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Dying Dad: Why Me?
October 4, 1994Sitting in the waiting room at death’s door. Is that an accurate metaphor? My dad isclearly waiting outside of death’s door, but dare I say I am, also? I guess it’s no different thanwhen I accompanied my dad to the North Shore Cancer Center for radiation treatment 2 weeksago. I rode with him in the ambulance from the hospital to the clinic, then I waited with him inthe waiting room until he was wheeled into the treatment room, where I was not allowed tofollow him. Now it is the same, isn’t it? I am sitting with him in the waiting room at death’sdoor. Soon he will be carried through, and I will not be allowed to follow. Maybe some other time.It is now just over a month since my father was given his terminal diagnosis. When last Iwrote about this drama, I was embroiled in conflict and confusion. I was reeling from my father’sdeathbed confession to me that he had had a series of e
xtra-marital affairs in the mid-
seventies. My anger towards him made it all the more difficult for me participate wholeheartedlyin his care. And since, I couldn’t tell the rest of my family what my problem was, they had nochoice but to assume I was just acting like uncaring jerk for no good reason. Fortunately, or not,I was unable to keep my father’s vile secret for long.I wonder about the saying: “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice todeceive.” What do they mean by “first”? Does it mean that the tangled web begins instantly uponthe commencement of our deception? Or does it mean that we weave a tangled web at first, butonce we become more practiced at deception we are able to manage with less tangle? Or did theoriginal framer of this so fa
mous aphorism simply need a one-
syllable adjective to suitthe meter and he/she just happened to come up with “first”? In any case, it was the consequencesof tangled webbedness that inadvertently and circuitously led to my mother learning my father’ssecret.As I mentioned, when I heard Dick’s confession I was quite blown away. I had long participated in the family conspiracy that said that my father may have had myriad shortcomings
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 but at least he had always loved his family steadfastly and unflinchingly. It was easy to fault Dick for so much else but, as I was often reminded, you had to admit he loved his family.Ya right, except for a secret series of affairs that he had successfully kept secret for twentyyears. And if he was able to keep one horrible secret so long and so well, what other horrible,hateful contradictions might also remain yet hidden? I had been having hard enough timereconciling the family myth of the ever-loving father with Dick’s recurrent tendency to lash outangrily at my mother for the slightest imagined offense. But those outbursts were just randomsniper fire compared to the atom bomb blast of his now revealed infidelities.The enormity of my father’s confession proved way too massive a load for me to carrysolely by myself. Dick had asked me to share this matter with absolutely
no one,
 but I reasonedthat his primary concern was that it not be found out by the rest of the family, especially mymother. Consequently, as soon as I returned to IMS, I sought out Joseph, swore him to secrecyand shared second hand my father’s news.That was OK, wasn’t it? I just told Joseph, no one else, just to ease the overwhelming burden of carrying the nasty secret. And it did feel a little lighter having shared it. But not lightenough. So I swore Sharon to secrecy and told her, too. Then Carol Wilson, and then SteveArmstrong, and then Michele. But I swore them all to secrecy too, don’t worry, and they’re allDharma Teacher’s anyway. That was a relief too. But it wasn’t enough.It was during the
3-month
retreat in 1991 that I helped rescue the deer that fell throughthe ice into the nearby pond. After that adventure was finished, I went back to my meditation practice but I couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened with the deer. Even as Iwalked silently, slowly, contemplatively back and forth in the walking meditation room, inwardly Iwas vividly reliving the deer story in my head. I would start at the beginning and tell myself thewhole story right to the end. Over and over, I narrated the story to myself and there seemed noend of self-storytelling in sight. Finally, I stopped my meditation and sat down and wrote thestory down. Getting it all down on paper, got it out of my head and I was able to move on withmy retreat and my life.For the same reason, I wrote a story about my father’s confession. I had about run out of  people I could justify including in the slowly growing tangled offspring of my father’s originaldeception. But still his secret was ricocheting wildly in my head like a trapped sparrow trying tocrash its way through the windows out of our garage. So I sat down and started typing. Nineteen pages later, I felt better. I printed a copy of the story and read it over once, then twice,
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and then I was done with it. In fact, I felt so done with it, that I had no need to talk to anyoneabout my father or the whole situation at all for quite a while. I had successfully thoroughlygotten the episode out of my system and onto paper. The only small problem remaining waswhom to send the story to.I mean, I hate to write a
nineteen-page
story and not share it with anyone. Thiswasn’t a journal entry; it was a story, after all. After some thought, the perfect reader occurred tome. How about my friend Eric in California? Eric is a big fan of my writing and a long timeconfidant and commiserator in my inter and inner personal struggles. And he’s even a Dharmateacher, and he lives three thousand miles in the opposite direction from Marblehead. So I slid thesole copy of the story into an IMS envelope and put it in my pile of business needing to be mailed.The next day, I received a call from my mother saying that my dad had suddenly becomedesperately short of breath and had been rushed by ambulance to Salem hospital. I hastilygathered up my things, including my not yet sent mail, and dashed back to join the battle. Myfather had apparently thrown a blood clot, which had lodged in his lungs in life threateningmanner. He was put on blood thinners to prevent any more clots and in a couple of days wastransferred out of intensive care to the oncology ward.Having my father in the hospital turned out to be a great relief for all of us. First of all, itmade it much easier for my mother, brother and I to sleep through the night without constantlyawakening in response to or in anticipation of needs of my dad’s. Also, I found it a tremendousrelief to have my father moved outside of the scope of group family dynamics. It was quite hardenough for me to work with my anger and resentment towards Dick regarding his confession, butwas virtually unbearable at the same time to watch him lash out angrily at my mother again andagain. Having him in the hospital was like sending a bad child from the dinner table to his room.We visited him in the hospital one at a time in order to maximize coverage, so there was no longer any all-together group to manifest dysfunction in.We settled into a routine of daily hospital shifts, and entered into what I’ve come to callthe Bogs phase: things were all bogged down; the going was slow, tedious and uneventful. Iwould go to the hospital for a
two-hour
shift, during which time I would mostly sit and playcards on my notebook computer. Occasionally my father would ask me to get him some icecream or hand him the urinal, and we would talk about nothing much else. Eventually, my shiftwould end and I'd go home and do nothing until it was time to go for another turn.
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