On my Dad: The End.

The hot air in my apartment is stuffy and stagnant as I listen to the sound of thunder roll through my cracked window. This is now the fourth day I’ve been without central AC. I’m lucky, in a way, that I spent the last few weeks putting a reflective film on my windows. I can only imagine how hot it would’ve been in here otherwise. It’s been as high as 85 degrees Fahrenheit inside for nearly the entire weekend. I’m uncomfortable to say the least and grumpy as hell to be more frank. I don’t handle heat well, I never have. But there’s more to it this time. This time, it’s a reminder. I have unfinished business to attend… It’s time to write the blog that I’ve been dreading.

It’s time to talk about my dad. I’ve been mulling it over. I know I want to paint him and generally I’d blog about it after the painting is done, but I think I’m going to have to do it a little differently this time. I’m still figuring out how I want to paint him. Perhaps writing about it will help. But what does the hot air in my apartment have to do with my father? Well, let me tell you. For once, let’s begin at the end.

My father died last July. In less than two months he will have been gone for a year. Our relationship hadn’t been good for a very long time. We’d barely spoken in years, really. I’d long told people that the man who raised me was already gone. In many ways, I still believe that was true. But something happened that last month… I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that I think he knew. I think some part of him knew his time was almost up. For years, every time he reached out, it felt like he was just trying push me back toward Christianity. He’d send me bible verses, and tell me he was praying for me, and as much as he asked “how I was,” it never felt like he really wanted to know. It was just an excuse to push his religion on me… again. I ignored a lot of his messages.

But suddenly, something changed. There was a big storm here in June and he texted me to make sure we were all safe. He asked me if I’d been reading my bible lately, like he often did. And instead of ignoring the message or coasting along and only answering the parts of his message I wanted to… I told him the truth. We (my ex and I) were safe, and I haven’t been a Christian for many years. I braced myself for the incoming lecture, but I realized that our relationship was never going to fix itself if I remained silent any longer. I told him how much of a burden Christianity had been on me and how free I felt without it. How I didn’t want to disappoint him but I couldn’t look past all the evil the church is used to justify. I warned him not to push me away. And he didn’t.

He told me he’d suspected as much (he’d have to be crazy not to) but that he was still proud of me. That might’ve been the most surprising thing of all. All this time he’d been telling me he was proud of me it felt impossible to believe—here I was, this spiritualist, pansexual, transgender, liberal human. I’m everything he didn’t want me to become and more. How could he—a baptist pastor—possibly be proud of me? He was disappointed, but it didn’t sting the way I expected it to. The lecture didn’t come. He said his peace like an adult and we moved on.

He told me he had just been diagnosed with stage one heart failure—something my mom has since told me she didn’t know. I have a hard time believing that, to be perfectly honest with you. I find it more likely she forgot. But maybe she never knew. Their relationship had been strained to say the very least for a long time, and my dad shared plenty of the blame. There’s a lot more to it, but their issues affected my relationships with both of them as well.

We started talking pretty regularly. He helped me gather information on my great uncle who had been a POW in Germany in WWII for a class I was doing with the local Holocaust Museum. For the first time in years, he sounded like my dad again. Maybe only in brief spurts, but it was enough. He was level-headed, introspective, thoughtful, nonjudgemental… all of the things he used to be before his stroke about 10 years ago. My mom suspects he’d had multiple strokes that last year. Sometimes I wonder if one of them sent his brain into some kind of “reboot,” for lack of a better explanation. Perhaps it was more like brief moments of clarity, though. It’s hard to say with me being states away.

I’d been working on setting up a time for myself, my ex (we were still dating at the time), and my best friend to go there and visit them and get my great uncle’s silk scarf for the museum. I was extra excited for my dad and my best friend to meet because my dad had been learning Spanish and never had anyone to talk to. And, of course, he was looking forward to meeting my boyfriend. I remember writing in my journal how ready I was to go back and see everyone and introduce them all. I even wrote that it seemed like most of the time my family only ever got together when there was a funeral. I had this awful feeling like it was foreshadowing something as I wrote it. But I brushed it off.

Finally, we were approaching the hottest weeks of the year. And they weren’t just hot, the air quality was garbage and it was humid. They told people not to even go outside. And my dad finally told me that their air conditioner hadn’t worked all year. Mom didn’t want to call the landlord because she was worried about how the house looked. Suddenly it all clicked in my head and I told my dad they needed to get it fixed ASAP… he had a heart condition for fucks sake. It was over 90 degrees outside and they just had the windows open and some fans… I got so upset. I remember bawling, just knowing that if something didn’t change that I was going to lose my dad… just when I’d finally gotten him back. I regret not doing more now.

He reassured me and told me he’d be okay. But the truth is, I don’t think he even believed it. But I tried to listen to him. I tried to push away my fears. And I started to feel better when I kept getting texts from him every day. We’d set a date to visit. I’d be there in a couple of weeks. Little did I know I’d spend those days attending his funeral and looking through all of his things instead.

That following Monday I sat down at my desk with some cereal to catch up on some work. As I did, though, I got a call from my mother. Which was odd. It was pretty early for her. I don’t remember what I said when I picked up. All I remember is my mom’s voice as she said “I’m sorry to tell you this… but your dad is gone.” I never did eat that cereal. It sat there as I went through multiple states of shock. I don’t remember almost any of the rest of our conversation. She’d found him in his chair, where he always was that morning. He’d passed in the night. She’d called me after they’d taken him away.

I think I cried almost the entire day. I had just talked to him the day before. We’d talked about how I was going to take his bass guitar back home with me. We didn’t say a lot. And I remember at the end I got this gnawing feeling. Just the slightest little voice in my head that said “this might be the last time you talk to him.” But I ignored it. I think I regret that most. It would’ve taken so little effort for me to send one more text… tell him I love him or how excited I was to see him… but I didn’t. I allowed whatever was going on in my life to distract me. The last thing I said to him was that I remembered his bass was fretless… If you read this and take nothing else away, just promise me that if you ever get that feeling like it might be the last time you talk to someone… say something good.

I don’t know if my dad would’ve been okay had the air conditioning worked. But as I sit here in my humid apartment, I can’t help but think about what his last days were like. How miserable he must’ve been. Because I’m miserable and it’s not even as hot outside as it was that summer. I miss walking to the other room without sweating, I miss being a comfortable temperature. But most of all, I miss my dad. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop these thoughts of him circling in my head until there’s actual air circulation in my house.

I didn’t get to most of what I wanted to say about my dad in this one, like who he was as a person or the lessons I’ve learned from him. Look out for a blog entitled “The Hermit.” That’ll be the one. There were a lot more facets to him than his Christianity. He was a musical genius, for one, but he also spent most of his life helping people recover from their addictions as a substance abuse counselor. He spent a number of years working in foster homes before that. He was a shining beacon of joy to so many people around him. He could make absolutely anyone laugh. He was brilliant. Those are the parts of him I’d like to draw more attention to. And next time, when I’m feeling a bit less sorry for myself I will.

I was going to wrap this all up in a pretty little bow and try to end on a positive note… but I’m all tapped out. My brain is mush. And I just found out I’ve got to wait multiple more days for someone to even come look at my HVAC. Hopefully my next blog will be less depressy… but unfortunately, that’s all I’ve got for you today. Stay safe. Tell your people you love them.