is it so wrong that i want my father to die?
am i a wretched, horrific, grotesque for feeling at this moment simultaneously nauseated, depressed and enraged that my father's slowly being extubated, is coming around, showing some small signs of — what? — activity? mumbling? drooling? i wouldn't call it "signs of Life," sure as hell wouldn't call it that because now that they're weaning him off the life-supporting nipple of the ventilator, the doctors, undoubtedly pleased they've "cured" him of the infection that rushed him into the ICU, onto the respirator, allowed, like a stealthy snake, a central line to invade his body, those doctors discovered:
whoops. Ray done had himself a series of small strokes while he was put under these past several days, that there machine doin' his breathin' for him. dang the bad luck!
an ambulance just screeched past the house, down the road, engine roaring like a semi-truck and i hope like hell that if they're on their way to the sickbed of some elderly, decrepit human goddamned being that, really, is no longer being, that ambulance speeds and squeals in futility; that they're too fucking late.
let's hope i'm a Sherwood Anderson-grotesque: worthy of sympathy and compassion. i doubt most of you consider me such, but here's to hoping. consider the Magnolia. consider the grotesques. consider sympathy and compassion: understanding.
***
what, in the name of my father's God, kind of condition is My Daddy going to be in now? fucking christ! his brain wasn't assuredly annihilated previous to this holy hell? how much longer? how much more? i've endured years of "everything happens in threes" and those threes — you can't fathom, i couldn't relay to you what triumvirate of kingdom come, what will was done — but i survived, i lived and i was either a child, a naive, innocent Lily of a Daddy's Glirl or a junkie, untreated bipolar, for fuck's sake.
but i lived. not sure how, not sure why, to what end or purpose, but....i live. i am, somehow, alive despite or, perhaps, in spite of, it all.
threes? threes? fuck your father, son, your whoring ghost — she caught the last train for the coast! bye-bye, Miss American Pie!
and today's Buddy Holly's birthday. you've gotta be.... completely forgot until.... was going to post "Everyday" with the caption "BUDDY HOLLY LIVES" but, no, no he doesn't, regardless of the cool graffiti testifying otherwise. Daddy loves Buddy, owned one of his greatest hits albums with that cool graffiti spray-painted on a whitewashed brick wall; i used to stare at that album cover for hours while listening to the spin, hiss and pop of Buddy and his Crickets.
whitewashed. every fucking thing. every goddamned day.
"....goin' faster than a roller coaster...."
why. can't. it. just. stop.
i cannot take one more thing; not. one. more. my friends — oh, what in the hell? — so many of them, you, are suffering, losing loved ones, struggling with your own health issues and here i am bitching and moaning—
fuckit.
i want for my father to die, peacefully; to go gentle into that good night. i want for this to happen right away, as soon as possible. when we last saw his mother, dying in a nursing home, i was fifteen; she was in and out of dementia (mostly in) due to her massive stroke (strokes?), one leg amputated due to years of ignoring or not treating her diabetes, horrible diet, and she'd been dropped by an orderly, her shoulder dislocated, had been trying to tell the physical therapists, nurses, everyone, "My shoulder....he dropped me...." but no one listened and they continued to put her through hours of PT every day, Buddy, every hellacious day, and she cried, moaned, begged them to stop, called out for her sons, but they rotated that arm, shoulder every fucking day, Buddy and when we flew in from Florida to see her in Denver, she immediately burst into tears and slurred, "My shoulder, Raymond....he dropped me. The man dropped me...." and my father knew exactly what she meant. she managed to garble out a bit more about the PT, the agony, how she tried to tell them but they wouldn't listen and my father, already five years into the crippling battle with arthritis, stormed to the nurse's station but had it been the 80s, his healthy days, that man, "The man" would've been found and hurt.
when we left that day, My Daddy stopped me on the sidewalk, turned me towards him, made me to look him in the eyes. i'd been sobbing at the sight of my dying Nana; Daddy, who i've seen cry four times in my Life, was teary, his face set and serious.
"Annie, promise me...."
"Promise you what, Daddy?"
"Promise me you'll never let me end up like that. Don't ever let me end up in a place like this — like Nana is now. Okay?"
"Okay, Daddy."
"I mean it, Anne Michelle. Never. Don't ever let me end up like my mommy."
"I promise, Daddy. I swear. I'll never let that happen to you."
why'd you make me break my promise, Daddy? why did you do that?
why is this happening? why does this shit continue to happen, this succession of bullets, this one after another of—
i want it to end. now. right the fuck now.
go back and read something not about me. i'm sick of me, my bullshit, my fucked-up, so-called-life. go back and read about true tragedy, about real sadness, about the lives of others, what i consider my best writing because it is, likely because it has absolutely nothing at all to do with self-centered, narcissistic, me, me, fuckin' me:
The Louder Actions: For Chelsea King
"I guess everybody has their own idea of fun."
better yet, read somebody else, their real lives, their unfiction, which is far superior to this, my above, before, too much, too much written shit: Kaplowitz: Tales From Dank Ct. Vol. 1
whatever the hell you decide to do . . . .
don't you dare judge me. don't you even think to do so.
******
i love you, Daddy.
now please — let go.
keep your end of the bargain, your promise and just....
give up.
