01.06.09
The very dregs.
What you see above is a representation of one of the things that totally sucked about 2008.
I hadn’t written about this previously, because quite honestly, it made me ill just to think about it, and also made me feel quite stupid to remember it. But, I guess it’s traditional to put the year to bed, and to make an attempt at purging the bad through recognizing it and letting it go.
On the very last trip I took to North Carolina in March, I had to have my entire apartment packed up and placed on a very large truck, a truck which would wend its way all over the U.S. (seriously – the next stop after NC was in New Jersey) before making its way to the West Coast. All of my furniture and nearly all of my possessions traveled thousands of miles over two or three weeks before reaching me here in Glendale.
It was incredibly surreal – I slept on an air mattress and ate takeout and snuggled with the cat and worked insane hours, and then the boxes arrived, and it would take me 3 or 4 more months before I would have a living room worth using, for all the boxes and moving block puzzle arranging of furniture. Anyway.
So on this last trip I signed many pieces of paper saying yes yes, you have my stuff, and it is numbered 1 through 1 billion, and I give you permission to hang on to all of my bedsheets and Tupperware and books for up to a month, no problem! and then I met with the car guy who put the Grand Prix on a big car truck, and I was staying with friends, and as I was packing up for the flight back to Burbank, I realized that one thing was missing: a small, slim metal tin with most of my DS games inside. The photograph above? Those are the empty cases for the ones I lost on an airplane. Somehow. Even though, through all of the flights I took from October to March, I made it home and back each time with all games and gadgets intact. This very last flight, I completely misplaced nearly twenty games, all with a significant amount of love and time put into them.
Even to this day, I can’t really think about my beloved Animal Crossing town, which was about two years old by that point and one of my biggest travel comforts while away from home. I know, feel free to laugh, but it really sucks. I miss my cat neighbor, Kabuki, something awful. I’ve since replaced a few of the games, but I can’t really bring myself to play them much. Newer games are alright.
So that was one thing that was a super-huge drag from last year. Sure, I’m lucky it wasn’t anything even more valuable, but it makes me mad and sad that I called both airports, filled out forms, and called the central lost and found depository in Texas several times, with no reports of the games being turned in. I am mad that I was not more responsible and aware, and it was a pretty big indicator of how burned out and exhausted and stressed I was getting with all the travel, the long hours, and (another) cross-country move.
And then I got laid off. Which, you know, sucked.
But the next thing that sucked is the thing that still sucks the very most. It is the thing that started at least a year and a half ago, and has been a frog-in-a-boiling-pot-of-water sort of suck.
My Dad is dying.
I haven’t wanted to really write about it publicly, because in so many ways the whole situation is just not my story to tell, it’s not about me, and it’s really just too sad and too awful and too much. But he’s my Dad, and it’s become a major portion of my waking thoughts, so I am putting pixel to screen and writing a few words about it.
He had a short series of small strokes, I guess, in the latter half of 2007. Mostly his voice was affected, but he remained positive and was taking advantage of his VA benefits to see about getting speech therapy to relearn various sounds that words make, and to re-pitch his speaking voice. It was quite a shock to get a phone call from him in December of that year to confirm our dinner plans, and hear the voice of a man in his 80′s speaking with my Dad’s speech patterns. Wobbly, frail, hoarse – almost unrecognizable. When I saw him, though, he was driving his car, he looked healthy, and beyond a few facial tics that appeared to be after-effects of the stroke(s), he was alright. His kiss on my cheek was a little motionless and awkward, but he was alright. Everything was going to be OK.
But as time went on, other things began to falter: his sense of balance, his fine motor skills. Once I moved to California, I tried to go out to see him when I could, which was not often, because I was still working insane hours, and we lived a not-insignificant distance from each other (quadrupled with L.A. traffic, naturally).
There were lots of little stories over the next few months that indicated that things were not improving for my Dad: some of them I heard second- or third-hand, and several others I witnessed myself. I would show up to spend time with him, and have his girlfriend explain the quickly-healing gash above his eye that he’d lost his balance yet again, and fallen forward against the edge of a table. I saw him lose his balance myself a few times, noting what the doctors had: his reaction did not include the instinctive throwing out of his arms to catch himself. He would simply fall. I began to guard him closely any time he got up to do anything or walk anywhere – it was imperative.
Eventually, Dad moved in with his girlfriend, and my brother and I helped as much as we could (mostly my brother) to tie up loose ends, gather furniture to be donated, and box the rest to bring over with Dad to her house so she could help take care of him. He was no longer able to really speak or emote at this point, and there were often pads of paper or portable dry-erase boards for him to use so he could communicate.
At first he was resistant to a cane or a walker, but came to depend on it, as he was simply not able to walk without falling. He began to have trouble swallowing, especially liquids. Doctors were initially hesistant?/reluctant?/unsure? about giving him a proper diagnosis, as the combination of rapidly attenuating symptoms did not seem to point to any one thing. They umbrella’d him for a long time, and then finally, there was a possible name for what he was going through: CBD – Corticobasal Degeneration.
At the end of October, my Dad was transferred from his girlfriend’s home in California to an assisted care facility in Texas, thanks to the Herculean efforts of my brother. It was a very emotional and screwed up situation in general, but suffice it to say, there was some enthusiasm for where Dad was placed and the care he would get.
Right before Christmas, my Dad had one of the worst falls he’d ever had. He was walking around with his walker, and he fell and hit his head so hard there was bleeding in his brain. Perversely, one of the things that saved him that day was the CBD itself – the brain atrophy he’d experienced up to that point left room for the blood, which thankfully stopped bleeding during his hospital stay.
However, the fall did a lot to further his condition – he was no longer able to walk on his own, or to sit up on his own. He also stopped eating, and continued showing absolutely no interest in television, movies, e-mailing, looking at cards and letters sent to him, etc. He lost even more weight than he’d lost up to that point. The last time I’d seen him in California, he was getting very bony already.
While there is certainly an observable pattern of decline and then plateauing with CBD patients, this last fall changed the landscape considerably.
After an emotional call with my brother, I flew out to Texas for a few days leading up to and including Christmas.
It is quite possible that this visit would be the last time I will ever get to see him.
And there is really no way to ever find the right words, or the right way to say them, even if we haven’t been close for so many years now, even if he can’t speak or write any words back to me. And even though his facial muscles can no longer make definitive expressions, his blue eyes said quite a lot as I told him things from my heart and told him stories and relayed stuff my Mom told me to tell him. I felt awkward and stupid and horrified. I only wanted to say the best things, but instead I stuttered and sometimes fell quiet, because I suddenly felt like the world’s floor had dropped out from under me, and nothing I could say would ever suffice. I forced myself to talk, and occasionally found things that made him laugh (a short gasp and moan) or cry (a moan, eyes filled with tears).
I don’t even know if it’s right that I am writing about this, but I think about him every single day, and I know that he is not plateauing at the moment, and he is only 64, and I just want peace for him and I hate that wishing peace for him means something horrible. This is horrible.
This is a mystery filled with rage and sadness and fear and love, and there is never a good way to tell a story like this. I love you, Dad, and I am so sorry that this horrible thing is happening. It’s fucking unfair, and I will never understand it.