Ten years ago today, my father suffered a stroke. I was a junior in high school. I left home that morning never thinking that it was the last time I would hear my dad speak, or see him walk correctly. At no point during the day did I think, my father is close to death right now.
After school, I dropped my friend Dave off at his house, as I did every day. I walked into his house to the sound of my grandmother on his answering machine. That was the first sign on January 31, 2002 that something wasn't right.
The next message was my mother. She repeated the same thing my grandmother said, "Jason, there's an emergency. You need to get to (the hospital) as soon as you hear this. I remember tossing the CD that was in my hand and, with no indication that I was right, saying to Dave, "It's my dad."
I raced to the hospital from Dave's house. The song on the radio was Rancid's "Time Bomb." That song is forever synonymous with that moment. I yelled at every car in my way and drove much too quickly to the hospital.
Standing at the door to the Emergency Room was my grandfather (mother's). That cinched it that it was my father. I drove my car into a snow bank at the far end of the hospital and ran quickly. My hunch was true.
My mother's friend Linda Thomas, a nurse, sat me on a vacant stretcher and told me, through tears, about my father's stroke. I had no idea, then, what a stroke really was. I knew it made people talk and walk funny. I didn't know why it happened or what it looked like when it did.
My grandfather drove me to Boston, where my father was transported to receive emergency surgery to try to keep him alive. My grandfather, Dean Hess (this being the only time his name will ever appear on the internet in a blog), was and remains either a really great person to be with in times of crisis or the worst. When his close friend and the husband of my grandmother's best friend died, my grandfather stood in his backyard for a while, marveling at how impressive Bobcats were. Not the animal. The bulldozer vehicle. My grandparents apparently picked an ideal day to have a new septic system installed at their house because it gave my grandfather a distraction.
The drive didn't involve much talk about my father. We talked about sports and that was it. It prepared me in no way for what awaited me in the ER waiting room at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
I've never really understood why people cry. For one, why did God decide to have water come out of our eyes when bad things happen? And why does seeing other people cry cause one to cry? Because as soon as I saw my mother: tears. And lots of them. And for a very long time.
After hours of waiting, my mother was told that doctors could not remove part of my father's skull to allow his brain to swell. I don't remember why. The details are in no way important. She was told that his prognosis was not very good and that if his brain swelled very much at all, he would die.
And so, before we left the hospital that night, we said goodbye.
I walked into his room and lost all control. There were tubes feeding tubes feeding tubes. He was not responsive. He was not conscious. And so thus, you talk to, essentially, your dead father. That is something we do as human beings. We encourage our children to talk to people who can't hear them, see them, talk to them, or touch them. This is supposed to be cathartic.
It's not.
I don't remember anything that I said. Not a thing. I don't remember how long I was in that room for. I don't remember anything except how my father looked. Dead.
The last time I had seen him he was sitting next to me on the couch at 6:50 am, watching MTV with me. No headache. No dizziness. Not even a sneeze. The next time I saw him, 16 hours later, and everything had changed.
Ten years later, and my dad is definitely alive. If I were to see him tonight, which I wish I could, he would look very different then he did ten years ago. No tubes. More gray hair. His face looks noticeably different, naturally.
The ten years since that stroke have been incredibly difficult for him. Six months after that stroke he suffered a massive seizure that nearly killed him. What followed was a series of smaller seizures. Therapy became more difficult for him because he didn't see progress and he eventually gave up hope that he'd speak well ever again. His physical therapy afforded him the ability to walk, albeit with a slow hitch. Then, in 2008, my mother, for reasons I'll never understand or accept, told my father that she wanted a divorce.
The last ten years of my dad's life have been more difficult than any decade should be. My mother and sisters have chided me for "making excuses" for him. In my mind, the guy doesn't need any excuses. Everything we take for granted was taken, inexplicably and without warning, from him.
I haven't really talked to my dad in the last 10 years. We talk, but because of the limitations he faces, there's no real substantive feelings expressed from him. Everything he wants to say is there. But it often can't come out. And when it does, it's just a word or two. In a decade, my dad hasn't been able to adequately express how he feels. It confounds me, especially as someone who loves to hear himself speak, how one can live through that.
My intention here is to not bog down your day with my problems. That is not the point. We, as people, often need reminders to not take things for granted. Every January 31st, simply by looking at a calendar, I'm reminded of that. And it bothers me when this is regarded as cliche. A word like "cliche" should never be used to describe awareness and appreciation. The manner in which you wake up one day can be very different from the manner in which you go to sleep that same night, if you even get the opportunity to lay your head down at the end of the day. Your ability to express how you feel, to tell someone that you love them, can disappear in an instant. Just because you got to see someone before they left for work, does not mean you'll get to see them when they've clocked out.
After I post this, I'm going to call my dad, and tell him I love him. It'll be a vastly different conversation from the one I had ten years ago with him.
