For the past 9 months I have been watching my father die slowly. Actually, I need to amend that. I have been watching my father die for the past 43 years. It feels good to finally say that out loud. It feels good to own where all of my mixed feelings have been based on for the past year.
My father is an alcoholic. There is nothing wrong with that per say, alcoholics are everywhere. And not all alcoholics are like my father. Or, more accurately, like my father was. My father did get sober when I was in my 20's, which is why I choose to not share stories about my childhood now. I am so protective against him being judged. Or I was.
I am known for saying that my fathers alcoholism is his story, and if he wants to share it he can. That is noble and on some level correct, but it creates a small problem for me. I never get to acknowledge my story. My experiences. My truth. Until now. I have spent nine months trying to resolve my feelings, trying to rationalize, justify, deny them...but they are what they are.
My father never meant to become an alcoholic. Nor, did he ever intend for his alcoholism to impact the world around him the way it did. Never mind that, he never intended for it to impact him the way it did.
My father drank. To the point that when I was five, I took a piece of poster board and made a calendar, four full weeks, and on that calendar I created a schedule to wean him off of booze. I drew little bottles, starting with 30, and worked him down to 1. It failed. When I was ten, I tried to walk home from Billerica to Spencer so that I did not have to get in a car with him, after my step mother told me he would be fine to drive even though he could not walk to the car on his own. When I was thirteen I was no longer allowed to be alone with him. And when I was twenty-one my grandmother called me for help because he was drunk and belligerent, and I told him that if he bought the gun I would buy the bullets because I could no longer watch him die slowly. He went to detox that day...it was not his first or his last, but it was the one that changed something for him. On the outside.
On the inside his body was waging war on the man that had abused it. He had developed cirrhosis, hepatitis, and COPD. These led to heart problems, diabetes, depression, and a plethora of other things. Those things are killing him now, which means, in effect, that his alcoholism is killing him now. And do not underestimate that sentence. He has been in a hospital or a nursing home for 7 of the past 9 months: in a coma twice, had two heart attacks, is in end stage liver disease, deemed inoperable for his 2/3 blocked aortic valve, has gone into congestive heart failure 3 times, has gone on insulin, has almost bled out internally, has had bands put in his esophagus, is 100% deaf in one ear, 90% deaf in the other ear, and has been on life support.
Not once in this time, through this situation, have I known how I feel. I have vacillated between rage and relief, fear and faith, joy and sadness. I have tried to defend and protect his rights as a patient while simultaneously resenting his not letting go. I have battled the desire to make his sickness about me by trying to keep the focus on him. I have avoided questions about his well being, while asking for prayers for his recovery...because I want him to recover...and resent him for it. I am so angry that he put himself here, and so sad for the man that is withering before my very eyes.
I am not sure that I am any closer to understanding myself in this situation. I do not know that there is a clean cut, black or white resolution to emotion. I do know that it is time to face the feelings so that they have an opportunity to heal and to become less powerful. Or at least, that is my hope.
