On Summertime and Sadness
After a long year filled with stress, depression, and anger I was finally done with grad school. I celebrated my triumph not by walking with my class and greeting the King of Norway but rather hopping a plane to SoCal and helping my fiancee pack up her belonging and drive north to spend the summer with her new future family.
My goal for the summer was to relax and recover from my self proclaimed, “worst year of my life.” My summer consisted of painting houses, working at the Old Spaghetti Factory (the Spag.), going to concerts and vacationing with my friends and family in Eastern Washington. It was the ideal mix of work and play and I got to do it all with my bride to be (major plus). It was our first summer together and it was simply wonderful.
Towards the end of summer, my plans for Fall were set. I was planning on substitute teaching in order to stay in the education game and get the lay of the land, while still having the flexibility to take a day off every now and then in order to take an extended break from the previous year of grad school insanity.
Despite the good sense of my plan, my mind did not rest easy. I was struggling to come to terms with being one of the only people from my program not fully employed and feeling uneasy from how people were perceiving my decision to substitute teach. Slowly, I became more comfortable with my choice to remain in a season of rest and not charge forward into full time teaching just yet. Then one weekend in the middle of August my dad went into the hospital because he had a headache and his eyes were feeling funny.
30 hours later, strange and distant words mount an assault on my reality and leave me adrift in a vast miasma of confusion:
MRI,
BRAIN TUMOR,
GLIOBLASTOMA,
12-16 months TO LIVE,
CHEMOTHERAPY,
RADIATION.
Haunted and Hurting
These words,
these words are
these words are foreign objects,
these words are foreign objects, that
that do not, belong
that do not, belong, in my lexicon,
these words are foreign objects, that do not belong in my lexicon,
I do not like them
I hate them
I want them to go away
I never want to hear them again, cuz
they bite and
they nash and
they threaten and
they grab and
they strangle and
they fight all the good and hopeful thoughts in my head,
I go numb
I retreat
I react
I repeat
I repeat
over and over,
and over in my head
what would it mean
if he is dead?
I break into verse
I want to curse
I feel no pain
though I have skin in this game
I reason
I calculate
I postulate
I bargain with fate
I see people all around me, cry and sigh and weep
I do not utter a peep
my feelings
they creep
around the edges
they sleep
I scour
they scamper
they hide
they find no place to abide
they do not want to be found
they burrow underground
they...
Why don't I feel
how this reality really is real
I don't just know.
I just don’t know.
In the summer he was fine
In the summer he was sublime
In the summer we passed the time
Not realizing that time was a limited commodity
And now that reality seems an impossibility
A vapor a mist
The end of hist...ory
He’s not doing so well. It’s been a few weeks now. The headaches are getting worse. He cant stay awake. I’m in Tacoma meeting a friend. I get a call. I think now he’s dead. What does that mean? Where am I? Is this real life? I go home more worried about who is going to be at my house than who is no longer there. I can’t deal with the emotion, the drama. My dad is dead and I am freaking out about how people are going to perceive me when I get there. What a great time to worry about oneself. Through confusion is what I feel as I drive home. They are coming to take him away. I get one final look and kiss his head. Profound feelings stirs inside of me. Never again shall I see that face in flesh. It’s a body now, the person is gone, so I help carry it out and they take it away.
The first time
The first time, I cried
The first time, I cried, I was
I cried, I was, helping
I was, helping, my dad,
helping, my dad, walk
my dad, walk to, the car
Yes, I said helping
helping him walk, this formerly strong man, the strongest man I knew, and I knew he was strong so strong
because when I was 5 I knew that my dad could beat up your dad with his pinky finger
because I knew he was invincible
because I knew he knew everything
because I knew when I had a question he had the answer
because I knew he was strong and courageous and loving and caring and
because I knew it did not matter if he was sometimes the most difficult person to understand or to get to understand what you were trying to say
because I knew he was my dad
because I never knew what was growing in his brain all summer long
because I don’t know what it will feel like when he is gone
because I thought the good times would go on and on
But now things have changed
they did not remain the same
and everything I thought I knew
turned out to be not so true
what did I ever know anyway
I couldn't just say
I just couldn't say
