... family sure can mess with your head.
First -- a two part disclaimer of sorts: I promise I'll put to rest these updates all about the after effects of my recent trip home very very shortly (maybe even today), and I apologize in advance but I have to write to process stuff, so feel free to pass this post by if you're not interested in being an observer in my therapy.
Second -- an apology: I didn't get to see nearly half of the people that I had wanted to in that short 48 hour turnaround in the area. Of course, I also wasn't exactly the best guest during that time -- I was very much in my own head and up one moment and down the next. So to Bonnie, Mrs. Woodward, Robin, Corey and Ben (whom I missed by just five minutes at his tattoo shop on Monday night, according to the porch people next door) -- here's to my next trip back home.
Third -- I don't think anything made me miss my puppy dog Demon more than this trip. I forgot how healing it can be to just come home from some kind of drama and be greeted by a creature that wants nothing more than to remind you that you are the most important person in the world and that they want nothing more than to make you happy and that the excitement of their whole being is that they are with you in that moment and that nothing else matters. To be clear, I love the cats (and good old fashioned human interaction as well) -- but the cats tend to look at you when you return as if to say: "What are you doing back so soon -- we thought you gave us this place?".
Fourth -- on the second day of my visit with my dying father in the nursing home, I was encouraged to review the photo albums that he painstakingly organized sometime in the last few years. He had written names in the margins in his aged handwriting (some he got right, and some I feel certain he noted mistakenly), and one picture of my mother caught my eye so much that I slipped it out of its sleeve -- only to discover the declaration that appears above. I"m not sure why I was so taken aback -- maybe the hint of emotion (hell, the word loved is even underlined) that I'd never seen in my four decades with this man ... or maybe the overall sense of "the one that got away" that seemed to contradict the relationships I had witnessed as a young child of divorce ... or maybe it was just that, for the first time and just maybe, I was able to see this old man as a human being who had regrets instead of the caricature he had basically become. [By the way, the front of that picture appears at the bottom of this post.]
Fifth -- something else strange happened in those final moments of the visit as well. I think I heard my biological clock ticking for the first time. And I mean that twofold -- in the way that turning 40 earlier in the year suddenly seemed so much more like a warning that I was now on the back end of life and not just the celebration of a certain passing of time that I had experienced ... but also in the way that I realized that I needed to get my house in order if I was ever to have kids of my own. I had always "planned" to emulate my father's breeding pattern and have my child (or children) when I was in my fifties as he did -- after finances were in order and relationships were prepared to handle it. Now I think I'm going to blink and 40 will be 50 and it will be time to call my progenic strategic bluff.
Finally -- and the capstone of my experience -- the visit ended and my bio-dad "walked" me out to the elevator (which consists of his shuffling his feet to make his wheelchair roll out to the hallway). Once I explained that I use a different elevator than he does to go to the cafeteria ... I said my goodbyes and headed down the hall. Having arranged this visit on the doctor's insistence as the cancer was rapidly spreading and as treatment options had all been dismissed due to his existing health condition, this was, for all intents and purposes, to be the last time that I saw this man (at least in this condition where he had any of his faculties about him). As I rounded the corner, I glanced back for one last look -- what I expected to be the image of him shuffling back to his room -- an image that I would keep with me. Instead, I found him in the same position as he had been -- and I suddenly became aware that he was watching me leave. And for the first time, I realized that this was a two way street. That father and son were both keenly aware that this was the end, and that this last time we locked eyes on each other was the close to this chapter of both of our lives. There were no words at this point -- just a nod of our heads -- just a last gesture of goodbye.
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