Variations on Death - 11. Goodbye, Father

How did I feel when my father died? The truth is I felt some relief. I loved my father, but his mind was not all there anymore. Age, dementia, mental illness, and stroke had taken their toll upon his once active mind. Some twenty years ago, we had ceased to really communicate well, like we used to in the glorious past, after his worst breakdown, the one that terminated his marriage to my mother. I still talked to him from time to time, but it was as though we spoke through a shortwave radio. There was a lot of noise. He could hear me, sometimes, perhaps, just barely, but not always understand, or even if understanding me, he was remote, and I could tell that I seemed remote to him, too, not really in the same room with him, but just an abstract idea, the figure of his son. Delusions great and small beset him all his days, and if I told him, this is not real, please do not pay attention to it, he would insist it was real, and I was mistaken, because he knew better.

Once I told him, you must not leave your wife, my mother, and go on this long journey you are talking about. You must take your medicine and you must seek help, because there is a danger, and you may not see it, but I see it and am telling you now, as a favor, a gift to you, because I love you, and you must hear me. She is thinking of divorce, although she has not told you, but she has good cause and she would be right. I tell you these things in all honesty to protect you. You must listen to me as you once did long ago. I know that you love me. You must remember me, recognize me for who I am, your son. See me as you once saw me, Father.

He laughed as though it were a joke, and I saw the demon had dominion over his mind, and nothing could persuade him against his plans. The next year, when he finally returned, he was divorced. She was loyal, good, and kind, but we all have our lives to lead, our precious lives that have only so many days, and we want to have good lives if we possibly can. What could I do but warn him of what I saw? When I called his psychiatrist and berated him for letting my father go unmedicated, I heard in reply a Psalm of Freedom, of Liberty, of the right to be as one is, even if society does not approve, as long as one is not a danger to others or oneself. Although I was enraged, even thinking wild thoughts, afterward in a cooler temper, I reasoned, maybe he is right, after all. Are we to be captors and would that be right?

Father lived alone, by choice, in perfect liberty, comfortable and insured, in the house of my birth as a recluse for twenty years. I checked on him from time to time. He told me his life was pleasant and that he was taking his medicine, really and truly this time, no fooling, although the medicine was not a cure, but it helped. He stayed out of trouble for the most part, and what trouble he did get into seemed more amusing, fuel for gossip, than dangerous. He was just a harmless old hermit living in an old house in suburbia among ten thousand books and dusty old photographs and paintings of the illustrious dead. He lived as long as his father had before him. If I live that long, I will be content.