It's all been such a frightful dream

I'm gonna warn you, this blog will be all over the place, but I have to get all of this stuff out before I pull a WASP-y, middle-class implosion, i.e., a nervous breakdown...although a mental institution or the Betty Ford Clinic doesn't seem like such a bad idea right now.

My father is dying. Not in the "existential, we all start to die when we're born way," but in the "he has double pneumonia and a stomach infection and will not see the beginning of May kind of way." I can't even describe accurately what I am feeling right now, and no one really wants to know anyway. I mean, people ask how you are, but I don't think anyone wants me saying back, "My father has days to live. Other than that, I'm a little hungry," although I may start to respond that way just to see what happens.

He's been suffering in one way or another for over a year now, and I really do know that he will be in a better place. He won't be encumbered with one leg, he'll be swimming and fishing and eating shrimp in Heaven. I fully expect him to let me in on the best places to go when I join him (hopefully, later rather than sooner), and I still find myself angry. I'm not angry at him, or maybe I am a little, but I'm angry at the situation. He's never been to Birmingham to see my house and never will, and he'll never meet my child, should I have one, and tell them dirty jokes. It pisses me off that at 32, I have to adjust to how not to have a father, when so much of him is wrapped up in who I am.

But in less than a week, I've been through the stages of grief. I mean, I suppose I started them when he had his leg amputated, knowing the survival rate for that and someone on thrice-weekly dialysis, and it is somewhat of a relief to think that he won't be in hospitals anymore, relying on strangers for treatment and cowering at the hands of lab technicians and nurses he refers to as "The Scourge of Satan."

On a bright note, because I refuse to wallow. I can't, or I will not come back...I am going to impart to you some things my father taught me...in no particular order:

1. He taught me how to whistle...I think a motivating factor for this is that my grandmother once said "Women who whistle are common," and he rarely has ever missed an opportunity to bother her, but it's one of those things that you once you learn it, you don't "unlearn," and that's pretty damn cool.

2. He taught me to love the written word. My grandfather had a hand in that as well, but Daddy taught me to truly appreciate a poem like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and loves that I want to get my master's in English, as he did. We both give the literature categories on Jeopardy a sound thrashing, and that will always sustain me.

3. He taught me how to be a smart ass. Even at times like this, humor carries me through. I can be a serious person, but at heart, I live with sarcasm and snark. That came straight from him. I can remember vacations and conversations where my mother was utterly lost at what we were saying or laughing at, because she does not have the impudent gene. But, we do.

4. He taught me about Humphrey Bogart...and Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly and Jack Lemmon and Cool Hand Luke and Clark Gable and Dead Poets Society and how a movie can inhabit you and change your outlook on things. He was never happier when somehow he convinced East Mississippi Community College to let him teach a film class. I can't imagine any other junior/community college that teaches film, but he did, and more than a few people I knew that took his class said he made them look at movies differently. Granted, that was if he shut the hell up about the symbolism in the movie and which actor slept with which actress, but it was truly an unrivaled experience.

5. He taught me that daddies exist for the whims of daughters. When I was sick, he took my temperature 72 times a day, which is probably why I do that now, much to the chagrin of Smitty, and he gave me my meds and brought me juice and made me soup. I remember leaving toys everywhere in the den once, and Mama telling me to clean them up, to which I said, "Daddy will pick them up if I ask him nice." HA. And I don't think he ever liked anyone I dated, ever, until I met Smitty...which warms my heart presently, that he knows that I am happy and well loved.

My favorite story of all time involves his wanting me, at age 5 or so, to ask if I could be excused from the dinner table. I didn't want to. I was a stubborn kid (imagine), and I just thought if he were asking me, it seemed like something I didn't care to do. We literally stared each other down for 2 hours until my mom finally told him I had to take a bath and go to bed. I never ONCE asked, "May I be excused?"
The next morning, which was a Saturday, at about 7 a.m., I wandered in his room, tugged on the sheet, and said, "Daddy, may I be excused?" He grunted at me, but this is a story, like we all have, that has been repeated no less than 30 times since then, because it was a battle of stubborn wills. (Pssst...I won)

I'm starting to get a little weepy, so I don't think I can elaborate much more, except to say, he taught me how to fish, and I have a wicked casting arm, he introduced me to Paul Harvey, and frankly, when he died earlier this year, I thought very much about my dad, he told me to never go to bed mad, he thinks I'm the smartest person ever (he is rather insightful..), he called me "Lil' Monkey" growing up, which is why I have such an affinity for the simians, and we played the "After While, Crocodile, See You Later, Alligator, See You Soon, You Big Baboon-game, well into my early teens.

He made up words like "fermer kemp," which means an idiot, his closest friends are people he's known since he was in his teens, and I've spent time with one of them recently: it was like spending time with a more robust version of my dad, the same cheeky sense of humor and intelligence, and as Smitty pointed out, the same eyebrows. I had the pleasure of spending time with him and his friends when I was 17 and we went white-water canoeing on their old camp stomping grounds/water. That is an experience I will treasure for the rest of my life.

I had never canoed before, I was in the front (I know there's a water term for the front, but I can't remember) and he was in the back, which I do know is the stern, and we had gone all the way through the rapids without falling out until the end when he misjudged where to turn and we hit a tree. I went flying out into the water, and he ended up holding on the tree branch. I endeared myself to his friends when I said my ass hit one of the branches at Mach 3, and I remember thinking once I landed in the water and located the canoe, "Oh, no, where's Daddy?" and relief washing over me when I saw the determination on his face as he clung to a tree branch, the current, rushing around us...and he looked at me, grinning, and winked. I carry that with me a lot and suspect that will be a comforting memory in days to come.