Sealed in the Book of Life

If you didn't know, Yom Kippur is Monday after next. And if you didn't know, it's the Day of Atonement.

And I know you didn't know it's the day my father will find out whether, in the eyes of the transplant center, he merits a spot in the liver transplant pool.

When I wrote about him last he was "recuperating" at home; now, after a brief stint at his brother's house a couple of hours away, he's in the hospital, back in his hometown. He's in a bed in a building he's worked in since before I was born; caring for him are people who have known him as long as I've been alive. I reckon they're as much family to him as we are, at this point.

His house is packed up, what remains of his personal belongings (and those few things that are rightfully ours -- the giant box of family photographs, the odd surviving toy) boxed in the garage. Goodwill came for most of the furniture. His brother -- his seventy-plus-year-old brother -- did all this for him; the "angel" of a real estate agent helped coordinate things. The house goes on the market as soon as all the papers get signed. If he gets on the list, he'll have to stay in a hospital in another city; if not, I don't like to think about it. Hospice.

He won't be going back to that house, ever.

It was our house, all of ours; we all lived there before my parents got divorced, then my sisters and I and our mother after. When we left for the East Coast my dad moved in, and while our familiar furniture was mostly replaced with the crappy divorced-dad-apartment stuff, a few things stayed completely untouched: on my old bedroom wall, for example, a pencil rendering of John Lennon, a copied illustration from Faeries. Under the sink in the bathroom, last summer, I found a box of hair dye. I hadn't used Balsam Color (the cheapest! the cancer-iest!) since I was fourteen.

It used to be so beautiful, that house. It was sunny and bright and full of nooks and crannies for hide and seek; it had a beautiful yard and a treehouse/chicken coop and tire swings. There was a half-size tennis court in the backyard where we would rollerskate, bike, set off firecrackers, and where once, at my own birthday party, I gave myself a bona fide concussion during an ill-conceived relay race. It turned into a mausoleum as my dad left rooms untouched, let papers pile up in others, tidied -- or maybe just didn't have any stuff -- but never cleaned. It got so dusty I couldn't breathe, on my later visits back, and the curtains were always drawn. The glass got broken out of the lamp in the front yard, and three years later, it's still broken.

* * * *

I don't have a lot of patience with addicts. Having departed from the familial strategy of denial with a side of enabling, I find myself looking hard-hearted, mean even, when I say don't let him stay with you "just two weeks," don't give her money, don't bail that one out of jail again (yes, we've got quite a family history, and that's not even on my dad's side). I never believed any of the crap my dad said -- that he bought airline tickets to visit us and then had to cancel at the last minute because of "the flu", that he just had to taper off the steroids and then things would be "just like old times."

He wasn't drinking by that point, but the behavior was still in full effect. "Just like old times," as he was quite clearly in decompensated liver failure. As he was sitting there with yellow-gray skin, no longer eating.  "Sure, Dad," I told him, and hung up. And then called up his brother and told him the truth -- what my sisters and I had figured out and confirmed with my dad's doctors -- that things could go downhill, fast. That he was not competent to care for himself, even as he told us he had it "all under control."

Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is what happens when the liver craps out and stops removing toxins from the blood, poisoning your brain. (Okay, that's the Highlights Magazine version.) You get slurred speech, fuzzy thinking, clumsiness, disturbed sleep. You might, say, forget to eat (which you don't feel like doing anyway). You might forget to take your medication, and you might get really grouchy with the people trying to help.

It's hard to know where ingrained addict behavior, even independent of the addicting substance, leaves off and hepatic encephalopathy begins. For that matter, it's hard to know how much of it is just personality. But how much of an addict's personality is truly his own? How much of that person is the one you love, and how much of it is the net of mechanisms designed to protect the drinking and push away those meddlin' kids? Who wasn't interested in the new babies, the drinking Dad or the "real" one? I'd get calls from him that were morose, nonsensical, argued in a circle. Then I'd catch him sober and he'd sound like the Dad I remembered, telling funny stories, asking after the babies. Then he stopped sounding drunk and stared sounding...addled. Somewhere else. That was the HE.

So what's there? What's left of Dad? How much of it is him in the first place?

And how much longer do we have with what there is?

* * * *

Would it be easier if I didn't love him so danged much? Would it be any better if he were an awful person? He is human, and like most of us, boy, is he damaged, but he is also fundamentally good. Even when he wasn't together enough to remember our birthdays, he was providing, providing, providing. At his best he's hilarious, affectionate, silly, kind. Generous. Patient with small children.

That's the person I want back, just for a little bit; that's who I want my girls and niece and nephew to know. He played tea party with Sophia last summer, Sophia who was so overwhelmed with all the new people and he was so patient, he just waited for her to come to him and then -- wonders! -- she crawled up in his lap. They sipped imaginary tea. She remembers him, she wants to talk to him on the phone, but he can barely even talk to me for two minutes. If he stays in the hospital -- oh, if he never leaves it -- she won't get to see him again.

I'm going out to see him, as soon as I can manage it. As soon as I know where he'll be in two weeks (if he gets on the transplant list, he'll move to another city to wait for a new liver; if he doesn't he'll move to a facility of some sort near his brother).

So say a prayer, if you're the praying type. Think a healing thought, light a candle. Me, I pray that I get a chance to tell my dad, in person, so I can see he understands, that we know, we know all about it, we've always known everything -- and we have always loved him anyway.

Comments

[vhmprincess]

Please go - see your dad. tell him you love him. My dad died in 2001. We did NOT get along, but I was with him every second I could be between his lung cancer diagnosis (on dec. 27, 2000) and his death on Feb. 28, 2001. I wouldn't trade ONE SECOND. WE didn't get a long at all , but he loved me to pieces and I love(d) him.

[kate]

"Me, I pray that I get a chance to tell my dad, in person, so I can see he understands, that we know, we know all about it, we've always known everything -- and we have always loved him anyway."

Oh man. From one daughter of an alcoholic dad to another, this broke me open a little bit. Thinking of you and your family.

[Lisa]

Love you and Bill...let me know what you need.

[Lilian]

This is so heartbreaking... I'll be praying for him.

[L.]

Prayers and empathy to you from daughter of mentally ill mother.

[After Words]

Thinking of all of you.

[Meira]

I guess I never told you, but my dad got sick last March, possibly due to alcoholism, and I had to manage his care and clean out his house and get him into assisted living up here. He thought he was going to the ER for varicose veins, and he spent over a month in the hospital and never saw his apartment again. Emotionally, he was always shut down -- so I don't have the happy memories to deal with -- but I'm guessing a lot of our thoughts overlap. I'll 'pray' for you.

[Jill]

It amazes me how much we talk about the drug use of the younger generation, but are in denial about the older generation's addictions. I think I am the healthiest person in the family, and that is kind of scary.

Prayers being said for you and yours.

[gretchenosis]

thank you for writing this. now i can wrap myself in something tangible about it.

[emjaybee]

"Would it be easier if I didn't love him so danged much? Would it be any better if he were an awful person?"

Maybe. Maybe not. My heart goes out to you.

[AussieAndrea]

Oh Jo! This was so powerful.... Your ability to articulate the many, many different aspects of the situation with such clear-eyed compassion is, well, simply breathtaking.

I really hope that you and your Dad and family find a way through all of this that allows each of you to have what you need at the end of it. I will be thinking of you and yours.

[Sadie]

Jo, I've been there. (When your toddler innocently refers to red wine as "Nana Juice!" at Christmas dinner you know you've got... some issues).

Or when you can't phone home after 5pm because you won't be talking to the same person you would've been at 4. There's regular mom who's wonderful and marvelous and there's drunk mom who slurs her words and yells and won't remember the next day and doesn't notice if you hang up on her. It's so painful. So painful.

And at the same time--- human. I'm glad you're meeting him where he is, with compassion and empathy. My hope for you is glimpses of the father that's in there, somewhere, under all the garbage he's been pulling over himself all these years.

[Erin]

Such a brave post.
My father was an alcoholic and a drug addict.
He died when i was 14.
The last words i said to him were "Dad, just leave, just leave and don't bother coming back". It is the biggest regret of my life.

Thank you so much for sharing this.

[Jo]

Meira, I didn't know that. Gosh.

Thank you, everybody. It's amazing how the stories can be so similar, isn't it? And that things we thought of as quirks, or the province of our own particular brand of familial unfitness, are disease patterns, common and identifiable.

[Sarah]

So sorry.

[Jenn (dish)]

Oh geez, Jo. Definitely sending prayers your way. No matter the Monday outcome, it's going to be a tough road. I'll be keeping you close to heart.

[hearhoofbeats]

Oh, Jo. May the one who brings peace in the high heavens bring peace to you and to all Israel, and let us say, Amen.
The alcoholic in my life didn't live long enough to make the question of liver transplants anything but academic. But I feel you, for real.

[Menita]

The candle is lit, dear Jo.
Wish we were closer so I could help out some way.

[Kish]

I understand -- it's like being ripped apart by two very opposing forces.

Praying both you and your father find some peace.

[Tine]

What AussieAndrea said, exactly. Also, I am praying for you, in my heathenish way.

[parodie]

It's hard to see a person so tangled up in illness that it's hard to tell where the illness ends and the person begins. I've seen it. I'm praying for you, and I'll light a candle. Take care.

[Superla]

I'm holding your family in the light.

[Micaela]

I totally, totally get it. Different situation--Dad was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was a year old and I never lived with him--but, but, but, he was/is a part of my life and that relationship is so bittersweet. He's institutionalized, but I write him as often as I can and he occasionally calls. I think it's worth it to maintain the tenuous thread of familial love. He's hurt me, he's scared me, he's enraged me, he's blown my mind, but he's also encouraged me, loved me, taught me some things. Sigh.

[Brooke]

I'm sorry. I've also got the long and not so fun family history of addiction.

Do you think there is actually a chance for a transplant? My understanding is that they tend not to give livers to alcoholics. Understandably of course since there aren't really "extra" donated organs, but heartbreaking when it's the one thing that could save a loved one.

[hydrogeek]

I'll be praying for you and yours today. This hits too close to home to say much more, but know that you and your dad are in my thoughts.

[Anne]

I'm so sorry for what you're going through. I too am the daughter of an alcoholic father who chose to end his own life in 2007 after it became clear he would have to be institutionalized for his physical health problems. At that point I hadn't had any contact with him for nearly 25 years...

Unlike your father, however, mine was extremely violent toward our mother, and did not appear to care that his behavior was terrifying to his children. That, in a strange way, did help me, since the good memories I had of him were so outweighed by the bad. I had to take care of the arrangements after his death, being next of kin, and the best I was able to do as I spread his ashes was to tell him that I didn't hate him...

But still, I ache sometimes for the whithered and aborted life he chose, over us...

[Lesley]

I'm so sorry to hear about your dad. Good thoughts, prayers and hugs for you all.

[rachel kice]

tears, tears, tears. and I'll save the discussion for our glass of wine... A favorite moment of mine with your exceptional father:

I asked: Why did you ever move to Kansas, Mr. Peery?

He answered: I needed a change. I started in Texas and put a tortilla on my head. Then I headed North. The first time someone asked, "What's that?" I stayed.

[Meg]

Jo, I hope that your dad finds healing in some way, transplant or otherwise. Thinking of you.

[Celeste]

I'm so sorry. I let the silence go too long and then it was too late. You still have a chance to say what needs to be said. I hope that you can.

Sending you strength for whatever is to come.

[gretchenosis]

rachel! i love that story! that's very Bill....if anyone has any more, I'd love to hear.

[SCG]

I'm so very sorry. Thinking of you...

[Jo]

Rachel, Gretchen -- just so you know, Dad is referencing Ulysses, who carried an oar inland until somebody asked him what it was for.

Somehow that makes it even funnier.

[Slim]

Sniff.

I'm thinking of you.