Yesterday was the 3rd anniversary of my father’s passing. We had a very mixed relationship. Good and bad. Growing up with a legally blind, type 1 diabetic father who had 2 herniated discs in his neck and back was hard. There were many times when I would have to call 911 for help because I couldn’t get Daddy’s blood sugar under control.
I was told that my father originally wanted my Mom to abort the pregnancy because he didn’t want children. That is why he got with my Mom because they both thought that she couldn’t have kids, well oops. I remember playing downstairs in the basement with Dad when Mom was upstairs complaining of a headache and what was turning into fibromyalgia. They divorce when I was 5 and I lived with Mom and the weekdays and Dad on the weekends. He bought me every toy I couldn’t want and we had lots of vacations. Every Saturday Dad and I would go out for our Saturday shopping. This consisted of taking a cap to the cleaners, the grocery store, the mall (where I would wait born out of my mind while Dad bought tons of clothing and shoes) blockbusters and McDonald’s. We normally left around 9 and didn’t get back till 12 or 1 ish.
My Dad would occasionally play with me but for the most part on the weekends I was on my own. He did love to watch me ride horses which I did on the weekends as well. As I got older my father became more verbally abusive. Telling me I was fat when I used food to compensate for having more responsibility with Mom. He would verbally abuse Mom in front of me and would go behind my back in school with my teachers to find out why I didn’t want to have a social life of living my life the way he wanted me to. When Randy came along things got really bad. Dad saw Randy as a threat that he was gonna take me away from him. He had more reasons to hate Randy because he was not Jewish or white collar.
My Mom passed in 2005 and when we were viewing her body, Dad went up to her and said she did this to herself cause she smoked all those cigarettes. I was given the option one day to stay with my father or be with Randy and I chose to be with Randy. I was disowned then.
I did try to reconcile with my father a few times but every phone call he was bashing Randy. So I stopped trying. We had no contact for 6-7 years and I had been written our of the will and later found out that Dad got rid of any evidence that he had a daughter that he could find.
About a year after Sammy was born I had a dream that Mommy and Grammy were telling me it was time to reconnect with my family and that included Dad. The next day I called my Aunt Sharon and was able to meet with her and my Pop Pop (both of whom I ran from because of their constant bugging for me to fix things with my father) I didn’t know how to facing things back then, I just knew how to run from them. So that weekend we went to my Dad’s house and I was horrified at what I saw. My father always was a buyer, I need 10 of this and 14 of that, but since I had been gone his vision and his herniated discs had declined even more so seeing and cleaning were very hard for him. But what Randy and I walked into was a disgusting house covered it dirt and a collection of things. This house could have easily been on Hoarders. It baffled me that there were pathways and that my in constant pain blind father was able to navigate this disaster. The once off-white linoleum of the kitchen floor was now caked with a brown coating and there were mounds of soap, gloves, jackets, shoes, talking watches, diabetic supplies all over the place.
I had to watch Sam around this house because there were open lancets my father couldn’t see to clean or throw out! I know if he could have seen what his house looked like he would have been disgusted. Aunt Sharon who had been helping my father in my absence and I tried to get him to hire a cleaner but my bigot of a father was too afraid that anyone would steal from him. Over the next few years I spent trying to make his house as livable as possible, I took him our every Friday and he got to know Sammy some.
He was still the cold man for of negativity and hatred but he was my father and of course, I still loved him, just as he still loved me. Even though he made me want to bang my head into the wall sometimes from his stubbornness I never regretted the 3 years I spent helping him. Towards the end though things were getting very bad for my father’s health. My father’s diabetes was getting out of control causing reactions and crazed episodes where he would break things or fall and hurt himself. Sadly Randy’s car had broken so he was using mine for the time being so I was unable to drive to see if my father was ok. I had made an arrangement with the neighbors that we would both call throughout the day to make sure my father was ok. I had tried multiple times to get him in assisted living and he flat out refused. I tried to get him a nurse to help him out and he refused. It got so bad with the paramedics coming 1 to 2 times a week that I tried to get social services involved, but my father was able to stop their efforts.
On Feb 20, 2014, Dad wasn’t answering my phone calls and neighbor the neighbors. They went over to see if he was ok and ended up calling the paramedics. They found him and they thought he was dead until they found a pulse and rushed him to the hospital. I got a ride to his house and was in awe at what I had found. He somehow had locked himself in the bathroom and had punched through the wall and then through the door in a whirl of diabetic confusion. It looked like someone had a sledgehammer and was just going to town. There was blood everywhere, the TV in his room was smashed to bits and it looked like a crime scene. I spent the day cleaning the house as best I could. I filled up 4 giant trash bags of stuff. If I had known how bad he was then I would have gone and seen him sooner but I wasn’t told till around 4pm. The hospital called me and finally told me that I should come in and see him that he was in very bad shape. Since he had fallen into a diabetic coma the circulation in his left leg had died and had now become necrosis. He needed surgery to remove his leg up to the hip joint to save his life, but there was one problem. His blood pressure was too unstable due to the dying leg poisoning his body to survive the surgery.
Randy left work and took me to see Dad. The man laying in bed was barely alive and looked nothing like the stubborn full of life man I had once known. I just couldn’t stay there I told him how much I loved him and kissed his cold lips avoiding all the tubes he was hooked up to. I walked out and was asked what my ruling on my father’s future was. I thought I wanted to do everything to save him but at the same time I knew that this man who had fought for his independence for so long would wish he had died being condemned to a wheelchair and constant care in a home, if by slim chance he should survive the surgery, which the doctors were 99% sure he wouldn’t. So I said to let him be. My father passed that night at 11pm.
As much of a burden that he was at the end of all of this and as much as he abused me and hated at Randy he was still my father and I love him with all my heart! I miss you Daddy and I know you are so much happier in heaven now.
