bathroom. He's sick of chicken and grilled cheese sandwiches at the group home. He lives with lots of crazy people. His girlfriend may have - and might continue to - steal his stuff and sell it for cigarette money. Sometimes he whines, sometimes he lies. Sometimes he manipulates people, especially women.
And yet, if it came down to it, I think he's a better man than I am, happier with less, more generous of spirit and open with his feelings. I don't even know if he's wise by design, or if living as much as he has, he simply learned to accept more. Maybe he wasn't given a choice.
He faced the news about his kidney problems more philosophically than I would've thought. And he agreed that he would fight, at least a little bit, if only because he loves his girlfriend.
I am not a wise man, or a good man, or a wild man. I am a grave man, with a heart already six feet under. That which I admire and love about my dad comes from the moments that he fights. That which I despise and hate about him comes from moments that he gives up. I can only conclude that my current extreme feelings of self-loathing stem from internal superego, out of control, unregulated, with all the fire of an old-school Protestant, but ultimately correct in its hatred of my generalized apathy and resignation.
I have known excuse factories and hated them. I have become such a factory. I don't really, really know how much of my depression is real and how much is fabricated, just as I don't really, really know how much of my father's behavior over my lifetime was really under his control.
Yet the will's somewhat--somewhat, too, the power--
And thus we half-men struggle.
- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto"
I cannot inspire the hearts and touch the souls of those I would reach by continuing to be a second-rate craftsman of excuses and resignation. To do this, I will have to leave the grave, or at least try and rage, because and in spite of immortality and ambition denied. In so doing, we save ourselves, and raise our sons and daughters.
At the end of dinner, I pulled my father from the car to the wheelchair. Yet as I listen now, it is he who is telling me to stand up.
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