Dad

He was so strong, even in his 60s, that I was sure, despite his lifetime of smoking and daily drinking, he would make it through. Sure, he'd puke and feel miserable, he'd lose weight from the chemo and lose his hair, but in 6 months, he'd be a new man with an external bladder. As he put it, "it's just plumbing." I mean, bladder cancer has a survival rate of 80%, and if anyone was built to survive, it was Dad.

But strong has nothing to do with it. Nor does effort. Just days before he died, he was hauling his wasted body up a flight of stairs with no handrail because he was working to regain his strength. It turns out he had no platelets, no red blood cells, and pneumonia, and even the fatigue that comes with one of those conditions, let alone all three, couldn't kill his will. When he went to the hospital for a check up, his sister-friend Barb and Susan, the girlfriend he refused to call girlfriend, the woman he would have called wife if he hadn't been so burned by his last divorce, used an office chair to roll him to the car. Barb told me he couldn't remember how to get to the hospital from his house, along roads he'd driven his entire life. And when he moved to the wheelchair to go inside, his pants fell to his ankles because he was easily 70 pounds lighter than he was when he was diagnosed. 

Susan kept us in the loop, even though I don't think he really wanted us in it. He'd rather we preserve an image of him as the Captain, the man with the cover and the concealed carry license, the guy who was as steady in a stick-up as he was while cleaning his own mother's bottom at her end. He was totally unfazed, and while that hurt deeply when I was a kid and he was a distant dad, I grew to appreciate that part of him the most as an adult. It was a tough lesson to learn to have no expectation of people you love, particularly a parent, but it freed me from hurt and disappointment more than I even realize. 

We didn't talk often, but he did write me letters and forward invites to the annual family reunion and keep me posted on deaths and births and marriages. The last few years, he'd trek to Kentucky to bring us some of his homemade deer jerky and a $100 bill for Christmas. When we were together for our annual summer visit for 4th of July, a holiday he made matter, we'd get a fire going and he'd make me laugh. Our politics couldn't have been farther apart, nor could our religious beliefs, but somehow we had a lot in common. He told great stories and got a kick out of little things. He loved the outside. He was a smart ass, with a sideways smirk and a twinkle in his eye that was always looking for a good time. For me, he was that parent that you look at and go, "oh, that's why I'm like this." 

I value my own physical strength more than physical beauty because of him. I'm not afraid to try things that are traditionally reserved for men because of him. I don't feel anyone else is responsible for my happiness or life choices but me because of him. I married the man I married because of him. I like solitude. I owe the parts of myself that are the biggest, the most pronounced, the most valuable to me, to him. 

When I got to the hospital to be with him, after Mack drove me 24 hours straight, I gave him a hug and said, "Wow, I didn't expect you to take Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death so hard, Dad." He peeped his eyes just to give me the glare that was our playful exchange. His hug felt amazing, warm and safe despite the fact that I outweighed him by 30 pounds. I sat with him and held his hand, and when he opened his eyes and saw me and I smiled behind my mask, he said, "Sorry." I don't know what it was for, I can imagine a million things, but I didn't want to hear it. I told him, "Don't you dare, you have nothing to be sorry for. You are an awesome dad and I love you." He responded with, "I love you too baby," and closed his eyes. 

The next three days are burned into my memory, and I keep reliving each moment over and over at the most inopportune times. It's sweet agony. I want to hang on to them, but I need to move past them. Our relationship was so much more than those three days, but those three days were sacred, intimate, intense days of love and fear and courage and laughter. Shannon sent a video of Nynie on the beach saying, "Love you so much, Grampa Greg," and when I showed it to him, he smiled the last smile I saw him muster. I had to call my step-sister Christie and give her the news, and my heart broke again hearing hers shatter. Leiah came to be with him also, and we sat on her bed in the hotel one night eating peanut butter pie right from the box with plastic spoons and relishing how lucky we've been in life lately, aside from the event bringing us together. When I said good night to her the next night, I had to tell her to cover her eyes because they were looking too much like Dad's and she was going to make me cry. 

They did a CT scan on Dad, which showed more cancer in his lungs, liver, and kidneys, maybe even in his brain but they didn't scan that part. I held his hand when the doctor came in to tell us the news, which we knew was bad thanks to the gift of summation by his excellent nurse... who turned out to be a relative, of course. Dad was as unfazed as ever, but I did see the tiniest tear appear on the lower lid of his right eye. He kept his eyes closed and brought it back into himself, stuffing it in the bottle he kept deep in his belly where he shoved all his intense feelings. I inherited that from him, but my bottle is admittedly leaky. He asked the doctor how long he had, and was given days to weeks. Dad held up his index finger and said, "One." I said, "Are you giving us one more day, you have one day?" He nodded. 

I immediately moved into action mode. "Where do you want to go? Where do you want to spend your one day?" He wouldn't answer until the next day. I guess it needed to sink in. His action meant dying, and I guess he needed to get square with that before giving out orders. The next morning, when Leiah and I walked into his hospital room, he said, "I'm ready to go home, I reckon." I told him we could do that, but I wanted him to know that the getting there part was going to suck. At one point, while talking about the stress of transport, I said, "If we can make people who've had their legs blown off tolerate a helicopter ride, we can get him comfortable." Dad piped up and said, "No fuckin' helicopters." The room erupted in laughter. I'm not sure if his trip via copter to Indy in August inspired the strong reaction or if it was the bill on his table for that ride for nearly $40,000 that did it. 

Helping Dad die was such a surreal experience that I was so grateful when the nursing element came in. Something familiar that I could cling to. A role I felt human in. A tether to this world. A distraction from myself. Turning him. Giving medications and tracking the times and doses. Checking his pulse and counting his respirations. Monitoring his urinary output. There is so much strength in caring for others. 

Friends came to visit, and the room filled with laughter at some of the stories we heard. It also filled with sadness as the severity of his disappearance hit people in the face. Barb was an angel who manifest miracles in the times of Covid. I fell in love with Susan for loving him so much and so delicately during this whole process. My cousin Kristin brought all her mom energy and pointed us on the path to the right decisions without telling us what to do. Leiah and Christie were sources of joy and comfort, as was Shannon even though she was stuck in Florida. We were a bunch of women helping a man do an impossible thing for him. 

He died late on a Monday, although not pronounced until early Tuesday morning. The nurse in me couldn't help but look at the clock when I saw the last pulse run through his neck. Time of death, per the microwave clock, 11:29pm. He always used to tell Susan "10 o'clock, lights out." He stayed up late to hang out with us a little longer, I guess. 

I had been giving him morphine and Ativan around the clock, but despite the meds, he started sweating from breathing so hard and fast. He was taking huge gulps of air that clattered his teeth. I called the Hospice nurse and asked him to come to the house. We gave him a big dose of morphine, and after about 20 minutes his breathing slowed. The nurse left. We sat with him. Then his breathing got slower and slower, still gulps, still clattering his teeth. And eventually it stopped. We held him, said goodbyes and I love yous, and Leiah and I fell into our husbands. I looked over at Susan, whispering in his ear, and my heart broke into 1000 more pieces. I still have no idea how she didn't die in that moment too. 

Christie had the good sense to break out the peach Crown Royal. We sipped a shot and waited for the nurse to come back to pronounce him and the funeral home to arrive. I rubbed a little taste on Dad's lower lip. Barb told an amazing story about giving farm animals shots and we laughed again. But the room was notably absent his laughter. He was gone. I still can't believe it. 

Something Concrete

Being at home all the time really makes you recognize all the annoying things about the place you live. For me, it's been the driveway.

The driveway has been sinking since we moved in. Pulling in from the sidewalk started to make the car go PLUNK! about a year ago. Mack band-aided it for the past year with a paver we put in the 4" drop by the sidewalk. Alas, the paver is now chunks of moveable rock and the car is PLUNK!ing again. This time the car is not a Chevy Volt. It is a Tesla. It is Mack's fancy Tesla. 

And now we're getting a new driveway.

Picking a driveway is seriously harder than it looks. A couple years ago I consulted with a landscaper for a yard design, and she sucked so bad she suggested bringing the driveway into the yard. I hate large swaths of concrete, and I had no idea why she was suggesting we move the driveway into the view of the front porch. Well, I still think her idea is stupid, but I have a new sympathy for figuring out a driveway concept that looks good. It's frigging hard.

I thought about keeping it simple and just redoing the whole driveway, but see the part above where I hate large swaths of concrete. Then I was going to get that concrete grate looking stuff that the grass grows up in, but it looks way more modern than my 100-year-old house. Then I started looking at ribbon driveways, a driveway concept I'd seen but had no idea had a name. They seemed like an option, so I called my Do It Guy, Kyle, and he got to work.

Of course, because it's a home improvement project, we found a problem. The dirt under the driveway by the house was wet. Did we have a sewer leak? Did we have a sprinkler problem? What the heck? Kyle climbed under the house and dug a hole that could've been a grave for 10 people trying to find an answer. The answer was just wet dirt. We had to delay a bit to let it dry out, and then, business time. 

While Kyle and his crew broke their backs, I had to figure out what to do with the middle of my ribbon. I went down a driveway rabbit hole on Pinterest and decided I'd fill it with rock. Then I decided I'd fill some of those gaps in the rock with plants. I'd make a driveway garden!

Maybe one day my love of gardens will turn my thumb green.

Grateful that we'd bought a pick up truck, I headed to the stone store, where I was confronted with La Paz cobble and Yosemite cobble and Sierra cobble, large cobble and small cobble and pebble cobble. Jesus, why is there so much cobble to choose from! I ended up buying 3 tons of Yosemite cobble. Yep, the same stuff I loaded up on during our trip to the Sierras earlier this year for free cost me hundreds of dollars. As they loaded the pallet into the truck bed, I wondered if that old girl would break in half. Luckily she didn't. That'd be what I'd do unloading all this damn rock and placing it in the middle of the damn ribbon. 

Since we have nothing else to do, I popped up the sunshade so I wouldn't burn to death and started taking armloads of rock to the driveway. I had to buy dirt to put under it so it wouldn't just be a place to break your ankle, and so my garden could have a chance, so I also hauled about 500 pounds of that over. I put on my podcasts, zoned out, and 8 hours and a broken body later, behold.... a driveway masterpiece. 

I'll be shocked if the plants survive, but isn't it just the cutest driveway you've ever seen for now? If it's not, shut up because I'll never walk the same and it needs to be worth it.

The Interesting Times

Breaking news: we're still in a pandemic. The coronavirus continues to keep restaurants in take-out-only mode and masks are such a feature of my face that I've got mask-ne. It's acne... from a mask! We get Door Dash a couple times a day and have developed a real Amazon ordering problem. The toilet paper/hand sanitizer madness has subsided and you can buy those things as needed again. There's no where to go and nothing to do, and when you walk down the street and people see you coming, they'll cross the street to keep 6 feet of clearance. Okay, that social distancing part I love and want to keep forever, but the rest is tired and annoying. Interesting, huh?

Just a couple gals getting a Covid antibody test. I was hoping Mom's sickness this Christmas was Covid so she could exist in the world. No such luck.

Bubba, Lee, and Mateo are staying with us, and Shahin, Tom, and Laila are next door. The proximity of family spread across two neighboring properties has made our bubble a little bigger than most people's, and I am so grateful for that. Mateo is about to be a big brother in a few months, but for the time being he is relishing being the center of six adults otherwise boring and alcoholic seltzer soaked worlds. 

He's really into Grossery Gang, so much so he had it as his birthday theme. He's got moldy nachos, a soda with worm straws, fries with vomit? on them, a tub of discolored popcorn, and about 100 other small, squishy rotten food items that he totes around in a box and plays with all the time. He never lets me, or any other women he ropes into playing with him, be anything but Bagel Lady.

That boy comes up with the nuttiest things. He is A LOT, never gets tired, and sometimes I find myself bickering with him like I'd bicker with my sisters because I AM MATURE. But most of the time he is being a bright spot in the middle of this boredom. Mack bought him a book of stories and one of them is about a donkey that wants to sing like grasshoppers, but since it's an old storybook, they call the donkey an ass. Mateo loves being allowed to say ass, and that's the only reason he likes that story.

In non-Mateo news, I've spent my free time planting a garden in the container boxes Scott and I built before this all started. The cabbage worms are trying to sap my will to cultivate food, but I finally caved and dusted them with Sevin and I think I may just have the upper hand now. My friend Annie started making mead from scratch. Mack and Erik, Annie's boy, built automatic weapons. Men and women respond to global crises in such different ways. 

  

Zoe, Bubba's dog, is also living here, and she has developed an understandable fascination with the chickens but a really bizarre friendship with Lemondrop. She bursts out the back door and acts like she's herding the chickens, except they're already in their coop. She runs from one side to the other, getting all up in the dusty bushes and getting filthy. Then she'll come inside and chew on herself from itching because she is not a chicken and cannot do the dust they way they do. 

Oh, the gorgeousness. Those asses. 

Mack and I have managed to do a couple of escapes, one to camp at Mammoth Pool in the Sierras and one to visit my family. Mammoth Pool was beautiful, but Mack and I had a moment when we wanted to kill each other because I insisted we take the long way home from the waterfall to the campsite and the long way ended up being 8 hours of nervous off-roading in a giant pick up truck. This is only about the 10th time I've ambitiously led us on an adventure that ended up being a scary ass drive that takes forever. 

It started out so perfectly.

Listen, Google Maps confirmed this was the way.

Worth it.

Beautiful campsite right by a little creek.

He finally forgave me after a pot of chili and the serenity of a campfire. 

The trip back home was way too fast. I had to hit Kentucky, then up to Dad's for a day, cram in some aunts, uncles, and cousins, meet the newest member of the tribe, Crew, and then get back home, all without catching or giving anyone a deadly virus. The fear of travel is real when the lovies are at the receiving end of it, but I couldn't not see them, especially with this threat looming over us and no visitors allowed in hospitals. 

2020: bringing the campfire hangout back cuz you have to be outside and social distanced!

Worth it.

Don't know how these teenagers are making it thru this mess with a smile on their faces. 

Pandemic baby! Welcome Crew! Do you know how hard it was to not be able to hold this fresh baby?

We still have no idea when this might all end. When we might be able to hug and kiss again. When we'll see smiles from strangers and celebrate birthdays again. When we can travel to the places we're drooling over again. When we can go to weddings and hold the babies. When this interesting will take a turn toward normal. But until then, we're washing our hands, being good recluses, and being grateful we're dodging the invisible bullet. 

Life in Interesting Times

I guess we're in a global pandemic. Which I guess gives my life the distinction of being lived in "interesting times."

So what's interesting about it?

As things were just starting to ramp up, Heather came for a planned visit. It's hard to self-isolate when your best friend is a night shift nurse with ADD on vacation, so we had to get out of the house despite the flurry of warning. Our days were bookended with trips to the weed store or Costco and epic games of Scrabble. I took her to get Botox from the guy who does mine. We wandered around the neighborhood, grateful to live in a place with lots of beautiful plants and houses and murals and a beach at the end of it.

In the middle of it all, we escaped to Joshua Tree to stay at a Zombie-themed shack next door to a trailer park hotel, where we binged awesome pizza, saw shooting stars, and sat by a fire in a teepee.
We let Mack lead us off a trail to a boulder-filled riverbed in search of a palmed oasis and hoped our ankles held up. Heather got spiked by a cactus and I plucked the pricks from her thigh while she stood bravely in her underwear in a room full of fellas.

I took her to the airport with a handful on N95 masks I had in the garage for cleaning my chicken coop. There was some mouse poop in the bottom of the box, so perhaps they'll end up being the source of Covid-20. We do what we can.

After Heather left, I did a few-day stint at work, which was as dead as it's ever been. I almost burst into tears as I turned into the parking lot on my first day back. I was terrified and obligated, torn in half by a desire to protect myself and help others. It felt like I was lining up for the firing squad. I had to swallow that worry down and remind myself that being brave meant doing things despite being afraid. I talked about this bizarre conflict with some co-workers in the break room and tears welled up in our eyes. Cops brought us donuts and coffee, restaurants sent us meals, we felt loved and appreciated. We had to plead our case to get a mask from our supervisors.

I checked the temperatures of every ambulance run that came in that wasn't on the verge of dead and offered it to staff if they asked what the hell I was doing. I felt like a Walmart greeter. I also spent a shift in triage, where I wore a mask and goggles and made everyone who entered use the hand sanitizer upon entering the room. In 4 days I think I saw 10 patients, most of whom were psych. It ended up being a great time to connect with my coworkers and use our sick sense of humor to make us feel a little more at ease with our enemy and the battle ahead. A battle that I knew I'd watch from the sidelines, since we had a month-long getaway/renovation job in St. Thomas that was planned way before Chinese New Year ignited the coronavirus.

Everything was cancelled. Volleyball for me, medical conferences for him. Bubba's nursing school graduation. Laila's classes. We took it as a sign and moved our departure date up. Our plane to the island had maybe 30 people on it, including one grouchy guy who was pissed about paying extra for the better seats when the plane was mostly empty. It sounds romantic and fortunate, and in a lot of ways, it has been. Especially before they closed the beaches. But in a lot of ways it's added an extra layer of torture. Is that interesting? Or disgusting?

We have a lot of time to feel guilt and gratitude right now, and it's a swirly mix daily. Frustrated with boredom, elevated by books. Annoyed that we can't get 90-Day Fiancé here because Hulu loves boundaries, renewed by a little dips in the aquarium outside our door that we do illegally most days.

I look forward to throwing rice at the chickens when they walk by with their babies. I love the sound of the wind in the palms and the crash of the waves. I feel obligated to check on the two lobsters hanging out at the reef we visit to make sure I can still find them. It's a thrill to see a soldier crab walking on the sidewalk. I hate that I love the air conditioning, not because I can do things without sweating but because my mosquito bites itch so much less. I miss touching people. I miss being careless about touching pens and keypads and door handles and shopping carts. I miss restaurants. I miss the sound of other people's laughter, especially if I was the thing that got it out of them. Mack's great and all, but the burden of isolation is really too much for one human. I'm jealous of big families. I bet parents of big families wish they were me. Is this interesting? Or pathetic?

The isolation has made us weirdly social people. We befriended our contractor Jose, who learned that we are late sleepers without any conscious input from us. We polished off two bottles of wine and ate black bean stew with (and courtesy of) our neighbors Corrine and Ivan, a brilliant combination of British sailor and environmentalist and Caribbean Olympian/actor/spear fisherman/community-made mayor. I'm looking forward to Scrabble night with them this week. I need to bring them some chocolate if I can find it. And wine.

Other items on the List of Things to Look Forward to This Week include a trip to get groceries since hardly any restaurants are operating and, hopefully, the arrival of Mack's electronic piano. We miss the music that usually fills our mornings. Maybe we'll also get our washer. We ordered it 2 weeks ago, but the handle was broken and the ferries weren't running and then there was Easter and island time. Last week, we managed to move in, get our dryer, get WiFi, and have the air conditioner installed. I'll probably keep up my routine of sweeping the floor and mopping daily. I have really cultivated a love of sweeping, probably because our place is so small it's low effort for high yield. I have also cultivated disdain for FaceTime, probably because it shocks me into harsh reality every time I open it. I love to see my lovies faces, but I can't stand the look of my own... it matches my voice. We haven't had a mirror in our lives since we moved in, and I forget how wild and greasy I can look, especially in muggy climates like the one we're in. Today I had to apologize to Jose when I opened the door for him to do some plumbing work because I went to bed with wet hair and I know the range of appearance that can get.

(Mack just caught a mosquito with our electric racket: "Mess with the bull, get the horns." The thrill of catching one of those bastards is worth remark.)

I don't know how long this will last. But I do know that the sweet agony of it has settled down on us, and I hope that at the end I'll feel the same fondness for it that I feel about my last summer vacations as a kid in Kentucky. That hot season when my mom kept us out of the house since she was trying to sell it and we were living disasters who survived on Nerds and Nachos at the swimming pool. When Heather and I bounced around the neighborhood between our houses like nomads. When I kissed my first boy and discovered that I could inflate my bathing suit top to make it look like I had giant boobs. When I broke my collar bone coming home from the dentist and had to swim in a brace. When we climbed into the bathtub to protect ourselves during a tornado warning and Leiah peed on all of us since Heather's mom refused to let any of us get out of the tub. When everything was carefree and slow, drastic change was on the horizon, and I was learning without even trying to.