Like the waves
It’s like the waves.
Like standing at the ocean’s shore, sand at your feet, staring out towards the edge of the world where the ocean and the sky marry into a faded, faint blue. The waves, they washed over you once; you were soaked, cold, and shivering, but now you’ve started to dry. You can finally feel the sun shining on your back.
Like looking out at the ocean and seeing that the waves, they don’t stop coming. They crash onto the beach, one after another, inching their way up towards your feet. They tempt you to react—to run the other way, but after some time, you realize they never seem to reach you anymore.
Like seeing one wave approach from far off on the horizon. It looks like any other, and so like the others you expect this one to come short. But this one doesn’t. It keeps coming, coming, and the moment you grasp how big this wave is, is the moment it crashes over you, enveloping your ankles, your waist, maybe even your head. It’s cold, you forgot how cold the ocean feels.
And then like that, it’s over. The wave’s gone. You start to dry off again. Out in the distance, you see more waves coming, and you wonder if there will ever be another wave that will wash over you again.
That’s what grief is like. It’s like the waves.
We all have our limits. Three quick instances are how I found mine.
I take my parents to eat dim sum. It’s normal, almost boring, until we almost finish eating and my dad has left one cha siu bao on the table. He hasn’t touched it for a few minutes. No one else is eating.
“John, do you want eat the last one?” my mom asks him. “Should we get a box for it?”
My dad doesn’t understand. My mom repeats herself. My dad doesn’t understand. My mom repeats herself.
“Are we in a rush!?” my dad growls.
“No...I just wanted to know if you wanted to eat it or not,” my mom pleads, trying to explain herself.
“I can take care of myself!”
I should tend to my mom, just give her a hug and be done with it. That’s what I’ve learned to do. But for some reason, my brain fails me today, and my instincts take over. I hate watching my dad berate people, and when my mom is the target—the woman who’s basically sacrificed everything for him—I may not lose my cool, but I lose my logic.
“Dad,” I gently say, locking eyes with him, “Mom just wants to know if she needs to get you a box.” I want him to know that his wife loves him and deeply cares for him. I want him to know. I want him to understand.
He does not.
“What is your problem!?” he turns his anger to me.
I stand and kneel next to where he’s sitting, which I imagine looks funny to anyone watching us. I put my face next to his ear, and whisper softly, “Dad, Mom is—”
“SIT DOWN!” he roars.
I glance around the restaurant, and realize we are “that person.” I shut my mouth, and sit back down.
As soon as we’re back in the car and the doors are shut, I turn to my dad, sitting in the passenger seat. There’s a quick war between my rational side, the side that knows I need to give up. But that side loses to my desire for justice.
I open my mouth, my voice firm, unwavering, and angry. “Yell at me one more time, and I’m not taking us here anymore.”
“When did I yell?” my dad asks. His voice is low, and almost, sincere.
I take a deep breath and flip the ignition.
I replay the sequence of events on the drive home, and pinpoint what went wrong. My dad believes that he was in an argument with my mom, and that I took my mom’s side. I have to wonder where this core belief comes from—that I always take my mom’s side, because for almost all of my childhood, my mom and I have never been on the same side.
A friend of mine comes to visit. We run through a number of ways to spend the rest of the night, and land on watching Netflix at home.
“Will it be okay for us to use the TV?” my friend asks me.
“It should be fine,” I tell him. After all, my dad isn’t even watching; he’s just absorbing light waves.
And so we walk to the living room where my dad is lying on the couch. I tap him on the shoulder ask ask, “Are you using the TV?”
“Why do you think I have the TV on!?”
Well, because it’s there. Because you’re not paying attention. Because you like the sound. But none of those things probably make sense to him, so I just reframe the question.
“Can we use the TV?”
He grunts, which I take to mean we have his approval.
I flip the TV’s input to my phone, when my dad perks up.
“What are you doing!?”
“We’re going to watch a show.”
“Use your own TV!”
He means the computer monitor in my office, but I don’t argue that technicality either. I sense something funny about the situation, something weird. It might be that my friend is watching this event unfold, and it might be that there are some new variables in this scenario that I’ve never accounted for. For one, I’ve never tried to use the TV. I’ve also never allowed a friend into this space before.
I want to watch this show, I want to watch it here, and I want my dad to be fair about it. I kneel down next to him and gently mutter, “Dad, I asked if we could use the TV. You said ‘yes.’”
“Hey-unh! Do whatever you want!” He rolls onto his side, facing the backside of the couch.
I turn to my friend and shrug, and start the show. Mid-way through, my dad turns to start watching with us. I wonder if he can tell it’s not the news. I get my answer a few minutes later.
“Are you still using the TV?” he quietly growls.
“The show is almost done,” I say. I have no idea if it is.
“Why can’t you use the TV in your room!?”
I hit ‘pause’ and kneel down next to my dad again. But before I can say anything, he lifts his arm and starts scratching the air like he’s a cat. I assume this is his way of trying to shoo me away.
“Let’s go to my room,” I tell my friend, giving up.
“I think I understand your situation better,” he tells me.
I’ve explained my dad to him before, but this is one of those things that I’m not sure any amount of theoretical knowledge can prepare you for.
I also replay this whole scenario, pointing out to myself my two mistakes. Number one, changing the variables. I really shouldn’t have people come over anymore, which, as someone who has picked up my mom’s penchant for having guests over for various occasions, finds disheartening.
Number two, actually trying.
This all comes together one early evening when my mom tries, one last time, to get my dad to take a shower. She offers a plan: She’ll take a shower first, and then my dad will take a shower after her. He seemingly agrees to this. But when it comes to his turn, he reneges on his end of the deal.
“John, you said you would take a shower.”
“You make no sense!” he screams at her.
“John, it’s been several—”
“Can I have some autonomy!?”
There’s a look my mom has. I can’t really describe it. She just looks, hollow. Like she’s been wronged. Like there was goodness in her heart and someone physically ripped it from her, robbing her of any chance of happiness. I do not like this look, and the moment my dad presents me with the opportunity to strike back at him, I foolishly grab my gun and charge into battle.
“Can you turn the light on?” he turns to me and asks, his voice losing all anger he had for my mom two seconds ago.
I walk over and say straight into his ear. “You want autonomy? Do it yourself.”
Whatever monstrous attitude fell asleep for one second, comes roaring back. “Hey-unh, does nobody have any care in this house?”
His brain is broken, a voice in my head whispers, the same voice that tries to whisper those words to my mom. But the battle cry drowns out all reason, and I continue riding the momentum of justice.
“Oh really? No one cares? Do you know that I cook for you everyday? Buy you coffee? Creamer?” I rattle off a long list of things. I start to stammer because I don’t even know which list of things to keep naming.
My dad struggles to stand up, and then reaches out his arm as if to push me out of the way. “Excuse me!” he yells, spit dripping from his lips and falling onto the floor.
“You know I’m going to have to clean that up too?” pointing at his spit.
“You always take your mom’s side!”
This makes me laugh in that scoffing, sadly contemptuous way. “When, have I ever taken mom’s side? When? Prove it. Name one time.”
He finally reaches the lightswitch on the other side of the room, flips it, and shuffles back to his couch before plopping back down. And then, as if he knows he can’t actually win any argument with me, he changes tactics (like many people do). He attacks me.
“What kind of son is this?”
I’m about to say “What kind of father does nothing and then attacks the very family who tries to help him?” when my brain fast forwards through the sentence, and answers it before I can even speak a word.
The kind of father who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. That’s what. The kind of father with a broken brain.
And so I relent. Not because I’ve lost, but because there simply isn’t anything to win.
“I am disappointed,” my dad mutters.
This comment would have destroyed me years ago. It reminds me of those times when people's’ disappointment did destroy me. I know better now.
I walk to the kitchen and begin preparing dinner, because it’s dinner time, and that’s what my role is.
“Daniel!” my dad yells for me.
I ignore him. A few minutes later, I put on a baseball cap to change my physical appearance, and decide to reset. I walk out to see my dad, and if he still remembers what happened, then I’ll just act confused.
“Let’s not argue anymore,” he might say.
To which I’d smile and just respond, “We were arguing? What did we argue about?”
But when I walk past, he just lies there on the couch. He doesn’t really look, he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t stop me.
Nothing.
He’s already forgotten.
The crux of every event is the same core desire I can’t seem to let go of, no matter how hard I try.
I want my dad to understand me, to know me. I want him to know that there’s an endless list of evidence that proves that people love him, and that he just needs to accept that it’s true. And so I keep trying, when I least expect it, I keep digging into my creative backpack for any random solution that might break through whatever clouds his mind. If only he could remember what I do for him, then he’d know. If only he could listen before trying to talk every time we try to have a conversation. If only he didn’t assume everyone was out to get him. “If only,” I tell myself.
But if there is one thing I once learned about love, it’s that love and acceptance are not functions of “if only.”
If only I weren’t this, or were more of that. That’s what I always told myself. It’s a waste of time. Because if only that thing were true, then I wouldn’t be me.
And so I know I have to drop “if only” with my dad, because then he wouldn’t be him. And then I wouldn’t love him. I’d love just the idea of my dad.
At the same time, this is my limit. I’m not God, and don’t have unlimited energy. I don’t have anything in the tank left to give.
I grab some whiskey and pour it over some ice, rocking the ice cubes against the glass and listening to the way they clink clink clink.
I sit on a couch, in a room away from my dad, staring into the hardwood floor. A tear rolls down my nose and rubs against my nostril, staying there uncomfortably the way little water droplets do until it becomes unbearable and I wipe it away.
I once heard a podcast talking about working with the elderly. One thing that stuck with me was the written word’s power of being mostly independent of time. You can write something down and give it away, but that doesn’t mean it’s forgotten. It’s still there, retrievable just by picking up a piece of paper and rereading what it says.
And so I draft a note to my dad. I tell him that I’m going to move out. I tell him that I’m sad. I tell him to be nice to my mom, and that she loves him very, very dearly. That she cooks him food when I’m not there, cleans up after him, washes his dishes, changes the bedsheets, pays for his electricity so he can watch the TV. So please be nice to her.
And then I scrap the note. My dad wants to feel like he’s helping. Not being helped.
And so I just write three short sentences.
Dad, I’m going to move out in October. Please help take care of mom. Goodbye.
I tape it to his coffee maker, the one I bought for him—after he broke the first one I bought for him.
A few tears continue to roll down my cheek and into my glass, which has about one last swig of whiskey left.
My dad used to be a bubbly person. He wasn’t what I would call, kind, but he was interesting. A quirky mix of philosopher, writer, attention-seeker.
My dad used to write letters to newspapers for their ‘letter-to-the-editor’ columns. I found one while cleaning through my parents’ storage. He wrote in response to news that a local homeless shelter was about to close, asking: What does it reflect about our society’s values if we don’t care for the homeless?
It’s funny that he’d ask something like that. In his day-to-day life, you wouldn’t really expect him to care about anyone, much less the homeless. But people are complex. You can’t just reduce them to a set of ideological beliefs. And now I’ll never know what my dad really would have done if they did close a homeless shelter.
My dad used to be strangely photogenic. There’s a picture of my dad hanging on the wall next to my mom’s desk table. It’s from five years ago, when a cousin got married in Mexico. My dad’s holding my nephew with one hand, and pointing somewhere with the other. My nephew looks on with extreme interest, and you can tell my dad is in mid-sentence explaining something he thinks is cool. He has an energy to his face, a kind of handsome suave look that I used to be jealous of.
But that’s not my dad now. His condition was in a slow, steady decline, seemingly until I moved back, and then his health seems to have fallen off a cliff. He was fine for those first few days. He could move, hold the basics of a conversation. Sure, he was absent minded and got lost in his own thoughts, but he could still understand me. That was only six months ago.
Now he’s misinterpreting things left and right. And I wonder how long until he forgets who I am. I think that might be easier. Weirdly.
A tear rolls onto my lips.
Boys aren't supposed to cry. At least that's what silly old traditional rules said. But in many ways I'm already not your typical boy. And my dad is suffering from something not typical either, or at least something not expected. It may be natural, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. Are you supposed to lose your mind? Because no one teaches you how to prepare for that.
No one truly knows what it’s like to be the elderly. Not you, not me, and not them. Everyone understands babies because you know you yourself were one of them. No one has ever been elderly and by the time you are one, everyone who has already gone through it is dead.
It’s the most fucking lonely thing in the world.
I thought I was done with grief. I held a funeral for my dad. I adapted to taking care of him and treating him like the rock in the house that he is. But I guess I was wrong. Whether he’s literally dead or just becoming brain dead, all grief comes in waves. And just when you think you’ve conquered it, it becomes a wave that crashes all over you.
I finally get up off the couch and take a step, almost losing my balance. A moment of fear crosses my mind and I wonder if I’m becoming like my parents. But no, it’s because I poured myself more whiskey than I thought.
I take that one last gulp of my drink and lick my lips. Whiskey and tears are salty.