Soundtrack meme: Father

Until his recent illness, my Dad has always been the life of the party. People who met him for the first time always called him "charming". (Meanwhile they always called my mother "serene" ... so much so that she once threatened to run amok if anybody else ever called her serene. Didn't stop them.) Whenever there was a conversation going on within earshot -- between anyone, about anything -- my father invited himself into the middle of it and ended up dominating it. You can probably tell where I inherit my tendency to talk too much.

The thing is that this can be charming at first, but it wears on you. After a while you start to wish he would go away, or at least shut up when he doesn't know anything about the topic at hand. He doesn't, though. He's not good at those things. And he can't tell when his input has become wearying. Moreover, he reacts very badly if you try to tell him so. Either he contradicts you and offers to prove his point, or he decides that you hate him personally for some inexplicable reason ... probably because you are a malevolent asshole who should be written off as a permanent enemy. Welcome to narcissism.

Anyway, it occurred to me a couple days ago that in some respects this song is perfect for him. Not in all respects, of course: it's written about a woman, for example, and she flashes a lot more money and fashion than my father ever had at his command. But the spotlight? The front page? Oh yeah.

Like all good caricature it exaggerates. But like all good caricature it captures an essential truth unforgettably. 

Before I forget, let me start off quoting a paragraph of rules:

The Rules:
Write a post about the soundtrack of your life. Please include somewhere in the body of the meme "This was started by Kyra (last refuge of the lonely housewife)"... I want to google to see how far and wide this meme travels.

"Big Shot" by Billy Joel

Well you went uptown riding in your limousine
With your fine Park Avenue clothes
You had the Dom Perignon in your hand
And the spoon up your nose
And when you wake up in the morning
With your head on fire
And your eyes too bloody to see
Go on and cry in your coffee
But don't come bitchin' to me

Because you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to open up your mouth
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
You know what everything's about
You had to have a white hot spotlight
You had to be a big shot last night

They were all impressed with your Halston dress
And the people that you knew at Elaine's
And the story of your latest success
Kept 'em so entertained
Aw but now you just can't remember
All the things you said
And you're not sure you want to know
I'll give you one hint, honey
You sure did put on a show

Yes, yes, you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to prove it to the crowd
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
You're so much fun to be around
You had to have the front page, bold type
You had to be a big shot last night

Well, it's no big sin to stick your two cents in
If you know when to leave it alone
But you went over the line
You couldn't see it was time to go home
No, no, no, no, no, no, you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to open up your mouth
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
So much fun to be around
You had to have a white hot spot light
You had to be a big shot last night

"Forgive your father"

Tuesday night I visited the UU Sangha, as usual. And I told the story about my father.

 

At the end, as we were all packing up, one of the women said, “Good luck with your dad!”

 

Then she added, “My uncle always used to say, You have to forgive your father; because if you don’t, who will?”

 

That almost sounds like saying, You have to forgive your father; because if you don’t, you can be damned sure nobody else will!  

 

Maybe that’s what she meant and maybe not. But either way I got a hollow chuckle out of it.

 

Jack Kornfield (or maybe it was Lily Tomlin) once defined forgiveness as “giving up any hope of having a better past”. In that sense, I suppose I have already forgiven him. I know that’s just how he is … I don’t expect any better of him … and I even realize that my father’s selfish and short-sighted behaviors injure himself more than they injure anybody else. I realize that he makes himself suffer terribly this way, and I try – when I can spare the attention – to have compassion for him over this.

 

But that doesn’t stop me from recognizing what he is. And it hasn’t yet stopped me from feeling irritated at him. Clearly I have a lot more spiritual progress to make ….

 

 

Selfish and shortsighted

My father spent last week in the hospital. Then on Saturday he moved to some kind of nursing care facility, because the hospital needed the bed and he really didn’t have to be in the ICU any more. But the doctor said he wouldn’t release my dad to go home unless my mother had some help. She can’t lift him by herself, and he might fall again.

 

The boys and I drove down to visit him on Sunday. He was weaker and thinner than I have ever seen him, and he drifted off to sleep at odd moments. Actually he slept a lot.

 

He clearly hated the facility where he was staying. He shared a room with a man who needed a breathing apparatus, and murmured that the noise of the apparatus made him want to kill the man. He complained about the food; when they brought him lunch he ate one small bite of the roast beef and then turned up his nose at it and instead ate the canned fruit and potatoes. Wait, … isn’t he diabetic? Isn’t it important for him to concentrate on protein and low glycemic foods instead of starch and sugared fruit? For that matter, didn’t he pointedly refuse the insulin shot they tried to give him just before lunch? Well yeah … but none of that seemed to matter. He just didn’t like the way they had prepared the roast beef, so that was that.

 

He fell asleep after his lunch so the boys and I went to get some lunch of our own. We came back, stayed with him for a little bit, and then he dozed off again. So we left. Brother and his girlfriend arrived later that night.

 

Monday night Brother called to tell me that they and my mother had signed him out of the care facility and taken him home. No, he hadn’t done any of the physical therapy he was supposed to do to get his strength back, but he was unhappy there so it was the right thing to do. I asked, Does Mother have any help with him? Yes, we are staying there for now to help out. And he’s so much happier here!

 

Well yes, I’m sure he’s happier to be in his own home. In an e-mail today, Brother told me how much better Father seemed, and it doesn’t surprise me. It’s even good news that he’s doing better … right? So why am I feeling so sour and curmudgeonly?

 

Not long ago … I feel like it was only a year, though I can’t remember for sure … my parents were thinking about moving into one of these facilities for old people where you get to live independently in your own apartment for as long as you can; but then when you get ill or infirm and need help, they offer you help. I have no idea what my mother thought of the place, because Father torpedoed the idea. There might even have been good reasons for torpedoing it – I don’t know. Everything has pros and cons. What I do know is that his reasons for rejecting the place were very bad reasons. His reasons were selfish and shortsighted. So far as I could tell, in fact, what he objected to was their no-smoking policy. Only my father doesn’t smoke. He won’t let other people smoke in his house. But if some clerk sitting behind a desk tells him that he’s not allowed to smoke, … why then, by God, he’s going to come home in a high dudgeon, drag out his pipe, and stuff it with the smelliest tobacco he can lay his hands on. Serves them right for daring to tell him what he can or can’t do!

 

Only … honestly … what the fuck? Do you really honestly care about this? Really?

 

Who knows? Maybe he cared and maybe not. Maybe he just wanted to preserve his independence and damn the consequences.

 

Only … gosh, it sure would be convenient now if they really had moved into this place. Then Mother wouldn’t have to look after him so closely. Then Brother and his girlfriend wouldn’t have to give up whatever else they might otherwise be doing (like holding jobs, just for instance) to wait hand and foot on Father. There would be a safety net to catch him.

 

But there isn’t, because he got indignant over some lowly clerk telling him he’s not allowed to do something he normally doesn’t give a shit about doing anyway.

 

I repeat that there might have been good reasons to reject moving into this community. I really don’t know enough about it. But I do know that my father’s stated reasons were selfish and shortsighted.

 

Of course, that’s just who he is. He’s spent his whole life being selfish and shortsighted … why expect him to change now? And in a sense I don’t. It’s just too bad, though, when the costs of his selfish decisions have to be paid by somebody else. By Mother and Brother and his girlfriend. Because they are – quite clearly – the ones who are now paying for my father’s unwillingness to think ahead, or to accept minor restrictions in order to buy major benefits.

 

And so I find myself disgruntled. Again.

 

This happens a lot when I think about my dad.

 

Sigh.

 

 

 

 

Vow to fail

"There is a wonderful aspect to the mindfulness trainings: they are actually impossible to keep! To refrain from harming others? What a profound practice! We receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings knowing that by doing so we are opening up to our own failure. We cannot fix the world; we cannot even fix our own life. By accepting failure we express our willingness to begin again, time after time. By recognizing failure we change, renew, adapt, listen, and grow. It is only by practicing without expectation of success that we can ever truly open to the world, to suffering and to joy. What extraordinary courage there is in risking losing what you know for the sake of the unknown; risking what you think you are capable of for the sake of your true capability! What profound freedom -- not having to get it right all the time, not having to live for the sake of appearance! By opening to our own failure, we open to the magnificence of the unknown, participating unconditionally, renewing our life."

-- Caitriona Reed, quoted in Thich Nhat Hanh, For a Future to be Possible, p. 15.

 

 

 

 

Father may be dying

My father may be dying.

 

I have not seen him yet. What follows is adapted almost entirely from e-mails from my mother.

 

A week ago Monday night, his heart doctor put him in the hospital for a few days. They had been trying for some time without success to get rid of the excess fluid in his body by giving him oral diuretics and the doctor said he needed to go into the hospital where they could administer some more potent diuretics by IV, and watch him closely. My mother added explicitly that it was not an emergency or life-threatening situation, and that he expected to be out in two or three days. But she added that he was pretty uncomfortable and would appreciate a phone call, however brief.

 

I think Brother went out to visit. ((He lives a lot closer than I do.) I called. In the space of a 5-10 minute call I inserted at least three jokes -- the only one I remember was when I asked him, "So, with all these diuretics: do you suppose this is your doctor's way of telling you to piss off?" He laughed and repeated it to my mother. Father and I get along a lot better when we can use humor to lubricate the gears.

 

He was discharged from the hospital on Thursday. During his stay in the hospital he had lost about 13 pounds (presumably all water) but the experience left him considerably weakened, tired and disoriented. That night my parents stayed in a nearby hotel, as the electric company was to be doing some major repairs/upgrades in their neighborhood and they wanted to be somewhere with power.

 

But that night Father had a bad fall in the bathroom. He hit his coccyx and his head pretty hard.  My mother called the main desk and a big burly security guy came to help him into bed. His GP saw nothing wrong the next day, but Father still had considerable pain in his hips, ribs and coccyx. The doctor took no X-rays.

 

They spent the weekend trying to get back to normal. Father was so tired and weak he could barely walk across the room with the aid of a walker. Yesterday, Monday, he had two doctor's appointments: one at 12:30 with the cardiologist and one at 2:15 with the kidney doctor. The day was extremely hot -- maybe up to 106. They borrowed wheelchairs at both doctors' offices to get him into the offices for his appointments. The cardiologist noted that he had lost a lot of water, but his blood pressure was dangerously low. Rather than send Father back to the hospital, which he dreaded, the doctor changed some of his medications to eliminate the ones that were driving the blood pressure down. The kidney doctor observed the same thing. His pressure was even lower there. My mother though it might have something to do with his not having eaten since 9:30 AM, or with the heat of the day and the regimen of appointments. But his blood sugar was good. Anyway, the two doctors consulted by phone and agreed on the changes in medications.

 

When they got home, Father was unable to get out of the car and walk into the house, even with the help of the walker. (They are trying to get him a wheelchair, but the usual Medicare red tape is taking time.) He ended up on the ground by the side of the car, and my mother was unable to pick him up. So she called 911. They came and carried him into the house, then took various vital signs again and informed us that his blood pressure was too low and they needed to take him to the emergency room. My mother tried to protest, but they finally persuaded him so off he went. They put him in a bed and on an IV for fluids. The doctor in charge said that he needed to stay overnight for observation, but that he would go home today. They took a CAT scan and X-rays. He was bitterly cold in the ER so my mother fetched him a wool blanket from home. She waited till 11:00 to hear the results of the tests, and to find out which room he would be put in, but nobody came. So she went home to sleep.

 

This morning my mother called the hospital and was told that he is now in the ICU. They found that he had a blood infection, and started tests to find out where it came from. They are giving him antibiotics. The doctor told her to think about whether they should use "extreme measures." She spoke to Father briefly on the phone and he sounded very tired and confused.

 

I keep hoping to hear more about the prognosis. Son 1 and Son 2 are staying with me this week. Do I take tomorrow off work so the three of us can drive the two or three hours (each way) to see him? It sounds like it might be a good idea. I'd like to know more, so that the decision becomes obvious.

 

But maybe -- really -- it already is.