Jodi Meadows
I know how it is. Your parents are divorced, have been since you were four, and traveling between them is how you grew up. But now you’re a teenager with school, work, and practice, and you don’t have time to go back and forth. The days you used to visit Dad are now days you spend on your own, just doing your thing. Besides, Dad’s changed a lot in the last few years. Visiting him isn’t the same anymore.
Your dad is sick. You know it. You know about the alcoholism, the smoking, the diabetes, and the way he can get hurt by simply walking to the kitchen. You know he hasn’t been Dad since he lost his job; he can’t hold a new one, and his house is filthy. You know you don’t enjoy visiting him anymore.
Here’s what you’re not recognizing: He’s given up.
His kids aren’t kids anymore. The adult kids have kids of their own. You and your sister visit Dad sometimes. You clean the house. You hassle him about drinking too much and remind him that smoking will give him lung cancer one day. You complain with your sister that it doesn’t seem like he’s even trying anymore.
He’s not. He’s killing himself, and he doesn’t even care.
In a few years, you’ll get married and move away. You’ll try to talk to Dad on the phone, but you’ll be lucky if he answers. And toward the end—though you won’t realize it’s the end—you won’t be able to get hold of him at all. It’s going to make you angry. You’ll leave a lengthy voicemail about how he should answer the phone for his daughters if he wants to be involved in their lives.
You won’t hear from him until he’s found himself in the hospital, with cancer (yes, lung cancer) and a host of other problems. You won’t even have time to fly back home to see him. Your sister is going to put him on the phone. He’s going to sound heavily medicated (because he is), but you’ll tell him you love him and that he has to get better. All the anger, all the bitterness—it won’t matter anymore. You’ll let it go, because he’s your dad and you love him.
And that will be it. You’ll be on the phone with your dad, and he’ll be dying.
But you don’t know about all that right now. Right now, you’re frustrated. You know you’d rather just avoid the problem, and conveniently, that’s not too hard to do at the moment. You’ve actually got a lot of other very legitimate things taking up your time, like work and school and practice.
But I wish you’d go to see him a little more often. Talk with him. Remind him that you love him. There’s nothing you can do that will change the outcome. What happens to him is not your fault. It’s a horrible collision of depression, addiction, and resignation. You can’t change it, but you can give him a few more moments of happiness.
It may not seem like much right now, but in a few years you’ll understand that those moments of happiness can really make a difference.
Jodi Meadows lives and writes in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband, a cat, and an alarming number of ferrets. She is a confessed book addict who has wanted to be a writer ever since she decided against becoming an astronaut. She is the author of Incarnate (2012) and Asunder (2013). Visit her at JodiMeadows.com.