Loaded Questions

Hey Laura, how ya doin'??

Oh fine. Great. Wonderful.

Uh-huh. So - whatcha doin'?

Well, I'm sitting here, on my 3rd rather large glass of wine, watching the stupid last episode of stupid Sex & the City*, considering eating the leftover Chinese food that I'm supposed to take for lunch tomorrow and crying.

Um, is this a bad time?

Oh no, it's a great time. Really. Great. I'm fine. I'M FINE. FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!!!!!!!!! {sluuuurp}

Dude.

Ok, look. Tomorrow will be a week and maybe I've spent the last 6 days squish-squish-squishing things down so I could function. OK? I admit it. I admit that last night I distracted myself by getting my nails done and my eyebrows waxed and letting kiddo color my hair. I admit it. Tonight I took the kid for some beautification of her own (not that I think she needs it, because my kid is beautiful, but anything I do, she has to get done, because she is woman, watch her wax) and getting Chinese food and well, you know the rest. At some point, it would be great if my brain chose to distract itself with housework, but whatever.

Fair enough. Anything else?

Yeah. I'm pissed off, and I'm pissed off that it took the worst episode of SATC, EVER, to make me cry and make me realize how pissed off I am. I'm pissed off because apparently I read too many infertility and adoption blogs to be able to deal with the whole insta-baby from China thing. I'm pissed off that Carrie's supposed to be this strong, independent poster-child for feminism, yet in the end, she needs a man to rescue her. And I'm pissed off about the whole cancer storyline.

And it's so stupid. Breast cancer vs. cancer of the lymph system.** Fictional vs. Real. Whole host of shit vs. Whole host of other shit. But dude....my dad never got to wear designer wigs, never got to whip his wig off heroically while giving a speech about cancer. He didn't get to prance around, all sexy and healthy-looking during chemo, and he certainly didn't get to fuck some hot actress while a flower bloomed symbolically on his nightstand.***

No, my dad went through years of painful, nauseating, exhausting chemo and was finally told that the medical community had no more cards in its hand. We're sorry Mr. Cajun, but there's nothing we can do. Instead of getting to die pretty, my dad died at home, in a rented hospital bed, incontinent, unable to control his muscles, unable to speak and gasping for breath. With the amount of drugs that they pumped into him to keep him calmed down, I'm sure (Good God I hope I'm right. Please God, let me be right.) he wasn't in pain. I know that after Tuesday evening, he wasn't really aware of what was going on. Or, if he was, he couldn't communicate it to us.

I found out at my dad's funeral that pretty much everybody who met him liked him. Which, yeah, I know - nobody's going to come to a funeral and say "GodDAMN, your dad was an asshole." Hee...I almost wish somebody had - dad would have appreciated their candor.

But see - the thing I heard most was how my dad was so great, had such a great sense of humor, was such a good employee and manager, was such a good dad, good example, great guy. He was such a great guy that the oncologist (Yadlapati, how's that for a last name?) had tears in his eyes when he told my dad it was just a matter of time. Such a great guy that the hospice nurse (Dawn, and I believe there is a special place in heaven for hospice workers) told us how great she thought he was - specific details here, not just general niceties. Such a great guy that an entire bench full of engineers for the state of Louisiana sat at his funeral and bawled. Such a great guy that Sport's and McBrother's friends showed up to the funeral - some of them it was just out of support, but some of them knew my dad and were visibly shaken by his passing, and were there to say their own goodbyes. His ex-wife (my mom) from 30 years ago, his former mother-in-law and former brother-in-law all came, and no - they didn't sit next to me. They were there with their own grief.

I'm not sure I can even talk about how they told me he waited for me to show up on Tuesday - how my flight took off TWO HOURS AFTER it was supposed to land in Baton Rouge, and I don't know how much I'd pay to get that time back - what if it was the difference between a few sentences and a conversation? Or the difference between him holding on and fighting until 11:30 vs. 9:30? What if, what if, what if? Or how I got to talk to him and hear him say he loved me and tell him I loved him on Tueday evening and then (with one tear-jerking exception) that was it, except for requests for water and morphine, until he finally just stopped talking at all.

"Hey pops, you awake??"
"Hey...yeah. Hey Sport - are you all here?"
"Yeah dad - we're all here."
"All three of you - hold my hand."
"Ok - we're here...whatcha got Dad??"
"Y'all...I love y'all. Y'all be nice to each other."
"Whitney, you haven't heard them in here, cutting up?? They get along great - you'd be proud."
"I'm always proud. Never not been proud. I love y'all."
"We love you too dad."
"Yep - love you."
"Love you daddy."

Breathe. You know...you don't have to actually make sense - just put it out there.

Yeah, yeah...I'm breathing. Did I tell you that on Wednesday afternoon, he threw up blood? And that when Stepmom woke up Wednesday night, he had thrown up again, and that one of the strongest people I have ever met welled up at the thought that she might have let her husband sit there, with vomit on his chin? This woman ground up Xanax and Lasix and made them into a paste and spread them on the inside of her husband's cheek so they'd absorb. She changed the pad under him. Jesus Christ. I can't even begin to imagine the spine that this woman has.

Sport helped load him into the hearse, because the stupid fucking funeral home only sent one employee. Read that again and let it sink in. My twenty year-old brother loaded our father into a hearse. I will go ahead and minimize other folks' pain here when I say that I doubt their late March 29th/early March 30th sucked as hard as Sport's.

When I was holding my dad's hand, I looked down and realized that I have his hands, almost down to the wrinkle. Long, thin, veiny, baggy-knuckled, yet surprisingly wide, with a weird bend in the middle finger. I compared the profiles of our thumbs and they matched exactly. He didn't bite his nails, so he had longer nail beds, but that's about it.

I also have my daddy's nose.

I have his watch. It's a silver Pulsar with a stretch band. I thought that maybe I should get some links taken out so it fits correctly, because I want to wear it all the time. Kiddo thinks I should leave it a little big, because that way it looks like what it is - my daddy's watch. Now I can't decide.

He also had the weird protruding bone on the outside of the wrist that makes wearing bangle and cuff bracelets impossible for me. I don't know if my dad ever wore bracelets. Heh.

I also have his class ring from when he earned his Master's degree from LSU. In case you thought I was exaggerating on the similarities of our hands?? The ring that fit him on his right ring finger fits me perfectly on either one of my index fingers. There's *maybe* one size difference between the two, and I wear a size....8? on that finger. My dad had artist's hands. Apparently so do I. Wish somebody would tell my brain, 'cause I can't draw my way out of a paper bag.

Hands, noses and leftover jewelry.

You sound a little calmer.

Eh. Not really. but it is funny how talking about stuff doesn't tend to do much for me. Rather, it just makes me cry and then I never feel like I can get it out accurately. There is no backspace key in speech. Dude, if there was?? How cool would that be?

.....???

Ok, look. It's going to be All Dad, All The Time around here for a little while. I haven't even gotten to the actual funeral yet (which, considering it was a funeral, was good), or the evening I spent getting blasted with Sport and his friends (dude, never play drinking games with 20 year-olds, OW) or the crawfish boil the next day and how we decided that on the last weekend of March, we should have the Whitney J. Cajun III Memorial Crawfish Boil, or how we put his "Cancer Sucks" shirt in the coffin as a sort of banner and now I have it and and and and and and.....

In other words, it'll take you time**** to work through all of this, just like it does with everyone else in the world??

Yeah. I suppose so. Guess it's time to face up to the fact that I'm human. Bah.

Before we get to the footnotes - thank y'all for the wonderful comments and the thoughts and prayers and IntarWeb Lurve. Believe it or not, it has helped so much. More than I think y'all will ever know. I vote for a beerandcarnationscon (wow..that's unwieldy) sometime soon.

*Heh. By the time I actually sat down to write this, SATC was over, and a re-run of CSI was on. The
rest of it is true.

**I know, colon cancer, but the colon cancer is not what killed him. Technically, kidney failure killed him, but that's because the cancer had spread into his lymph system and y'all know the story. I'm too tired/lazy/depressed/annoyed to link.

***Of course, Stepmom probably would have had some choice words if he HAD, but that is beside the point.

****I had to add the word "time" back into that sentence. Honest mistake or Freudian slip? Discuss.