Another long stint at the hospital today. Dad was less responsive this morning than yesterday. I fed him lunch, but he wouldn’t even mumble. But after they switched him to another room by a window, I noticed his eyes fluttering a bit and he responded in his most alert voice of the past 3 days. I asked him if he wanted to listen to some classical music tapes I brought and he said “Sure” in a perky tone. “How about a little baroque? Do you like baroque?” “Sure, it’s gorgeous music” he said, again in a very audible, upbeat tone. So I clamped on the headphones and he appeared to fall fast asleep in about 2 minutes.
They’re giving him some blood pressure medication, Hytrin, so I left Robbie a voicemail to see if she could do a little Net research on it. Maybe it’s contributing to his stupor.
While eating lunch just now, it occurred to me that one way to look at this bedside vigil I’m keeping as a big emotional deposit. I wrote about deposits in the “Scoring points” article a couple of weeks ago, but it’s never really occurred to me that I could or need to make deposits with my parents. I’m stuck in little kid mode, I guess, thinking that they should be going out of their way for me. I don’t have a sense that my dad has ever really gone out of his way much for me. So here I am, in a position to go out of my way for him. He’s overdrawn his account with me long ago, insulting me and Robbie in ways too numerous to mention.
But maybe another way to frame it is that he’s behaved that way in part because we don’t have a relationship. I’ve deposited nothing in his account, he’s deposited nothing in mine, so it’s easy for him to insult me and easy for me to just distance myself from him and not really give a shit what happens to him.
So here I am, going out of my way, and I’m not sure why, other than it just seems the right thing to do and that I am aware of some level of caring for him. Maybe it’s just because I don’t hate him, since I made my peace internally with him a while ago.
So hey, if he lives, I’ll be able to make some demands on our relationship since I’ve now got something invested in the guy. I just won’t let him get away with any of his bullshit, plus I’ll figure out ways to insist that he go out of his way for me. Cool.
And if he dies? Yeah, those deposits go to the grave with him, I suppose, but I bet they’ll find a way to live on somehow, either in my own selfish bastard heart, or some other way unbeknownst to me. No reason to worry about making a bad investment here. Ok, back to his room so I can keep pestering him. He’s just got to wake up enough to hear about this crazy presidential election. He’ll get a kick out of it.