My dad had been drinking all day long, apparently in an even larger quantity than normal. He had peed so much that there was a fairly large puddle pooling around his feet. He was in a deep sleep, snoring so loudly that the walls of my apartment seemed to be vibrating.
I felt a strange combination of pity mixed with anger. I knew that my father was still grieving the loss of my mother. They had been together since they were in college. My mother had always been the one to look after him, me, and anyone else who needed her help. So, when she died from cancer, despite the many rounds of chemotherapy that she held out high hopes of working, we were all devastated.
But no one took it harder than my dad. He stayed holed up in their house for months, refusing to talk to anyone, even me. It wasn’t until the bank took possession of the house for non-payment, after my mother passed away, that we connected. And it wasn’t even him who reached out. It was one of our neighbors, Mrs. Green, who called me to tell me that she saw the police carting my father away as he tried to fight them while the sheriff’s department was putting all of my family’s belongings out on the curb.
I went to the police station to pick him up. I’ll never forget how he looked, like a kid waiting for their mom to retrieve them from detention. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes looked so sad. He barely looked at me at all when I told him that I was there to get him. He just slowly and silently stood up and walked over to my car. I told him that he would have to stay with me at my house for a little while until we figured things out. Again, he didn’t protest.
As I was about to start up the car and pull off, a police officer came running to my vehicle. He got my attention and asked me to step outside of the car so that he could talk to me.
“Is there something wrong, officer?” I asked politely.
“Actually, yes. I was one of the arresting officers at your dad’s house. You may not remember me, but we graduated high school together.”
I looked at him more closely, trying to see if I could recognize him underneath all the facial hair. I couldn’t place him.
“You probably know me better as Dickie.”
“Oh, my God! Yes!” He was the little brother of my childhood friend, Stephanie. He used to torture us with his pet frog, letting it out whenever we would be in Stephanie’s room trying to play. Whenever we would see the frog, we would hightail it out of the bedroom, screaming, only to find him snickering by the door.
“How have you been?” I asked, leaning over to hug him.
“I’m good. Thanks for asking. I was glad that I was on the scene when we got the call. Michelle. If I hadn’t been there, they would have charged your father with assault and battery. He was wildly flailing his limbs at the female officer who was present and who was attempting to evict him. I had to beg her not to press charges. I knew he was just reacting badly in a very emotional situation, and not trying to actually harm her.”
I was shocked to hear this about my father because he had never so much as raised his voice, let alone responded with violence. I guessed he was determined not to go down without a fight, as foolish as that thought was.
“Wow. I appreciate you telling me that,” I said.
“No problem. I just wanted to let you know in case there was something else going on and he needed help. Is he okay? I heard about what happened to your mother.”
“I sure hope so,” I said.
But, I wasn’t too sure of what was going on with him.
I just wanted to help in any way that I could. Dad told me that he wanted to go back to his house, so I contacted the bank to see if we could work something out financially. After weeks of trying to recover the house from the bank, to no avail, we decided that the only option was for my dad to come and live with me. It felt like I didn’t have much of a choice. He was my dad, after all, and I didn’t want to see anything bad happen to him. But shortly after moving in with me, he started drinking heavily.
When I first found him slumped over the toilet, sleeping in his own puke, I tried to talk to him, hoping that he would open up to me about how he was feeling. He wouldn’t. Instead, he attacked me and called me names. I ran out of the bathroom crying, cursing myself for even caring. I didn’t want things to get any worse, so I left him alone.
I cried myself to sleep that night as the realization set in that my father, the happy man who had raised me, was drowning in a sea of depression and there was nothing that I could do to help him.
So finding him that day covered in his own bodily fluids, was not anything that I hadn’t seen before. It was actually becoming the norm, sadly.
And while I was sad to see my dad this way, part of me was angry. I was angry that my mother was gone and had left me with this shell of a man. I was angry that I didn’t have the nerve to tell him to snap out of it. I was just angry at the whole situation and I wasn’t sure that things would ever get better. I came to the sad realization that I may be coming home to my father in a pool of vomit and urine until the day that he died.
While cleaning him up and having him fight me the entire time, I made my decision about the trip with the Bradfords. This was my chance to escape my reality for a little while, so I told Whitney that I would be happy to join them on their trip. It would be a welcome distraction I thought, kind of like a vacation. God knows I needed one.