TATER

I am suffering from lethargy and the unwillingness to take on the battle I know that I must now face again.  As I sit and type out guilt, to folks I feel I know but haven’t met, I am kept company by my pup Mooshu, who is insistent that I stop this computer nonsense NOW, and throw her ball for her.  It has been awhile since my last confession, and the persistence of my little friend makes me want to walk away and play.

Walking away is a common thread in my life.  Avoidance of emotional baggage at any cost.  Lately the suitcase I need to pawn is my father.  I must visit the folks again next weekend, must walk into the fog of my father’s existence, and put on a happy, unconcerned face.  I must walk up to him, hug him, and tell him I love him.  I will think he looks okay, until I get close and go in for the hug, only to smell two or three days worth of body odor rising up to repel me.  I will suck in my breath, I will breath through my mouth, I will say the reassuring utterances which sooth the look of fear and shame in his eyes.  He is on medication which eradicates his sense of smell, and he is too far erased by disease to remember the daily acts of hygiene we take for granted as rote daily routine.

I will watch the shuffle steps and the confusion, as he wanders the house looking for my mother.  I will hear him ask me the same question over and over and over again.  I will feel guilty for feeling annoyed.  Guilty, ungrateful, selfish, and short on compassion.  He will follow me around HIS castle, and I will patiently answer him as he asks ‘just what I think I am doing with____’  Fill in the blank.  I must attend to his home, fix the washing machine for my mother so it no longer wobbles and bangs about her utility room like a drunken whore.  I will breathe through my mouth to avoid feeling shame at my own repugnance of this man I love.  I will endure his attempts to tell me how to do these tasks I must do, endure his constant criticisms as his blood pressure rises at my transgression of his role of Lord.  He will insist on helping me with every little thing, and constantly forget what we are setting out to accomplish.

His dog will whine anxiously and circle me, licking me and offering her belly.  She will plead with me in her blue merle eyes to rescue her papa from this stupor, to take her away from this master that is becoming a stranger.  She senses his illness, and attempts to herd him to his easy chair incessantly.  She has taken to peeing in the basement when mom is away from the house for groceries, or odds and ends, and dad forgets she needs to go out.  She shows me her shame as I mop up the mess, and I pat her and tell her its alright, I understand her dilemma.  I wonder how soon it will be before I will have to start performing this chore on my dad?

I will answer his questions, I will smile for him.  I will extend my love to cloudy recollection, and I will accept his rebukes and consternation of my trespass.  I will listen to him recount my childhood tales still on call in his mind, and I will listen to him reconstruct our history.  He was the perfect father, I the recalcitrant and stubborn son.  In his reconstruction I am grounded and not strapped, chided but not ridiculed,  Bragged about, not rundown to friends and family.  I will feel angry, and shamed at my inability to just turn the other cheek to this poor sick soul.  The memories of fear, and sadness will come flooding back, to be rebuffed by the parts of me that have successfully moved on from all this nonsense.  I will become a child again, only  to snap out of it long enough to laugh at the futility of my harbored hurts.

I will stress to my mother the need for respite care, and she will agree with me again, and promptly dismiss it from her to do list.  I will hold her while she sobs in my arms, and tell her I am there for her, that all of us are available to help her through this torment and grief.  She will thank me, and then won’t tell me what she needs me to do for her.  I have been reduced to snooping about their house sniffing out all the entropy that has occurred, and jotting down notes to remind myself.

I will start to drive back home, into a life, where I support my family, where I am needed and counted on to keep the wheels turning.  I will be forced to pull off onto the shoulder and relinquish the stress and heartache with sobs and wails the likes of which I’ve never known.

I will do all this and stay sober.  I will do all this and not seek out the powders, pills and herbs which soften the edges and push away the hurt.  I will face this head on and power through, cause that’s my only alternative.

But I have a confession to make, and I feel weak.  I picked up tobacco again.  cigarettes.  I broke down and bought a fucking pack of cigarettes, and it was off to the races again.  Six years of kicking the habit out the window with one drag.  It’s not a drink, and not my drug of choice, but will kill me just as assuredly.  So now its off to a meeting, to address this backsliding bullshit, and pick up another white chip.  And I am sorry.