My Father, Myself

This time a week ago, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room in North Carolina while a doctor rearranged my father’s plumbing. It’s been a faulty system for at least three years now, the victim of rampaging prostate cancer that got away from the doctors almost a decade ago. Since then, it’s been a game of medical chess, a series of moves calculated to outsmart the cellular pawns of a clever and malicious disease. And through it all, my father has chosen to remain remarkably optimistic and upbeat, refusing to give up despite numerous setbacks that had us all bracing for the big good-bye.

“Your father is incredible,” the urologist confirmed last Friday morning in the hallway outside the exam room where he’d just seen Dad. “For every one like him, there are 15 others who would’ve been dead two or three years ago.”

“He’s an incredible person,” I agreed, working to keep my voice even.

Half an hour later, after several unsuccessful attempts to replace the plastic tubing that now substitutes for Dad’s broken plumbing, the doctor looked me straight in the eye. “You came at the right time,” he said.

He went on to explain that since he couldn’t fix the problem in the office, we’d have to reconvene at the hospital—the sooner the better—where he’d attempt a surgical solution. He left the room then to cue his nurses. My father’s wife was already out making phone calls. Daddy and I were alone. He seemed worn out.

“It doesn’t look good, honey,” he said. “There’s something going on in there, some kind of obstruction.”

I reached out and squeezed his knee, tried to look reassuring, tried to keep my eyes from filling. But his knee was all bones. He’s five eleven, “six foot when I’m scared,” he used to joke, and down to 162 pounds. I wondered if he was feeling that extra inch now. But then I couldn’t remember ever in my 54 years seeing my father afraid. Sad, for sure. Frustrated. Weary even. But afraid? I don’t think so. He must’ve hidden it well.

He was Hollywood handsome once, tall and lean, with lush dark hair, blue eyes and a perfect smile. He could hike through the mountains all day in a pair of rubber waders, fly rod in hand, searching for the perfect hole on the perfect trout stream, and not even be disappointed if he didn’t catch anything. Just being out in the woods was what mattered to him.

It’s hard to see him these days, shuffling along in his bathrobe behind a walker, the catheter tube looping down his leg. His hair is white now, thin and fuzzy from chemo. Except for doctor’s appointments, he hardly leaves the house, hardly even gets out of bed except for a late breakfast at the kitchen table or to watch a little T.V. from the comfort of a living room rocker, an afghan spread across his lap, trailing to the floor.

When he checked into the surgery clinic last Friday, I wedged myself into the tiny admissions office behind him and my step-mother while they answered questions and he signed papers. The admitting clerk was a young woman with fiercely teased and shingled hair, brassy blonde in front, orange red behind, topped off by a darker line of roots showing through a center part. She kicked things off by addressing Dad as “sweetheart.”

I wanted to stop her right then and there. Wanted to say, excuse me, let me introduce you to my father. Despite what you seem to think, he is not a child. Not four, but 84 years old, and once upon a time, long before you were born, he ran this city. He is every bit that same person sitting here right now, with the same intelligence, the same capabilities and the same sensibilities, and you should address him with respect.”

I wanted to say that, but another part of me was desperately channeling the Dali Lama, who says in every circumstance of life you have the option of being kind, so be kind, be kind, be kind. And still another part of me, a long-ago part that comes surging back whenever I return to the green trees and red bricks of my hometown, was trying to remind me of something I’ve known since way back then: “Sandra, this is the South. People say those sorts of things here; they don’t mean anything by it.”

I knew I should let it go; two out of three voices agreed. But that third part of me was just too angry, too insulted for my father’s sake. Hadn’t he suffered enough without having to endure the condescension of some tacky redneck tramp? I couldn’t let it go. I had to stand up for him.

So after I’d helped Dad and his wife shuffle out of the tiny room and off to the elevators on their way to the surgical floor, I told them I’d be right there and let the door close behind them. Then I turned back to the admissions clerk, Joyce, her name tag told me.

“Joyce,” I said, trying to keep my voice low and kind enough to placate the Dali Lama. “You called him ‘sweetheart’. That’s so demeaning to an elderly patient. He’s not a toddler.”

Joyce stood behind her desk with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her blue medical smock and smiled at me. “Bitch,” she was probably thinking, but she just kept on smiling. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize. I’ll try to do better.” I rambled on for another 30 seconds or so, repeating myself until she repeated her apology, which made me feel embarrassed enough to finally make an awkward exit.

Upstairs I found Dad and his wife and reported that I’d had a little talk with our disrespectful admissions clerk. My father looked confused.

“Why?” my step-mother asked for both of them.

“She called him sweetheart. It’s disrespectful.”

My step-mother looked confused. “Well, people say that,” she said. “Nobody thinks anything of it.”

It’s taken me a week, but I realize now it wasn’t my father’s honor I felt so compelled to protect. It was me. I’m losing him, and I know it. I didn’t want to be reminded, especially not by a stranger with atrocious hair, that my father, my strong, handsome, incredible father, while still all of that, is also old and sick and feeble and dying. Because when I allow myself to think of life without him, I am adrift in sorrow.