EroticOrogeny
Upthrust
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2009
- Posts
- 2,266
I had an odd conversation with my father this weekend. I normally call my parents once a week (though sometimes I forget, or am out of town, or simply don't want to, and skip a week), and we have the what I expect is the usual for most people my age kind of conversation: How are you? Oh, that's good (or, that's too bad), Yes, M and I are fine, We'll see you in a couple/three/four weeks, You both be well, I love you.
This week was different. Dad seemed down about his health in a way he never has been before (or never has admitted to me before): His kidneys aren't doing well, so the doctor had him stop taking some drug and that made his angina much worse. Then (this is the weird part) he wanted to talk about where M and I would live when we retired (which should be in the next five years or so), and did the stock market problems bother us.
Are you moving to Friday Harbor? You both seem to like it there.
Well, we plan to live right were we are, since the damn house is paid for, and though the uncertain stock market is troubling, no, we don't think it completely dumps manure on our retirement plans, though it certainly is trying to.
So what is that about? Is he worried about us being around for my mother?
This has me all creeped out that my father is, imminently, dying. He might be, of course, as he's 84 and in none too good health, so it would be no big surprise if he did die, but on the other hand all of his three brothers lived (or live) into their 90s, as did his mother, and his father lived to be, I think, 86.
None of this is something that I've wanted to face. Probably like most guys, I have very complex feelings about my father—complex meaning that we never really talk (meaning, I suppose, I find it difficult or impossible to tell him, really tell him, how much he has meant to me and how much I love him).
And then ABC had go and to air that cry-fest end of Lost last night. Bastards.
Why, I guess, I quite liked this Senna Jawa poem. It seemed relevent to me, and timely.
OK, OK. Angst dump over.
Really.
Well, for the moment. Shit.
Very sorry to hear that. The death and dying of one's parents is always hard.
My father died when I was just 19, but he was in poor health for the preceding few years, less able to breath with his emphysema getting worse. Not only was I not to able to play ball with him, but unable to really talk with him about much during those times - he would get tired too easily. And I was upset with him for getting on me about my grades (a C in German was what he didn't like) and made be drop a SCUBA class I had almost completed. I sort of drifted into games that next semester (hadn't started drinking or drugging yet) - was it some sort of reaction? Much later I wonder if I could have been able to ask him some things about life that might have (perhaps) helped me out. No way of telling, but might have been some things I couldn't talk about with my mother or friends. He was just 49. I think being a nuclear chemist was a contributing factor. He worked on the Manhattan Project, and knowledge of radiation danger was virtually non-existent then - my undergrad Physics adviser told me of handling cm size cubes of plutonium with their fingers.
I was closer to my mother than my father. For some reason it seems like I and my younger sister were more like her, while my brother and the older of my sisters (I am the oldest child) were more like my father an many ways. Simple things like hair color, but also attitudes and personalities. At least I got a chance to talk with her when I was an adult. She used to write me little letter frequently, often just with little day-to-day things. Sh wrote less after I had been sober a while and got married - I asked her about this and she said she wasn't so worried about me then. She died of lung cancer at 73. They said she had 6 months or more and I was planning to visit with my wife and son, but she died 2 weeks after I learned. A friend at work and my AA group helped me thru my loss more than my wife did - think she was too busy with our son. At least she wasn't sick long, and both died in their sleep.
I remember comforting my wife over the death of her father. Not able to fly to Austria for his funeral, but I'm not sure if she wanted to go. I dread when her mother dies - I worry whenever there's a message from her sister on the answering machine.
I can identify with Senna's poem and hope you're hanging on OK.
I hope you haven't already gone as I will PM with my email address and how to find me on Facebook if you're into all that stuff. Be careful out there 
