Growing Old Ain’t For the Faint of Heart
By Dax-Devlon Ross

1

Call it a premonition. Call it a bleak outlook on life. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either way I knew. I knew one night I’d get a phone call and on the other end of the line there’d be an ominous voice and even before I had a chance to sober up, to brace myself, my whole world would be rocked. In deference to the facts, it didn’t happen exactly like I thought it would. I didn’t receive the call; I made it. Like I often did. Late. Restless. Wanting to chew the fat with my old man. It was close to two in the morning east coast time, which made it about eleven on the left coast. Dad and I hadn’t had one of our weekly pow-wows where we let our minds roam freely for an hour or so in several weeks.

Looking back on it, I should’ve known something was wrong as soon as he picked up the phone. His voice sounded even more distant than the thousands of miles between us. Even when he learned it was me on the other end he didn’t perk up, didn’t extend that warm, welcoming, ‘Hey, it’s you!’ I’d grown accustomed to. I swear, I must’ve dialed my dad’s digits a thousand times over the years– called him from payphones from New York to Madrid, from Capetown to St. Thomas– and I can count the times he didn’t pick up on one hand. One hand! Always after the third or fourth ring. Always with the note of glee in his voice when he discovered it was his eldest son, the writer.

After a tepid and awkward back and forth in which I sense, for the first time, that he isn’t really listening to me yak about my latest epiphany (we were always sharing epiphanies) I stopped: ‘What’s wrong?’

His reply came quick, like it was on this tip of his tongue, just waiting there like a swimmer on the edge of a diving board: ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

I sat down, felt the euphoric stains in my consciousness wiped clear. Clicked on the lamp by the living room table. Then I rustled up my most courageous voice. ‘Shoot.’

He’d been having headaches for a couple of weeks, he said. All of a sudden. Headaches so bad that he hadn’t been able to go to work or get out of bed, which meant they must’ve been serious seeing as my dad was from the old school and didn’t know what a day off meant. Couldn’t conceive of not being productive in some way. When the headaches finally did subside, he noticed something else. (It should be noted that all the while he was delineating the details, he was resistive, like he was tugging something out of himself that he knew he had to release even though doing so was against his constitution. His nature was to guard and shield. He put on the brave front that assured everyone around him. That’s what he did, what defined him).

‘I’ve been dropping words,’ he said after some prodding on my part.

I measured my words appropriately. ‘I don’t understand, dad. You have to be clearer.’

‘Basically, words aren’t coming to me all the time. Words I’ve known a hundred years. Words I use everyday.’

That explained the terseness, I figured. Explained why his responses had been so clipped and stilted. ‘And so you went to a doctor, right? Please tell me you went to see someone.’

He had, which was both a relief and further cause for alarm. My dad didn’t go to the doctor, ever. He wasn’t afraid, he was just of the belief that one only sees the doctor in cases of emergency. ‘I won’t know anything until Monday, though.’ It was Saturday night.

We talked for another hour after that. Talked like we always talked. Talked like what he’d just revealed was little more than a nagging injury a few days rest would cure. Our late night conversations had evolved into a form of ritual by then. They’d started when I was in college, just after he’d moved out west, and I was going through my period of awakening and angst. I was a budding bohemian-radical and he indulged me by opening up his own vault of dissidence. It was through him that I first heard the Marxian maxim, ‘religion is the opiate of the masses.’ We could slip easily into philosophy or literature or politics and often, usually, we shared similar views. Frequently, in the days after one of our late night conversations a book would arrive in the mail. A copy of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet or a book of William Blake’s poetry complete with tabs and notes he’d made for me in the margins, passages he’d underlined: ‘We are led to Believe in a Lie. When we see not Thro’ the Eye.’ Sometimes, and never often enough, he’d type up his own thoughts on a particular subject matter we’d spoken about and send them my way. His favorite preoccupation in these "random musings" as he called them was this notion of living in the moment, of being completely and entirely present in order to experience an elevated awareness of life.

Despite my intentions to the contrary, I hunted for signs of his illness. I didn’t want to hear it, to be made aware of it, but it was the car wreck I couldn’t turn away from. He was limiting his vocabulary to concrete, simple terms. He was fumbling through his sentences. That something was terribly wrong was plain. Nevertheless, I sensed that it was as much a comfort for him to talk as it was for me to listen. Just as he needed to feel as though he wasn’t losing his mind, I needed to hear the sanity in his voice. I naively believed that we could talk this thing through as if it were a glitch in a hard-drive that could be mended over the phone. And like an aging athlete who believed he still has the juice in the tank, he seemed determined to prove that the glitch hadn’t gotten the best of him yet.

My uncle Jack called the next day. I could hear his voice cracking through the line. He’d spoken to my father five minutes earlier. He said, ‘Your dad sounded out of it.’ The whole family had been contacted; everyone was speculating. A stroke? A brain aneurysm? A tumor?

‘Dax, I’m flying out tonight. I think you should get a ticket as well,’ he gravely added.

That was when I accepted that the last conversation I’d had with my dad was no dream or test or anomaly– whatever he had wasn’t just going to pass in time. My dad, the rock, was sick and in my uncle’s words ‘needed me.’

The next three days were, as one can imagine, a blur. The MRI revealed a tumor this size of a golf ball and the doctors still didn’t know if it was malignant or benign. I let my job know I needed a couple of days off and wrapped up my affairs. Sleep became a luxury as my phone lines tied up with a string of nightly calls. Everyone who called was in tears or on the verge. Partly as a cover and partly because it felt like the thing people needed most from me, I adopted my father’s easy going attitude. ‘We don’t know the full story yet,’ I said to them all. ‘And anyway, we’re not going to deal with negativity. Dad doesn’t want that. He wants positive vibes so let’s do that for him.’

And I did. All the way to the airport in the bleak blackness of a stormy night. All the way across three thousand miles of American soil. In my mind I told myself nothing had changed. My dad was still my dad and I was still his son. He was still breathing so why couldn’t I try making the best of it? Why couldn’t we look beyond the moment and revel in in one another’s company? A good year was me seeing my dad twice. Once in the summer when he made his annual sojourn east for the family fish fry held at his baby sister’s house in Richmond. And once for work. For four and a half hours I comforted myself with blinding optimism. When the ‘What ifs’ did start creeping in as the plane flew over the flat farmlands outlining Sacramento County and the pilot announced that he was starting his descent I beat back the impulse to pity myself, my dad, our whole goddamned situation with a fury only sudden tragedy can produce. Whatever happened he wasn’t a victim, I told myself. And I wasn’t either.

I spot them at the bottom of the escalator, two middle aged brothers fast approaching their senior years. One brown and round with a hard won sadness around his droopy eyes: uncle Jack; the other the color of white corn, lean from the waist down, his eyes tucked behind a pair of ten dollar shades: my father Last time I’d seen uncle Jack he was in a hospital bed fighting back tears as the family, dad included, surrounded him like a crescent moon. He was recovering from a second bout of cancer. That was only four months ago. Uncle Jack grabs me and gives me a bear hug. Then he apologizes for his appearance. The medication, combined with lack of exercise, combined with his longstanding love of fatty foods have ravaged his body. He’s embarrassed by a stomach that barrels over his belt and by his chins that cloud out his neck.

Dad hugs me next. He pulls on my lengthening locks and looks over my baggy jeans and loose fitting sweat shirt.

‘Guess this is it, huh? I can forget about you ever wearing a Brooks Brothers suit.’

‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat,’ I reply. ‘You taught me that.’

He demurred, patted me on the shoulder. ‘That’s true. You’re just being you.’ Then he smiles again, shows all of his straight strong sparkling teeth and says, ‘That’s all right.’

Our first stop is by dad’s office. There are leave papers to sign and a cubicle to clean out. The office is vacant. Everyone’s out to lunch. Dad dumps all of his belongings into a shopping bag like a hasty thief. Meanwhile, I look at the office photos on the message board outside of his cubicle. He’s in two of them. In both he’s smiling awkwardly as if someone told him to say ‘cheese’ then couldn’t get the camera to work properly. His peppery mustache overlaps his top lip a little, his bald head radiates against the instant camera flash. I can’t help but see a man apart, on his own. Even among others he looks solitary. On the way out we pass a colleague. Dad reaches his hand out and keeps moving like he’s got somewhere to be. A few steps later, when the colleague is a safe distance away, he turns and with this wry grin on his face says, ‘Someone must’ve tipped people off.’

‘Why?’ Uncle Jack asks.

‘You didn’t notice the way he was looking at me? As if I was a dead man walking?’

I hadn’t, but then again I can’t see the world through his eyes; nor can I begin to penetrate the depth of his present perception.

With the papers all expeditiously signed we head to the door. Before we get there, a pudgy Hindu pokes his head around the corner of the drab office-space wall and approaches us with an affectionate grin. He does not wait for my dad to greet him. He opens his arms and embraces him. This must be the associate dad often speaks about in our late night conversations, I think. ‘The Indian fella’ he talked about religion with. I picture the two of them, a not too unlikely pair in this part of the country, going out for long lunches where they engage in deep dialogues about the essence of being and I am happy for my dad. California has been good for him. It has allowed him to open another chapter in his life. Given him the chance to explore a greater depth of his consciousness.

------

The thing with my uncle started almost as soon as I got off the plane. This...this obsessive repeating of the game plan. Before we’d even left the airport parking lot I’d already been debriefed twice on the exigencies of the situation. I’d been given a complete rundown of the day’s plans, the following day’s plans and even the third day’s plans. When he ran out of stuff to tell me he waited a moment, let the engine’s roar dominate the conversation. Either that or the melancholy melodies swimming through the speakers of my dad’s old Mercedes. Then he’d start again. At 3:00 we had to meet with the doctor. At 4:30 we had to meet with a guy who’d drawn up some power of attorney papers. After that we had to get my dad back home so he could take the steroid pill the doctor’s had prescribed. (The pill kept the swelling down temporarily and allowed him to function close to normal. But it wouldn’t last long. In a couple of weeks the tumor would be too big for the steroid to have an affect.) After the pill, there were phone calls to make.

Uncle Jack was in relief mode. His role was as the crisis management expert in the family. Jack was the sibling who stayed behind in Richmond with my grandparents, the one who took care of them when they were ill. The one who wrapped up their affairs when they passed away. He’d married once, but only for a brief time. He’d never had kids. He’d lived in the family house for most of his adult life. Before his battles with cancer, he’d worked at the post office for over twenty years. He was brilliant, but something held him back, wouldn’t allow him to reach his potential. I’ve always thought it had something to do with Vietnam. Growing up I had always been aware of Jack’s years in the service. In recent years he had even begun searching me out at reunions for a quiet man to man moment where he’d tell his war stories. Not the tales of killing and raping and the hypocrisy, which he knew of. But of the Vietnamese people he had shared his most memorable and life altering years amongst. Jack told these stories as though they were the finest days and nights of his life. Being called ‘Number One G.I.’ by a housekeeper he sometimes assisted. The time an old woman warned him of a planned bombing of an artillery bunker in Denang. I listened closely when he told these stories because I knew in his own way he was trying to explain what had happened to him over there.

------

When we were on the phone the night he broke the news my dad said that the remarkable part about his illness was that he had simultaneously reached a spiritual pinnacle. Said he wasn’t worried because he’d seen something that was greater than words. Said not to think he was losing his mind or pretending.

‘Please don’t mistake me, son,’ he said.

And I said, ‘I’m not dad.’

And he said, ‘I’m not crazy.’

And I said, ‘Of course you aren’t.’

He didn’t want his family to worry about anything because he knew, now, that life as we know it is but a cycle. A weigh station. A transitory grounds for experience. ‘The soul travels through earth in order to understand itself,’ he said.

2

You walk into a waiting room and you sign your name on the list and you have a seat and you watch the sick people pass back and forth— carrying oxygen tanks and catheter bags, in wheelchairs or on crutches, with the weight of their years dimming their eyes and bending their backs— and then you close your eyes and try to get some sleep but you’re only fooling yourself so you read everything in sight— signs you’d never pay attention to, magazines articles you’d never waste your time with— and then you use the bathroom because waiting can be just unbearable. Nothing comes out at the john but you push harder on your pelvis, squeeze every last drop of available liquid out of your penis. Then you wash your hands and stare at yourself in the mirror when no one’s looking, wondering how you got to be standing there when just the other day....just the other day you were a kid. Even when you thought you were grown you were still a kid. Because nothing compares to this.

And then, of course, when you get back the waiting room is empty. They’ve gone in without you.

-----

The doctor cuts straight to the chase: ‘It’s not pretty,’ she says, ‘but it’s real.’ She has a face I know I’ll forget ten minutes after we walk out of the office. A face that’s meant to express nothing, that’s meant to be erased from memory for her own sake. The flatness in her voice will echo in me for weeks to come, though. She cares, that much I don’t deny or doubt. I understand and accept that when you’re dealing with disease and death for a living you have to find a way to cope, to deal, to stay in the fight. Hers is a matter of leaving her emotions at the doorstep. It’s the only way she can help people. Tell it to ‘em straight. Give ‘em the low down. The worst case scenario, which in our case is death in three to six months, and let them decide whether to fight or not.

‘How will they treat the tumor?’ my dad asks, his voice tense and terse and brittle like hollowed out wood.

The doctor doesn’t have a straight answer. There could be surgery. And the surgery could leave him even more impaired. There could be chemo or radiation. She’s not the one to make that decision. There are other specialists whose job it is to treat the cancer. Her job is merely to diagnose it. ‘Just smile for us,’ I think. ‘Just once. Just say, in passing even, within a few months he might be as good as new. Back to work. Healed. Tell us the story of someone who was even worse off who fully recovered. Give us hope goddammit!’

Instead she talks to dad like he’s already degenerated into a feeble minded old man, choosing simple words, speaking them slow like he’s deaf and reading her lips, like she’s a patronizing librarian: ‘Now Claude, can you tell me what this is?’ she says holding up a pen!

Dad just looks at her like she’s the basket case and smiles congenially, his southern manners withholding his frustrations. ‘I don’t mean to be rude but you don’t have to talk to me that way.’

She sits up, alert now, and yet totally oblivious. ‘What way?’

He can’t find the word: condescending.

Uncle Jack comes to his aide. ‘I think what he means to say is he understands everything that’s taking place, so you don’t have to talk like...’

‘Like he’s a child,’ she says finally. The doctor’s eyes rapidly flicker between Jack and I. She looks right past my father’s hungry eyes. ‘I just want to be sure he understand the seriousness of his illness, that if it goes untreated it will kill him very soon.’

After we leave the hospital we drive the sprawling Sacramento avenues with their strip malls, ten minute lube job joints and five minute car washes, listening to dad’s remarks about the changes he’s witnessed over the last eight years.

‘None of this was here,’ he says every half-mile or so. ‘All of this is new.’ Then he slips back into his silence.

‘It must’ve been like driving through a new frontier back then. Before the chains got wind of things,’ I say, eagerly hoping to spark a light-hearted conversation.

‘Yeah, and there was never this kind of traffic.’

‘Compared to what I’m used to back east this is light stuff.’

‘I know. I know. It’s just that things have changed so much in such a brief period of time.’

‘Eight years is a long time, dad. Galen’s graduating from high school this year. He was nine when you moved out here. I was twenty. Now I’m pushing up on thirty.’

He falls back into silent mode and I let him be. I gaze at the unimpeded expanse. The pink and purple sky that seems close enough to grasp. I drift along with the odd conglomeration of kids riding their bikes along the eight lane avenues, highways really, as though they’re cruising through a tree-lined neighborhood. Besides the earthquakes, the distances between ‘here’ and ‘there’ in California is its lone drawback. That people are beholden to their automobiles is criminal. That children have no place in this place is a shame. They know no other way of life, though. Certainly not the life my dad and Jack knew when they were growing up in Richmond. Not even the one I had growing up in D.C., which isn’t the south or the north, but a little bit of both. This is something altogether different. A different America that dad always dreamt about, a place less impeded by the historical baggage of race. Which explains why he came here in the first place.

The light changes and the diesel jerks off the line and I’m suddenly back in the gloomy present next to my dad who looks healthier than ever, but who we just discovered has a fatal disease crawling around in his head, and his brother who has his own maladies, mainly a metal shunt running from his pituitary up through his skull. Without it he’d be dead.

Suddenly Jack is at it again: ‘I figure we can get the power of attorney papers signed in the next day. Also, we can get the Advanced Medical Directive and get that signed. Then all we have to do is notarize everything. We can probably get copies at the bank. They do that kind of stuff, right? Once all that’s taken care of we can get copies sent to your father’s job, his doctors, you, me. Also, remind me to call the family. Dax, do you think you can make a few calls?’

He goes on like this for another ten minutes, but I phase him out because otherwise I might start to comprehend the gravity of the situation, again.

------

Little brother hugs me. He stands up from his chair in front of his computer which is surrounded by old cans of soda, pizza boxes and hard ass muffins, not to mention clothes, and he smiles. Then he squeezes me and says he had an idea I was coming. Obviously, no one had thought to tell him.

‘I suppose that’s why you didn’t bother cleaning up around here.’

‘It is a little messy.’

‘Looks like you’re already prepared for college.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Galen’s not talkative. Never has been. Jack is worried about him. Worried that he’s internalizing everything instead of expressing his feelings. I’ve been given the assignment of engaging him, seeing where his head is at. ‘You’re really going to have to clean this room if you expect me to sleep in here.’

He gets right to work. Throws his clothes in the basket and hauls them to the living room. Comes back with a trash bag for the cans. Meanwhile, I’m wondering where the time has gone again. How he’d grown up without me knowing. His room has quite suddenly become the domain of a teenager. Television tuned to MV, computer screen beaming a video game, carousels of illegally burned CDs, school books scattered around the floors, cereal bowls on top of bookshelves.

After he cleans up I ask him if he is hungry. He shrugs. Galen has never cared much for food, which explains his slim build. Even as a baby he picked more than he ate. Really, I just want to get him alone so we can talk. We go for Mexican.

‘Really, I’m not worried,’ he says while we wait for our order. ‘He’ll pull through. Besides I just don’t see what worrying is going to accomplish. A guy at my school went through something similar. His father had a tumor. He pulled through.’

I don’t tell him what the doctor told us. I just listen and then we head back home. Jack is asleep in the Lay-Z-Boy when we get back. He has to sleep sitting up from now on, otherwise fluid might fill his brain and kill him. His snoring is outrageous.

Dad is at his computer.

‘Whatchu doin’? I ask

‘Oh, just some work for this guy. Something I promised him.’

I go into Galen’s room and find him working on a book report on Cireno De Bergiac. I play the interested big brother role: What’s your thesis? When is it due? How long does it have to be? Then I pass out on the floor. When I wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom I notice the glow of the computer screen radiating from the living room. It’s dad. He’s still plunking away. Still lost inside his work where’s he’s most comfortable, where he can still be in control, where he feels safe and secure. I think better of telling him to go to bed. This is his way, though. He’s got loose ends to tie up and so long as he’s capable he’s determined to keep his word. It’s up to me to respect that.

------

The sickness became much more real to us over the next two days. It seemed that Jack was on the phone with one person or another from sun-up to sundown. He had pages of notes with phone numbers written on them scattered around the living room table. He was getting everything in order, he said. Making sure his brother was secure in case anything did happen. Jack fielded the calls that came in like a switch board operator. Then he filled dad in afterward. When we went to the bank Jack and I did all of the talking and my dad just sat at the end of the table and signed whatever he was told to sign. In the mornings when Galen had to be to school, Jack took him. Jack would also remind dad of any medicines he needed to take. There was another trip to the hospital too. This time to get the Advanced Medical Directive so that I could make all of the decisions regarding my father’s fate should it come to that. It all seemed so premature, so heavy, especially since dad could still function, but Jack insisted. ‘It’s best to put everything in order now rather than wait until it can’t be done.’

Although Dad didn’t say much during these two days, I noticed a change in him. He seemed a little less sure of himself, a little embarrassed. Once when we were walking down the street on a rainy afternoon he said he could feel people looking at him funny, as if they could tell something was wrong. As evidence he pointed to the way one guy looked at him in the office and the way another guy looked at him on the street. There were other alleged incidents. Bank attendants. Doctors. Store clerks. ‘I feel stupid,’ he finally said, agitated.

‘Dad,’ I said, reassuringly, ‘you’re just projecting right now. No one can tell anything is wrong with you.’

That didn’t seem to give him much comfort, however. His mood only seemed to worsen. When, on my third night in town, I tried cajoling him out of the house for dinner he flat out refused. He didn’t give me a reason and I didn’t ask for one. I knew what was going on. The very basis of his life had been his independence, his intellect, his self-control and his confidence and now that was all being taken away from him. What was worse, perhaps, was that he couldn’t understand why any of this was happening. It just didn’t make rational sense to him. He tried his best to formulate plausible hypotheses to explain the growth. Was it the cell phone? The microwave? It appeared that despite the spiritual evolution he’d been going through in recent years, he was still fundamentally a scientific man who he wanted scientific answers.

-----

Dad spreads his legs along the couch and looks up at the ceiling. He and I are alone in the living room. Uncle Jack has gone to pick up dinner and Galen is in his room.

He says, ‘I wish I could explain to people what I’m experiencing. It’s almost..almost—

‘Surreal.’

‘That’s it! Surreal. On one level I’m dealing with this thing fucking up my goddamn brain...’ He turned to me quickly.

‘What’s it’s called again?’

‘A tumor.’

‘Yes! Shit! The words! I just keep dropping these words. Words I’ve know a hundred goddamn years.’ Silence. ‘But then, on the other hand, I feel this tremendous sense of peace. What I am discovering is that most of life is horrible. You look around you and all you see is people suffering. I guess I never looked around before.’

‘Usually we need something catastrophic to happen before we can begin to see the tragedy around us.’

‘That’s true. And I suppose I’ve been running around the last forty years making money and rasing children. But now, quite suddenly, I have this sense that whatever happens I’ll be fine. I’m not worried at all. It’s weird, man. It’s as if we walk around thinking we’re going to be here forever and the simple fact is we’re not. And that’s fine. I’m okay with that. As a result of what’s happening I’ve gained a different perspective.’

‘And what exactly is it?’

‘It’s hard to explain, but it’s almost as if I’m operating on a different plane. I’m seeing things that I cannot put to words because they are not meant to be put to words.’

‘But dad you sound as if you’re ready to die.’

‘It’s not death. Not really. It’s passing onto another stage. It’s so obvious to me that this is only a transitory state. That there are higher levels of experience that the body is not privy too, but that the soul is. This world we live in is deeply flawed so should I want to continue on here. If it’s my time it’s my time.’

‘It’s not your time yet. You’ve still got a lot of living left to do.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

We let it drop at that. Put on one of his classic films and sat back to watch.

As soon as Jack returns with the food he starts on the phone calls to family members. Then on the situation. He speaks to the family as though dad is another room:

‘He’s holding up. I’m just a little concerned about him driving around on his own at this point. He could have a seizure.’

And later,

‘We’ve got the P.O.A. taken care of. We got it to the bank and to his job. Everything is in Dax’s name should anything happen he’ll make the decisions.’

The calls eventually drown out the movie and finally dad gets up and leaves the room.

------

He sleeps on a twin bed. His walls are bare except for a picture of outer space taken by the Hubble Spacecraft. It isn’t large, but it says a lot about him. He’s always wanted to elevate his mind to the higher things. His letters were mostly about that quest: the books he was reading, the concepts he was tinkering with, the religions he was sort of following. The worldly things, the things others aspire to, had become irrelevant to him. Give him the necessities and he’s happy. A few clothes hanging in his closet, a laptop he bought used on E-Bay by his bed, a 13 inch television for the movies he likes to watch in bed, a dresser to discharge his change, a stack of half-filled journals. I stop there. I don’t open those.
It’s early on my fourth day. Dad and Jack have gone out for a quick errand. They left me behind to finish getting ready. I came into dad’s room looking for the iron. I don’t know, his life saddens me for some reason. It seems vacant. Deprived. He never really traveled. Never developed any particular indulgences except books perhaps. No eccentricities I’m aware of. He’s a man who takes care of his youngest son. A man who has mastered his wants and desires. A man who lives, now, almost entirely inside of a brain that is now being eaten up by a disease. All of his life he’s cultivated his mind with the hope that one day he would have a better understanding of the human experience.

Yes, it’s very sad indeed.

But to him it isn’t. And that’s what makes it hardest for me. He’s content with his simple life of work and reading and observing. He never thinks about buying new furniture or that what he has doesn’t match. That his bathroom has the feel of a temporary residence inhabited by someone who in a moment’s notice could pack up his belongings and be gone. I believe he likes this transient lifestyle, though. It’s part of the whole California illusion for him. No boundaries. No burdens. California was his starting point for a new life. He’d had all of the houses and the furniture and the cars and the everything else when he was on the east coast. He left all of that and drove to California. Left his business. Left his family. He didn’t even have a job lined up out here. He lived in a hotel for a month. He worked as a salesman at Sears to make ends meet at first. This was a man who ran his own business for almost twenty years. A man who was making six figures in the 1980s.

I find an old photo album. One of those twenty photo framed ditties that capture snapshots of a life in no particular sequence. Photos taken three years ago are pasted next to photos taken thee decades ago. I wonder why he keeps the album tucked away on the floor of his closet behind an old weight bench. Why he doesn’t put his family on display like most people? But then I stop myself. With my dad there’s always a rational explanation. This one was probably something as simple as, ‘I like it in here.’

------

It was the first definite sign. We were in his bedroom at the time. Uncle Jack was in the living room. Galen was still sleeping. He was at the computer as he always seemed to be, hunkered over it like it was a T.V. dinner. All around lay scattered papers, most having to do with his accounts. He wanted me to see where everything was. How it all worked. So I was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder as he explained it all as best he could.

‘It’s all right here on the television,’ he said, pointing to the computer screen. I knew what he meant to say. I didn’t bother correcting him. ‘All you have to do is get online, punch in my account information and boom.’ He pressed the enter key and his account history spread out before me. I suddenly knew his financial profile. How much he spent each month. How much he had put away. Things that, for whatever reason, I’d never wanted to know.

The trouble came when he tried closing an E-Trade account. He couldn’t remember the account’s password or, for that matter, his social security number. He tried every conceivable sequence he could think of and still nothing.

‘Maybe we should just call them,’ I suggested gently. ‘I’m sure we can get that information over the phone.’

‘I already did,’ he replied. Then he looked away, through the blinds screening out the back window where the telescope he used to look at the stars stood. ‘They goddern operator was talking too fast, you know. It was one of those voice recordings and I couldn’t punch in my account information fast enough.’ He stopped, shook his head.

‘Want me to try?’

‘Go ahead.’

As tough as it likely was for him to watch me solve the problem with ease, it was just as tough for me to recognize that my dad wasn’t the same anymore. That our roles were reversing. That over the next few months I would have to watch him get much worse than this. It was all very bleak that sunny California morning. But it was necessary.

------

‘So, what do you plan on studying in college?’

‘I don’t know. Probably something with technology.’

‘What are you passionate about? What would you do even if no one paid you?’

As the days pass I find myself retreating to my brother’s room with more frequency. We eat pizza, play video games, and watch movies. Our conversations are sporadic and are always elicited by my urge to play the big brother role.

‘When I went away to college I was clueless. I just went through the motions of applying, taking the S.A.T and waiting to hear back. You want to know something. I wanted to go to Miami, but I was too afraid to go that far away.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ he says bluntly.

‘Maybe fear wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was nervousness.’

‘I’m not nervous.’

I look over at him, his eyes glued to the screen, his fingers twitching with the automatic impulses as he maneuvers a virtual man through a dark corridor, shooting and stabbing everything in sight. What is the point of this game, I wonder? Where does it lead? Or is that not even the point? Is my little brother really so sure about himself? Or is he just another kid who thinks he can handle anything?

‘You know if you need to talk about anything you can always call me.’

‘I know.’

------

Another night. Another round of phone calls. Uncle Jack lumbering to the telephone to carry out his duties. That he loves his brother can never be questioned. Less than four months ago he was laid up in his own hospital bed. If only he took care of himself as well he took care of everyone else.

As soon as Jack starts dialing dad stands up and walks to his bedroom and closes his door. This is his nightly ritual.

As good and decent as Jack is I wish he was more sensitive to my father’s emotions. He’s not entirely to blame, though. My father has spent his life bottling his emotions away so that now it’s quite easy to believe that he doesn’t have them at all. That he can endure the persistent reminders issued by Jack about his condition and can stave off the anxiety of not knowing what exactly is to come.

Two hours pass before my father’s bedroom door opens. And then he’s standing before us in his underwear and his t-shirt, the tufts of hair on the side of his head standing up as though he’d been attempting to sleep but couldn’t. I know even before he says a word what’s to come:

‘I don’t like what’s going on around here! I don’t like being treated like a goddamn freakin moron! You have these conversations about me as if I’m not even here! Like I don’t understand what’s going on! My brain might be a little confused right now but I’m not an idiot!’

‘No one’s saying that Claude.’

‘I’m not done!’ Dad snapped back. ‘Now what we’ve got is a situation that none us understands or can do a damn thing about! You here me. Ain’t none of us doctors! The only people that can help me right now are the experts! They’re the only ones! And we haven’t heard from them either way so what I would appreciate would be if we all just cooled out! Right now I feel like a visitor in my own damn home!

Dad calmed a bit. ‘Bottom line is this: I’m sick. If I’m going to die then so be it. I’m not worried about that. That’s what everyone needs to understand. What bothers me is all of the buzzing around me.’

‘But Claude people just care about you.’

‘I understand all that and I appreciate their concern, but right now the only thing you all are doing is making things worse. I wish I hadn’t even said anything.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous Dad,’ I said.

‘I’m serious. I’da been better off if I just told my doctors and kept everyone else in the dark. Woulda saved me a lot of stress.’

‘But this isn’t just about you Claude.’

The phone rang and before Jack could lift out of the Lay-Z-Boy, dad answers it. I hate admitting it, but he looked almost feeble-minded standing before us in his Fruit of the Loom underwear, his skinny legs shooting from his drawers like a pair of peeled bananas, air where a butt used to be. We don’t know who’s on the other end of the line, but whoever it is has succeeded in calming him down. Meanwhile, Jack turns to me with a pain-stricken look on his face.

‘What did I do wrong?’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ I say, lying, hoping to stave off a guilt session.

He goes on, though. ‘I just wanted to get things in order before you and I have to head back. That was my mission before I got out here.’

‘I understand...’ I hesitate.

‘Go on, say it,’ he urges.

‘I just think you’ve got to learn how to shut off for a while. You get into emergency relief mode and, well, you don’t let up. Like this morning for instance–

‘What about this morning?’

I explain how as soon as I woke up he shoved a stack of papers in front of me and started running down the ‘to-do’ list. ‘It can just be a little overwhelming sometimes.’

He scratches the stubbled on his chin and lifts his heavy eyes to the ceiling. ‘Maybe you’re right, Dax. But that’s just the way I’ve had to be. I was there when our mother died and then when our father died. I feel like I’ve seen so much death these past few years. Then, I’ve got my own problems. To tell the truth it’s a miracle I’m still sitting here. Granted I’m falling apart, but I’m still here. The only way I’ve been able to get through it all is by being honest about the situation and dealing with it step by step. Before I went to have my surgery this summer I remember standing on the porch and thinking, ‘This might be it. I might not walk away from this one.’ That’s my way.’

‘But don’t you see how gloomy that way is?’

‘It’s the only way I know, it was the same way in ‘Nam. I had to accept death in order to keep on living. The only people who survive are the ones who can come to terms with their mortality. And as strong as your dad is. As much as he’s seen in his life. He’s never dealt with anything like this. He’s about to go to war and he has to understand that. What’s more, no one else is going to be able to see him through. If he wants to live he’ll live. If not...’

‘So you’re just...’

‘I’m just trying to get him to understand that his life is about to change dramatically. Once he starts the treatment it could really get bad. He won’t be able to do much at all. It might get so bad that he’s going to need someone to help him get dressed. Someone to help him take showers. The only way he’s going to make it through that is if he’s strong.’ Jack suddenly stops talking and rests his head on the recliner, waves it back and forth. ‘Want some advice kiddo. Don’t get old unless you can handle it because getting old ain’t for the faint of heart.’

------

I wake up the morning of my departure before the sun. Through the blinds in my little brother’s room I watch the grey melt into a powdery pink somewhere in the distance. Above me I can hear my brother sleeping. On the floor sits a piece of cold pizza and a half-full bottle of orange soda. He’s still got his clothes on. The television is on too, though the sound has been muted.

I don’t want to go. I want to stay and be there for both of them– my brother and my father. I want to stop my life and give it over to them for the next six months. I want to put everyone on my shoulders, to carry them for as long as it’s necessary. But after my conversation with Jack I know it’s time for me to go. My sister arrives today. My aunt arrives tomorrow. Arrangements have already been made for my other sister and two of my other aunts to fly in a week from now. Dad’s in good hands. So, life doesn’t stop for any of us. I’ve got responsibilities back east. This is my dad’s fight. I’ll be in his corner, but he must go into the ring. I can only hope he has the enough will to live left in him, enough reason to keep going.

Time passes on the floor. My back begins to ache from sleeping here night in and night out. I could’ve pulled rank on little brother, but what for? This is his room, his life. I’m just passing through. I must accept the imminence of my departure. It was important that I came out here as quickly as I did. It was important that I showed my dad how much I love him. Now I must do the hardest thing: Let go. Walk away. Get on a plane and fly back home. And not only that, I have to smile again. I have to love again. I have to accept the hand that’s been dealt and play it. Like Sisyphus. Like a battered battalion. We can not choose when we will go, only how: On our knees or on our feet.

Then there is a knock on the door, followed by a voice, my father’s: ‘You up?’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve already made breakfast. We should head for the airport in about an hour.’

I imagine the ride, the long, flat plains lined with farmland and newly built homes. Cardboard boxes stuck in the middle of nowhere. On a stretch of American nothingness. I hear the roar of the diesel engine along a barren stretch, the silence wafting between dad and I. His eyes behind the pair of ten dollar shades. His straw hat perched atop his radiantly bald head. His mouth stern and resolved. He’ll ask me how I am for money. He’ll tell me to take care of myself. Eat right. He’ll hug me warmly at the airport. He’ll drive off before I step inside the terminal. And that will be it. The last time I’m guaranteed to see dad as dad. When I see him again it’ll all be different: we’ll be different.

I cry now so I won’t have to cry then. I cry quietly so my little brother isn’t awakened. I wipe the tears even before they touch my cheek, while they’re still bobbing in my lids. I clinch my teeth together and focus on the sun. I must let it come out of me now. Not later. Not when it is too late. At least now I can get up. Take a shower. Get dressed. And still take that ride.