It's always so strange to me that you can just get used to someone being sick. Lately, I've had a hard time imagining what it would be like if my father weren't sick anymore. It just suddenly seems unimaginable that he used to walk around, drive his car, pay his bills, sit on the couch with me, that he could even come to Hollywood and my home to see me. Not so long ago we used to go out to dinner together. His favorite restaurant is the Springdale Bar and Grill in Garden Grove and we'd always get a booth near the bar. My Dad would order a vodka martini on the rocks with one olive and I'd always get a Newcastle. He'd order Prime Rib, rare, and I'd get a filet mignon. We'd inevitably leave overly full and slightly tipsy and I'd stand under the eaves of the restaurant smoking a cigarette while he pulled the car around.

Now, doing something like that seems impossible and I guess that it really kind of is. He hasn't left the bedroom in a month or more now. In the beginning, when I was first living with him and taking care of him, when I was first writing in this blog actually, I used to think that I'd hear him up and around. I'd be out in the living room and, even though I knew he couldn't get out of bed on his own, I'd hear something and my first thought was that he was making his way down the hall. This new hospice company that we're with brought a wheelchair last week and when Eric and I wheeled it into the room my Dad said, "What the fuck is that for?" I tried to explain that we were hoping that we could get him out of bed and maybe outside or at least to the living room but he just doesn't want to.

When my mother was dying, I was so angry with her. I thought that she just wasn't trying hard enough to get better. I was eighteen and going through that whole phase of just having left home and realizing how huge the world is and I was in the midst of making all these promises to myself about how I would live my life, how I would never just settle for something because it seemed easy, how I would never ever want to be simply content with anything I did. I thought that my mother was giving up, that she was content to just lay in bed and be sick. I truly thought that if she tried hard enough, she could get better. For a couple of years after she died, remembering that I felt this way would make me sick to my stomach.

But those old feelings are kind of back again. Sometimes when my Dad is alert and animated, talking about Gray Davis or Kobe Bryant or some shit that he just saw on the news, I'll think, maybe he really could get better. Maybe we shouldn't have jumped into this hospice situation. Maybe he's just weak because he's stopped trying to get out of bed. It's such a frustrating feeling and if I attempt to bring it up I can see how sad it makes him. And I definitely can't bring it up again because then he'll just start up that whole Honey, you have to let me go thing again which I really can't take.

After my mother died, I only had nightmares about her. And in all of them she was either still sick or there was just something horrible and wrong about her even being present. I'm the kind of person who hardly ever remembers my dreams. I have friends who seem to have incredible dreams every night and they can remember them in vivid detail the next day but that's not me. I wish it were because I'd love to dream about my mom or about Julie but I hardly ever do. I had nightmares about Julie too, after she died. With both of them, Julie and my mother, for about a year, every time I thought about them or tried to imagine them, it was always when they were sick. Finally after a couple of years, I started being able to remember them when they were healthy and living their normal lives. I suppose I'll go through this with my Dad too. I just don't want to.
11:06:30 AM     comment []