My Father vs Death

This is the face I see when I close my eyes but the memory fades as I grow older, I yearn to hear his hearty laugh

Hospitals always bring me back to my teenage years, when my father became very ill until his eventual death at the young age of forty-two. Much of my teenage years consisted of lost opportunities that have grown into deep regrets weighing heavy on my heart and mind until this very day. The majority of my teenage memories regarding my father revolve around hospitals rather than key moments that most sons share with their fathers. Despite being a very emotional male with the gift of empathy what I managed to demonstrate in those days was my complete and utter lack of concern. I assert that I was selfish, cavalier and callous. I showed more concern towards inanimate objects, material things, than I did for him, my own father.

My father in perfect health

During my fifteenth year on this earth my father had suffered a stroke which robbed him of all his freedoms and abilities, many things that most of us take for granted, and eventually it robbed him of the will to live. So destructive was his stroke that upon regaining consciousness he was unable to speak or move and was plagued with hallucinations. The day it happened I remember friends of my parents picking me up from a potential girlfriend’s house and bringing me home in order to wait for any news from my mother. Strangely enough that same night while wasting time away on late night television waiting for news I discovered Jackie Chan before he was even on Hollywood’s radar. I don’t know if it was his effortless acrobatics or his ability to turn any situation into a comical one but he brought me comfort in a dark time and I've loved him ever since. Sitting in the dark watching Jackie tumble around, in the back of my mind I told myself that my father simply suffered another epilepsy attack, which was quite common for him.

Better days, a proud father and his loving son, look at my biceps and be impressed :P

My mother eventually called with news in the early morning, I don’t remember much of the conversation other than the fact that she would not be coming back home anytime soon. I don’t even remember where my sister was during this time. I didn't know it yet but my life was about to change forever, again. What I do remember was visiting him in the ICU for the first time. A friend of mine and his brother offered to drive me to the hospital. While we sat in the waiting room for a nurse to take us to him a feeling of dread permeated the air. When she arrived she warned me of what I was about to see and asked me not to cry in front of him given that the situation was most likely already difficult enough for him, she clearly didn’t know what she was asking of me. I nodded in agreement as she motioned me towards the door to the ICU, as I walked through to my immediate left was my father surrounded by machines, tubes, needles… and of course my mother; the latter being a constant in the following years. It was glaringly obvious that what was on display was but a shell of what remained of him, his eyes were full of mixed emotions. Rage entangled with fear, sadness drowning in confusion, hope strangled by despair, everything coming at me all at once in one look, the weight of it all was too much to bare and I crumbled under the pressure and did the one thing I was asked not to do, I broke down and cried.

Not only was he often sick but he was also accident prone, regardless he often had a smile

The road to partial recovery was long and hard, partial simply because the stroke was so severe it had incapacitated him in very permanent ways. He would never work again, he would never run again, and after a couple of years he would never breathe again. He spent three months at the hospital undergoing an extremely difficult rehabilitation and by his side through it all, encouraging him, comforting him and most importantly taking care of him was his wife. My mother was never too far from her husband in this extremely difficult time, it is beyond me how she found the energy to work full-time, take care of my sister and I as well as tend to her recovering husband. It is incomprehensible where she drew all her strength from during those difficult years, the will to be everywhere she was needed, the voluntary act of unrestrained selflessness combined with the tenderness to love us all beyond any measure of a doubt are qualities I have yet to find in anyone else. Her devotion to her family was the single biggest reason why women in my mind are to be held in the highest of esteem. In this inspirational story of a fight against all odds I somehow managed to remain on the sidelines as if this wasn't my family struggling to survive. Instead of helping my mother out through these difficult times I channeled all the emotions surrounding our circumstance into pernicious and virulent acts.

My mother & father side by side, she made sure this was true no matter the circumstance

I visited my father rarely with little concern to the fact that his days were obviously limited. The man I adored and mimicked as a child, the father who always took the time to play with his kids making ice rinks and snowmen; the father who ritualized the summer boys vacation; the father who was always there when I needed him, this man was outright ignored and forgotten. For what, stupid useless videogames and other teenage trivialities. Oh how I hate myself and the person I was for treating my very own father in such a way. Had I known that he would never see me drive; that he would never meet a single girlfriend; that he would never see me graduate or get a career; that he would never meet any of my children or their mother, my wife; and that we would never share all the conversations that come from life’s precious moments; perhaps then I would have taken every opportunity to create whatever memories that time could have afforded us. But I didn't know… and I didn't make any effort whatsoever, and not just for my father, my mother got nothing but an ungrateful little shit oblivious to everything she was doing for my father, for my sister and for me. I look back and I am ashamed of what I was and am quite perplexed how what I was then has become what I am now.

One of the few times I visited my father in the hospital, my sixteenth birthday

After three months of rehabilitation he was allowed to come home to his family only because he had mastered the art of feeding himself with a tube and a syringe. This was necessary since he could not properly chew his food and risk choking to death. Day in and day out he swallowed that tube and injected this awful smelling sludge into his stomach for sustenance, this he did in order to be out of the hospital, to be somewhat independent but above all else he did it in order to be with his family. I remember one day when my mother asked him if given the possibility would he prefer to regain all of his motor skills or his ability to eat real food? He chose his motor skills without hesitation. It was around this time that we adopted a dog to keep my father company during the day. The little white bichon frisé, Tintin, was to be his sidekick and friend through the somber weekdays while his family was out of the house. No longer fit for driving my father was under house arrest, a sentence enforced by his own body. His gait was fairly unstable, he often hurt himself falling down in those early months at home but he never seemed to show any signs of pain. It wasn't long after we got Tintin that the little bugger managed to escape my father’s watchful eye, his freedom was short lived however as he darted for a busy road and met his end under a car. I will always remember my father and how hard he was on himself for allowing his friend to succumb an untimely death even though there wasn't much anyone else could have done as Tintin was well equipped to escape; he was small, fast and slippery. Nevertheless my dad beat his already bruised heart mercilessly, having lost Shreddies in 2019 unexpectedly I’m sure in his shoes I would have reacted the exact same way.

A mans best friend, the rat?

I can only imagine how difficult it must be to go from an able bodied person to someone who has difficulty tying buttons on his own shirt and I never made things any easier when I happened to be there. Most times I locked myself up in the basement where my gaming systems were and when I wasn't there I was out with friends, my father never got much consideration or the rest of my family for that matter. If he was half as emotional as I am I must of broken his heart into a million pieces but being a proud man he never let it show.

On one occasion while exiting our house from the rear he lost his balance and fell into the basement window well, the fall was enough to break his arm. Things never got easier for him, only harder, for a year and half he went about his life without much of a son because… I wasn't much of a son. Thankfully he had my mother in his life, that woman has a knack for making you feel truly loved and the trick to it all was that deep down she loved you more than life and that rang true in all of her actions. That type of love tends to come across loud and clear and cut through all the bullshit that life tends to throw our way, however deep down it was as if my father was defeated. He believed that a father and husband should provide for the family not burden them, he was distraught at the thought of never regaining full mobility, he had tasted true freedom for forty years only to be stripped of it at such a young age, it really destroyed him.

The crazy things he did when he had full control of his body

In the last month of his life he started having brutal migraines accompanied by a constant ringing sound in his ears, the hospital admitted him for a barrage of tests on a weekly basis. He would come home for the weekends to spend time with his family and spend the week at the hospital undergoing tests that always came back inconclusive.

My father and I were close when I was younger, he built that G.I. Joe base in the background

On his final weekend we were all having supper together, which my mother had once again prepared. It was a normal supper like the many that came before it, little did we know it would be our last supper together as a full family. He was back to eating solids for a while now without much of a fuss, halfway through supper however he started choking which eventually led to him vomiting but being the man he was it was as if he refused to be sick during the weekend. He spent all week at the hospital, he wanted weekends to be with his family so as he vomited he tried to hold it all down. We later found out that this only complicated matters as some of the fluid had gone down his larynx and made its way into his lungs. My mother called the ambulance right away while he continued to argue that he was not sick, sitting with him on the couch during his last hour at home I could see in his eyes how fed up he was. He verbally beat himself up over things he had no control over, he was tired of being a burden to his wife, he was tired of being incapable of contributing in any meaningful way to the household, he was tired of being physically handicapped, he was tired of living if it meant living as he had done for the past two years.

A true representation of my presence during those difficult times

Once the ambulance arrived they helped him onto a stretcher while my mother grabbed her things in order to follow them to the hospital. It’s all very vague in my mind but eventually my sister and I found ourselves among my mother’s family at my grandma’s apartment. Everyone there was pleasant and lively, no doubt in order to lighten the mood and perhaps extract a smile. I honestly don’t remember much of that day, then came the phone call from my mother requesting that I come to the hospital. One of my uncles volunteered to drive me, during the trip he entertained me about various facts regarding certain buildings we saw on the way but in the back of my mind dread was setting in. One distinct thought kept looping through my mind, “I’m too young to lose my father.” Upon our arrival we quickly made our way to the ICU, we were used to the drill by then, however once we arrived my father was nowhere to be found. My uncle stopped a nurse to ask for his whereabouts, her response was devoid of any compassion, “Oh no one told you yet, he passed away.” For years I refused to acknowledge the fact that one day soon my father would no longer be around, I selfishly chose to ignore his plight and those of my family in order to live some fantasy where all that mattered was what was in it for me. Well life has a funny way of knocking that shitty little attitude out of you, unfortunately my father’s death was not enough for me, I needed more rude awakenings in order to get the big picture.

There would be no more trips together

We were led to where his body was being held, inside I found my mother as well as some of my father’s brothers and sisters. The whole thing was surreal, the loss hadn't quite settled in yet. I made my way to his body and clasped his cold dead hands, he finally looked peaceful and at ease. My mother later told me that at one point the nurse had a hard time getting the IV needle into his veins, she repeatedly kept sticking him with the needle without much success. Worried my mother asked if it hurt him, his response, “I don’t care anymore.” He died shortly after, succumbing to an aneurysm. He had been a great father for seventeen years, I had been a good son for most of those years except when it counted most. With death being so final I started to realize what I had lost, slowly but surely everything my father was going to miss out in my life dawned on me. I was naturally overwrought with guilt and sadness but rather than learn from my mistakes I repeated them with my mother, now a widow.

The prick attitude paired with the Vanilla Ice look

On our first Christmas without him my mother gave us each a frame with pictures of our dad and us together. I still showed more interest in a new video game than in the frame, she course corrected me. In one ear out the other however, at least that was the standard operating procedure for me back then, straight out of the “How to be a Prick” handbook. I am utterly ashamed of my past and my behaviour. Disappointed, disgusted, revolting, these words are not powerful enough to describe the way I feel about who I was and how I treated my family. Oddly enough regret can be an intense motivator in life, over the years you learn to channel a deep sense of woe into a positive outcome. Everything in life comes down to our choices, as a teenager I chose to be narcissistic, self serving and quite insensitive towards those that loved me most. Now I choose to learn from my mistakes and ensure that they are not repeated, I choose to transform regret into a powerful motivator to right the wrongs I’ve done. I choose to live in the present where I can still affect the outcome of the future rather than dwell on the past where nothing can change. I may not like the man I was but he paved the way to the man I am and for that I am forever grateful for it has led me to the road in life that has yielded a life filled with love, the kind of love that most yearn to experience their whole life. It has brought me a dog that transcends the saying “Man’s best friend” for Shreddies has become so much more for me in our short time together. It has led me to tell this story without the need to hide my heinous past but rather share it’s brutal truths in the hopes that maybe someone else might read it and learn from my mistakes.

The frames we got on Christmas day, memories of our dads with us

So in the end wrongdoings and regrets can never be rewritten or removed from your past, but they sure as hell can mold and shape you for a better future. Take your failings and own them, make them shift the shape of you into the person you want to be. I might like who I was… but I sure as hell do love who I’ve become. I’m far from perfect but I’m also far from what I was, so let your past yield a better you.

Cedric Jean-Marie