Survival Mode

Maybe one day I’ll be able to cobble together a poem about what it’s like to listen to your dad weep while watching a YouTube “cozy ambiance” Christmas vignette and listening to Christmas music. I feel he’s being a tad dramatic. I mean no, I don’t believe he will last to Christmas, so yes, I understand he is crying knowing he won’t see another Christmas.

Which has always been my dad’s favorite time of the year.

Actually one of my favorite memories with him is a scene a bit like the one he’s watching. My dad liked (likes? He’s still alive but won’t be able to do this again) going out on Christmas Eve just to be among last minute shoppers. One year I was his “elf” assistant — we picked up a few things here and there, looked for a few wishlist items that were a “nice to have” but weren’t at the top of my brothers’ lists, but mostly we just strolled around enjoying the Christmas-ness.

And at the end, we stopped in at the Corner Bakery for hot chocolates. And like a scene out of a movie, it started to snow as we sat by the window sipping our hot cocoa.

If it had been my mom, she’d have freaked out about the roads and hurry we have to go before they get worse, but it was my dad. He just sat and watched and smiled.

Maybe I take it back. Now I feel shitty for thinking he was being a little dramatic about mourning himself not seeing another Christmas.

Dad has taught me how to indulge in what makes life fun. He overindulges, and I have too historically, because neither of us acquired the restraint and Catholic school discipline of my mother.

And sure, that overindulgence has often been detrimental – to my health, finances, whatever.

But sometimes it looks like not worrying about having anywhere to be before the roads get white with snow. Because what’s the point of Christmas if you get a chance to sit by a window sipping hot chocolate with your daughter (or dad) watching the snow fall while folks hurry along in their coats and scarves and hats and gloves, clutching their children and their shopping bags?

The YouTube video is currently playing O Holy Night.

Every second I don’t sit with him, I feel guilty.

This morning the first thing I saw in my dad was a grin that spread across his whole face and made it into his eyes.

Gypsy had snuck out of the room I’m sleeping in to check on Dad, but her tail was wagging and she was knocking the blinds on the sliding door around, which woke me up.

She was still doing it when I came out to get her. Dad was laughing.

That so rarely happens anymore, smiles that reach his eyes.

Dad said that when I’m not here he thinks I shouldn’t bring Gypsy back. He has gotten SUPER anal retentive over the littlest things being in perfect order, and in his mind, dogs = chaos.

Then she arrives and is the number one thing that gives him the BIGGEST smiles, and my mom (Not A Dog Person) told me “no, you WILL bring her.”

If I didn’t know what a crybaby she can be when it’s day 2 of being in someone else’s care thinking I’ve left her forever, I’d be tempted to let her stay here all the time. Lord knows she lights up my brothers, too.

Sometimes I think I’m handling all of this relatively well, all things considered.

But am I, really, if I’d be a total wreck if my dog weren’t by my side through it all?

Either way, I am grateful every day that I don’t have to find out. I’m more afraid of the day I lose Gypsy but won’t have Dad to call.

Last night Dad began crying telling me he’d been thinking about how no matter how I’ve looked over 36 years and 11 months, it hasn’t mattered, and wouldn’t matter, because he said he’s learned through all this that I’m “so deeply” — here, he made a motion like to the center of the Earth — “beautiful.”

He said his biggest regret in life was not appreciating every smile I’ve ever given him, or understood just how strong I was being to get through every single day with my depression and anxiety and ADHD, that he didn’t understand why I was the way I was.

Now that he’s had to confront the consequences of never learning how to cope with his own anxieties and anger and need to do things in a way that drives my mom crazy, he understands what a battle every day has been for me.

…Um, what?! Who are you and what have you done with MY dad?!

I never, ever thought that my dad would experience that level of empathy, especially not in as much pain and discomfort as he is in now. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and damn near asked myself if it was a waking dream I was having, hearing my father tell me exactly what I have needed to hear from him for… well, since forever.

He asks me sometimes, when he’s being idiosyncratic in some way or another, “is this an ADD thing?” (He always forgets the H.) And while it is never in the moments he’s being emotionally unregulated, the answer is still usually “absolutely yes.” Because it’s usually something like not being or able to concentrate if there’s a tissue on the floor, needing to arrange his little side table just so before he can relax.

Last night when he asked as he was obsessing over how everything he needs frequently was arranged so it was tidy but all within his reach, I told him, “You know what they say about college kids with ADHD. Their dorm room is never cleaner than when it’s midnight and they have a paper they haven’t started yet due at 9am.”

He genuinely chuckled at that, too. It seemed to surprise him, how funny he found it.

My whole life, I’ve told my dad stories hoping they’d make him laugh, or at least that he’d hear me, instead of it making him think of a time where there’s some story of his own he wants to tell me. I know I have a similar tendency, but my dad’s eyes visibly glaze over when he looks away thinking of his own story, no longer listening.

The biggest lie I tell about myself is that I rarely care what other people think of me. Because my dad is “other people.” I’ve just been desperately seeking, my whole life, his approval and admiration, the way he talks about his dad or fraternity brothers or even something I did twenty or thirty years ago.

The biggest lie I tell about myself is that I am not a people-pleaser.

Because even as I’ve become a person they never had a chance at becoming, if they would have ever wanted to before this experience, I have hoped against the logic of it that eventually they might be pleased by who I’ve become.

I am grateful to myself for at least ceasing to try to be who they wanted me to be, and instead trying to convince them that who I wanted to be is someone they should be proud of.

And I wish it had not taken til now for that to happen. But better late than never.