Dying From the Inside Out

My father is not a real person anymore. When his friend Bobby calls me to talk about him, he tells me about my father’s concerns, unconcerned. And he tells me that the person he really feels sorry for is his wife. His wife is dying of a kidney disease and so my father sees her same Chinese speaking kidney specialist for his brain. Because he can't be cured. And it wouldn't really matter if he saw a plumber or the best neurologist in the world. The outcome would be the same.

My father says his wife is mean to him, but Bobby says we can’t take him seriously. And still he feels sorry for his wife. My father told me he wants to divorce his wife but I told him to sit tight and not to leave Tennessee. He wants to drive his car, but he hasn’t because he doesn’t know that it's no longer his right.

He can't dress himself but he doesn't know that he can't dress himself. And he can't cook for himself. He's just a vessel that we have to keep alive so he can die.

When he calls us up to talk in circles, we only half listen; because we can’t follow what he can't follow. And I can’t confide in him though sometimes I still try. He’s not a real person anymore. His feelings don’t count and his experiences and perceptions can’t be trusted. The same paranoia and mistrust he felt his whole life, is the lens through which we are now all forced to view his cognitions, behaviors, and emotions.

Sometimes I think he knows what's going on because he will try wildly to remember every story about his life he ever wanted to tell; the time he was in an auditorium that collapsed, the Rolling Stones concert in college, the time he drove to Florida without sleeping for days. He frantically uses the pathways before they're burned out forever. Each new detail that he manages to convey is more evidence that his memory is working fine. So he sits proudly despondent in his brown leather chair and looks at the science channel and talks about how he wants to get another degree. He tells me there's nothing wrong with his head and Bobby is overreacting.

"I just hit it playing racquetball."

"I'm going to heal."

In his most lucid moments, he likes to talk about all the ways in which he was wronged by all his wives in all the decades of his life. But most days, my father can’t pay attention to a television program for more than ten minutes before his mind wanders off like an untrained dog. He flips conversation like he flips channels, jumping from thought to thought to thought. The plot to his own life; never ending and random, disconnected and jagged.

When he’s upset, no matter what the subject matter, we all know the culprit. His emotions and experiences going forward will always be defined by the obstructions in his head. His perception now a disease. A broken brain is the knife through everything he was. And when he’s excited or happy, it's just as distressing, because it makes it so he can’t sleep at night. We tell him to just take a pill because we don’t know how else to deal with what’s happening to him. My father is disappearing. I’m watching his hardware slowly corrupt. Soon, I’ll be able to see him but my father won’t be inside. My father is not a real person anymore.

My father is dying.