When my Father was dying (I now refer to the year he spent sick as the time he was dying because he eventually did), I was forced into the position of caretaker, bodyguard, and pitbull. Remarkably, it was a role that I fit perfectly and that I loved playing. I could get out all of my aggression and anger at him and the situation by proving what a great son I was by yelling at people. And no one was immune to my anger: the doctors, the nurses, the care workers, the case workers, and especially my Mother.
I wanted to know how she could just kind of step back and LET GO of my Dad. It seemed like she was just completely freaked out by the whole experience and didn't know how to handle it. So she just didn't handle it. To be fair, my Mother didn't just disappear. She was managing and maintaining a certain status quo that her and my Father maintained during much of the later years of their marriage. She kind of just stood there and didn't lose her stuffing when my Father treated her like an emotional punching bag. It's the only life she knew with him, so to deviate from that at the end of his life would have felt like a betrayal I'm sure.
But I would come in, like a firestorm, and just handle the shit out of everything. As much as I complain (to this day) about how I had to handle my Dad and his needs, I know that something in me needed to prove to him and myself that I was capable of being the man in charge. My whole life my Father treated me like he was worried that I wouldn't be able to take care of myself. And it's probably that fear and that mentality that prevented me from handling a lot of things in my life. I handled all of the things they didn't understand or have control over. I was an excellent student and I'm great at my job. I'm a writer and an artist and I excel at that. I'm a wonderful creative force. But when it comes to handling my money or responsibility in sustaining a level of livelihood, I'm not great at that. Because I was told from an early age that I wouldn't be good at it because I was exactly like my Mother. That idea got engrained in me. So deep.
Back to me being a pitbull...I had great purpose in yelling at people. I only got aggressive when I felt like there were answers that I wasn't being given. I have never accepted the idea that because of the color of my skin and because of where I grew up I was less than. I grew up feeling less than because I was gay or because I wasn't cute growing up. But never because I was Mexican and Chinese and from Downey, CA. So when my brown ass was in Downey Regional Hospital, I certainly wasn't going to let any of the doctors talk to me like they talked to the other families of patients they talked down to. My purpose was to make sure that my father was healthy and getting the best care possible. But then I realized something.
My Dad didn't care as much as the rest of us did. The rest of us include my Mom, my Brother, his friends, my friends, and me. And that's the first time I realized that I had to LET GO. I had held on to him so tight and started leading that I was no longer leading us towards what he wanted. He didn't want to fight. He had given up. His life would have been complete at a 68, almost 69, years. That wasn't good enough for me, but it was good enough for him. He had LET GO. Why was I having such a hard time?
I could say to him, "I can't want this more than you do." But I would continue to want him to live more than he wanted himself to live. So after going to every doctor's appointment, every nutritionist's appointment, making sure I was there for the doctor's rounds when he was in the hospital, writing the dos and don'ts on poster board on my parents' refrigerator, clearing out the high sodium foods from their pantry and refrigerator, yelling at my Mom for doing a shitty job, yelling at my Mom for not listening, yelling at my Mom for letting him fall and for not supervising him and for countless things--big and small--I finally had to LET IT GO.
But something happened in all of this. By defending my father and protecting him, I had realized what he couldn't articulate for my entire life. He had been protecting and defending me by yelling. It was usually at me. But in his mind, he was fighting for my life. Maybe that's why he didn't have any fight in him left. But I can't blame myself. I have to LET THAT GO. And when I realized that I embodied the kind of protection he believed in and that I truly was cut from the same cloth, I LET GO of needing him to validate me. We were done and resolved in our relationship without having the big conversation. I understood him because I had behaved like him over a prolonged period of time.
And that felt great. I felt resolved. I felt accomplished that my Father would die and we would have worked out most of our shit that kept me grounded my whole life. And not grounded in the sense of humble. But on the ground. Unable to fly. Weighed down. And now that weight was gone and I could start floating.
But then I still had anger. I had anger at my Mother for not doing everything I thought she should be doing to help the man she had stayed married to--against my advice, even. I didn't like the way she spoke to him. I didn't like that fact that she didn't have immediate answers for me when I asked her questions about his health. How could she not ask the doctors the most simple questions? And sadly, I understood how my Father could treat her poorly. I don't approve of it. But I really understood the frustration.
And I realized that I had to LET THAT GO too. I had to LET GO of the fact that my Mother didn't handle my Father's illness the way I would have. I had to LET GO of my expectations for her. I had to LET GO of my anger that she let me handle everything. But that's what she knew. She doesn't think she's capable of speaking up for my Father's health because he had controlled her for so long. And even though she had begun to speak up for herself, my Father had already rattled her to the core so long ago for so many years. I LET GO of my expectations for her. Well, I'm still LETTING GO. It's a hard process. But that's why I'm in therapy.
And once I started LETTING GO of my expectations for my parents, I started LETTING GO of other things:
My need to control everything.
My need to know exactly what's going to happen next.
My need to boss people around to show what a man I am because clearly a gay man has to prove himself to show that because he may talk, throw and act like a girl, it doesn't mean that he's a girl in the misogynistic pejorative sense.
My belief that everyone knows more than I do.
My belief that I'm not smart enough.
I had to LET IT ALL GO. And that's what I've said YES to. And the more I say YES to it and the more I LET GO, the more things fall away that are unnecessary. It's like this need I have to cleanse myself constantly. I just want to get rid of the empty calories in my life and the dead skin and the dirt. Anything that does not serve to reveal my most pure, most true self.
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