The Things We Remember

The last words I ever said to my dad were something like, “I don’t want the next phone call I get about you to be someone telling me that you’re dead.” I had a feeling in my gut that it would be. The last two years of my dad’s life seemed surreal. The man who had raised me and my siblings was gone, just a shell of a man he used to be. This couldn’t be happening to us; he couldn’t be choosing death over being our father. Looking back now, I understand it wasn’t that simple. None of it was.

When I was around the age of ten my mom and dad sat me down in the living room on our very 90s, brown knit couch. They seemed a bit nervous and awkward, looking at me with serious yet soft expressions. My mom led the conversation, telling me how she got pregnant at 17 with a man who was my biological father, and that my dad had actually adopted me after they married when I was 4 years old. She showed me the adoption papers, which I barely glanced at, and asked if I had any questions about anything. To me, this meant absolutely nothing, this adoption nonsense. My dad was my dad; he was all I had ever known or cared to know. I ran off to do whatever I was doing before “the talk”, and we never really spoke about it again.

I know my response to this newfound knowledge probably isn’t typical of most children. Others might have felt like their entire reality was shattered, that they were lied to, had questions about the biological parent, but I didn’t experience any of that. My dad so wholly accepted me as his daughter that I felt like his own flesh and blood. Nothing changed when my sister or brother were born; I wasn’t treated any differently than they were. I was loved. And not to say by any means that my dad’s and my relationship was perfect. I was somewhat of a difficult child - headstrong, stubborn, sassy, opinionated, disobedient. By all means, my dad could’ve gotten quite sick of me, especially in my rebellious teen years. But, he never did.

For me, that makes my dad even more special. He chose to be my dad, through thick and thin, and I’m sure raising me was one of the biggest challenges he ever faced. Like I said, he wasn’t always perfect, and he didn’t always make the right decisions when it came to me, but he never stopped loving me. My mom says that when she and my dad first started dating, I was not happy about it and would express my displeasure by taking poop from my diaper and drawing pictures on the wall of her closet. We always laugh about that story, but it makes me wonder at how brave my dad must have been and how much he must have loved her to continue their relationship.

My dad was a quiet man, a “man of few words” as they say. He wasn’t shy or anything; he was just kind of reserved. When he did talk, he was funny and caring. Sometimes he would call us “McFly”, and I always thought that was so weird until I watched Back to the Future as an adult. He loved music and he had a big CD case he kept in his Ford F150. You could climb into his truck one day and hear alternative rock, the next day country music would be playing, and the next he’d be listening to Bob Marley. I largely credit my taste in music to him, and there are so many songs that remind me of him when they play, like anything from Death Cab for Cutie or Smashing Pumpkins.

Sundays you could find my dad in the living room, watching a golf tournament or a Nascar race for hours. I never understood how someone could be so enthralled by watching sports on TV like he was. Not that I didn’t like sports, but I much more enjoyed going to the games as a family. When the Atlanta Thrashers were still a thing, we would always go to the food court in the CNN center before the game and choose whatever place we wanted to eat, then walk over to the game at Phillips Arena. We would sit at the tippy top of the Braves stadium in the nosebleeds, cheering on Chipper Jones. Once we went to a Clemson game, my dad’s favorite college team because his dad had gone there, and there was this belligerently drunk guy being raucous and rude. My dad didn’t have a big temper, and laughed it off while telling the man to “Shut up!”.

It’s funny the things you remember about people, like how my dad always stroked his sideburns when he drove. Or how he would go on cleaning sprees, usually on the weekends, and would throw away anything in his tidying path - important or not.

I found out that my parents were getting divorced when I was in the military. I was completely blindsided and hadn’t known or realized that there were any problems at home due to my absence. At the time I didn’t know all the details, but my dad had been developing a drinking problem. My mom kept finding empty liquor bottles hidden in drawers. Once, he fell into a glass table, shattering it and sending glass flying everywhere. She didn’t trust him to drive my brother and sister after his driving became increasingly erratic. My mom knew she had to protect my siblings by leaving him. It was a very messy divorce. My dad lost all pretense and dove deep into his alcoholism, refusing to leave the house, cursing at my mom, smoking cigarettes in their bedroom, writing her nasty emails calling her every name in the book. He was hurt, lost, depressed, and dragging my family down with him. In his eyes, he was losing everything.

When the divorce was finalized my dad moved out of our home and into a rental house. For a while, he could pull it together enough to have my brother and sister over for visits. Eventually, he lost his job. My sister would drive my little brother over to my dad’s house on their scheduled weekends and bang on his door until she eventually gave up and drove back home. I called him over and over and over, leaving voicemail after voicemail, texting him until I, too, finally gave up.

It was around the November before my dad died that I got a call from my grandmama. She told me my dad had been in and out of the hospital, about 7 times, with pancreatitis and other issues related to his drinking. Our family had no idea because of my dad’s radio silence. I was shocked, and I remember asking her if I should come home right away. I could take emergency leave and be there the next week. She seemed like she almost wanted me to, but was unsure. I was getting out of the military the following May, so I decided I would deal with him then, when I would be free from my duties and could focus all of my attention on him. Little did I know that he didn’t have that kind of time.

It was after her phone call that I spoke to my dad for the last time. I called his hospital room, and asked him what the hell was going on? Why was he doing this? He was going to die if he didn’t stop. He just cried and cried, and said “I know.” I told him I loved him, I would be home soon, and I would make it all better. I had some grand plan to come home from the military, take my dad out of that rental house, lock him up in a basement, and make him stop drinking. I would make him detox, then slowly help him get his life back together, get a job, have a relationship with his kids again. Make him see that his life wasn’t over, that he had so much more left to live for. That we didn’t think any less of him; he could come back from all of the mistakes he made. We loved him for who he was, not for whatever life he had created and now felt like he failed. But I never got that chance.

I was in my bedroom when my mom called me, just a few months shy of leaving North Carolina and my military service and coming back to Georgia. She told me my dad was in the hospital, and he was in a coma. I needed to come home today; it wasn’t good. I was hyperventilating, in disbelief. It couldn’t be real. I was so close to coming home for good. This couldn’t be happening.

I flew home and my mom drove me straight to the hospital. My dad laid in his bed in the ICU, extremely bloated from alcoholism with tubes hooked up all over him. I touched his hand, talked to him, and cried. A young male nurse came into his room and very matter of factly told us he couldn’t hear us and likely wouldn’t wake up. I wanted to punch him in the face and scream at him to get out. He didn’t know my dad, how special he was. His life couldn’t be over.

The next day, the doctor performed the last tests to check whether or not my dad was brain dead. At some point someone had explained that he had come in with extreme alcohol intoxication, to the point of hallucination, and had had a stroke. I remember the doctor shooting cold water into my dad’s ear, and seeing nothing on the monitor for brain activity. I burst into tears. My mom ran in the room and hugged me. It was over.

We had two viewings for my dad. Many of my grandmama’s friends came to one, supporting her and being there for her. They were in the viewing room, and I said to my aunt Paula, “Why are they laughing?” I couldn’t fathom having any reason to laugh in that moment. After that day, I felt numb. I couldn’t cry anymore. I didn’t want it to be real.

Grief never gets easier. Just when I feel like so many years have passed, that I’m maybe not healed, but I’m better, I will miss my dad so much in a moment it will bring me to tears. My sister and I always say, “He was such a special person.” There was no one like him. I think about him when I look at her; she looks so much like him. When my little brother furrows his brow just like my dad did. On his birthday, December 21st, and on Father’s Day. On holidays, vacations, during life events, and even on normal days when something reminds me of him. I wish I could tell him, “Look what you’ve missed out on.” Big things, like my sister’s wedding, her becoming a mother and graduating nursing school. My brother graduating high school, his first job promotion, him going to seminary. Me graduating college. And little things, too, like my brother learning guitar, meeting my dogs, getting to know my husband. I wish I could call him and talk to him, get his advice or just ask how he is.

For a long time, I had a lot of guilt about not coming home that November. I think some small part of me, that little voice in your head that says “What if?”, still thinks that I could’ve made a difference in the outcome. I’ve been able to find more peace with that, but I don’t think that feeling will ever leave me.

When my sister and I were going through my dad’s things after he died, we came across some notes he had written in one of his attempts at rehabilitation. On one of the pages he had written in his neat, block handwriting, “Don’t take life so seriously.” We thought it was so ironic; if only my dad had taken his own advice! If only he had understood that his life wasn’t over after his divorce, that he had so much to live for still, that he could get better and still be here for all of us. Instead of drinking himself to death, he could have given rehab a real shot and gone back to being our dad.

I feel now that this phrase, however arbitrary, is how I try to live my life and treat my relationships. One moment you may think you have forever with someone you love, but that is never guaranteed. I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to hold grudges, and why I’m so quick to forgive. Why family and spending time with them is so important to me. I have a huge soft spot for them, and would do just about anything for them. That was the last lesson my dad inadvertently taught me, that nothing is so serious that you should compromise a relationship with someone you really love. I’ll never forget how he made me feel so wholly his, and how he loved me so much. I miss him all the time. My sister and I talk about our dad often, about his little quirks and funny stories about him. It definitely helps ease the loss. I try not to think about my dad in his last few years; that wasn’t who he was.

My dad was an adoptive and biological father. He taught me that you can choose your family, regardless of biology, and love someone unconditionally. He taught me how to drive and to love music. I see him in my siblings’ faces. I remember my dad as a loving, giving, quiet, funny, man. He made me feel safe and important. His life isn’t defined by its tragic end, but rather by the way he treated others. There are so many things I wish I could say to him today if I had the chance. For now, I’ll just write, “I love you, and don’t worry; I’m not taking life so seriously.”