I don’t cry very often. In fact, most of the times I have shed tears I was remembering one thing. My father. My parents broke up when I was young. I saw him every other weekend for a while, and then things changed. Relationships between my parents strained, I saw him less often. He would disappear on and off. Then he disappeared for a full year. When he came back, he didn’t come to the door to greet us with open arms. He came to the hospital bed. A bed in a hospital where my mom worked, as a nurse. She came home with the news one night, and the next day I saw him, although he didn’t see me. He was in a coma; his body was shutting down, organ by organ. He looked so frail on what was to be his deathbed, and yet he looked so much like the father I knew. I stood there, not know what to say, or do, so I just talked, and prayed, and held his hand. The next day he passed away. All through this I never cried. Not at the hospital, not at the funeral. I stood by my mom, attempting to be strong for her, wondering why I wasn’t crying, just as I wondered standing beside his hospital bed, as his body turned off. He was 36.
My dad was an alcoholic. He had a problem that he couldn’t control. It took me a long time to understand that. I didn’t see, how, if alcohol was hurting him so much, why he couldn’t just stop. Why couldn’t he just put down the bottle? Why wasn’t he strong enough? Why didn’t he care enough about us to give up a stupid drink? Only a stupid, little drink. I eventually came to realize that alcohol wasn’t just a stupid little drink for him. It was part of his life. I’m sure it started out as nothing, not a problem. Then it just gradually gets worse.
I’ve read a lot about alcoholism. I’ve read books, papers, research. I’ve tried to understand it, tried to understand why my father had to die. I came to understand that it is a disease. It is a disease that you can be pre-disposed to, or one that can develop on its own. It is a disease that takes control of your entire body, your life, your mind. Eventually the disease takes on a life of its own, and it is no longer within your control. Then the disease takes your life, and extinguishes its own. That’s not to say that you can’t control it, just that its not as easy as a 13 year old kid thought it should be.
I did eventually cry. I was listening to the radio and a song came on. Harry Chaplins, “Cat in the Cradle.”
My child arrived just the other day He came to the world in the usual way But there were planes to catch and bills to pay He learned to walk while I was away And he was talking 'fore I knew it and as he grew He'd say "I'm gonna be like you dad You know I'm gonna be like you"
--------------------- And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man in the moon "When you coming home son" "I don't know when But we'll get together then dad You know we'll have a good time then" Selected Lyrics From Cats in the Cradle, by Harry Chaplin
That song awoke something in me. That song was my relationship with my father. It described it so well. I started crying, and didn’t stop. All the emotion, the pain, the loss that I had been bottling up broke loose, and came pouring out in a torrent of tears. To this day I can’t hear that song with out a tear coming to my eye.
I cried tonight. I was watching Boston Public, and a storyline occurred that was so familiar, for it was my own. Aisha’s father was on his deathbed from alcoholism, a father she hadn’t known in years. He was in a coma, and though she tried, he wouldn’t, couldn’t wake up. She sang a song at his funeral, about loss, and regrets. And I cried, and I cried.
9:32:22 PM 
|
