[Quick recap from Part I: My Mom is insane, and my Dad is dying in two hours]
The clouds cleared and let the sun suck up all the fallen rain with his giant invisible straw. That’s right, the sun is a man. The sky turned a perfect blue to match my Dad’s eyes, and the color of his soul as I imagine it. Things were getting better after a morning fueled by my Mom’s craziness.
But we received some bad news within the bad news.
My Dad’s best friend, Tom Loken, was supposed to spend the day with us, but, in an extra violent stoke to our cocks from God’s calloused hand, Tom’s Father had passed away the Wednesday before. So, Tom was in Florida laying his Father to rest as we prepared to do the same back at home. He left a nice message on my phone that I played for my Dad:
“Hi Dan. This is Tom calling from Florida. I know this is going to be really hard for you all today. Tell your Dad that I really wish I could be there. I’m so sorry that it didn’t work out. Let him know that I’m thinking about him. I love him so dearly. I probably have two really close friends in the world and today I’m losing one of them. I’ll miss him greatly. He’ll always be will me. Yesterday I had a great run on Clearwater Beach. I thought about him. I don’t think I’ll have a run in the future without thinking about him. I’ll see you all on Wednesday.”
What a faggot.
Just Kidding.
What a nice man, is what I meant to say. It would have been great for him to be there. It would have, at least, made my Dad feel better about everything he was going through, like dying and shit. Tom had been everything you could ask a friend to be. They ran together and when my Dad got ALS, instead of running the other way, Tom continued running along his side. Not literately. My Dad couldn’t run. He has Lou Gehrig’s disease remember? He stood by his side as my Dad laid in bed wishing he could run, fucking wishing he could do anything.
The sun poked its bright-as-a-similarly-sized-star-somewhere-else-in-the-universe head out and gently asked us to come play in its warmth in the gayest voice possible. The sun is great. It makes things bright so life doesn’t seem so morbidly depressing. We needed some sun to gleam off my Dad’s still-alive face one more time. Plus, no man should die without a sunburn. Regina, Greg, Tiffany, Chelsea and I were all glued to my Dad like he was meth and we were all solidly addicted to it. We were stroking him, poking him, touching him.
Regina had really put a lot of work and energy into my Dad over the last five months, and had emerged as a near family member. Sometimes I worried that she loved my Dad more than I did. I thus had to often remind her that she was a paid employee and not a family member.
Regina: Danny, let me hold your Daddy’s hand.
Me: [Grabbing both of my Dad’s hands] Regina, you are not part of our family. You are a paid employee.
My Mom was running around on her anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping on her feet and asking the same questions twice. She was still worked up over the balloons, even though Rob, Michelle’s pederass husband, had agreed to pick them up. She was also totting around a black notebook that contained a list of last minute questions she wanted to ask my Dad while she could. She stormed into the room as we began loading my Dad into his wheelchair so we could go outside and enjoy the aforementioned sun and looked at us like she had just caught us trying to lift a safe full of all of her worldly possessions.
“Where the fuck are you going?” she asked.
“We’re going outside,” Greg said.
“Well what about all the questions I have to ask your Dad?” She replied while opening up the notebook. “When do we close the pool? How do I get money from the bank? Who is David Sorenson? Should we sell the van? How did I know where the furnace is?”
“Those aren’t important now. Enjoy the time you have now. Live in the now. Do you want to borrow my copy of The Power of Now that Mike Markosian bought me years ago that I still haven’t been able to get through,” I responded.
“Okay, let’s go for a walk, but let me make sure Rob is going to get the balloons. The neighbor kids are going to release the balloons once Dad waves to them and dies,” she explained.
“Dad can’t wave. He can’t move his arms, and if he could I think he would lift them to flip off the neighborhood children, not wave,” I said.
We loaded him into his wheelchair and argued over who was going to drive him to the nearby elevator.
Regina: I’ll drive him.
Me: You’re not part of this family and I think a family member should do it.
Tiffany: I’ll take him. And you can grab the suction.
Greg: I’m going to get some water.
Me: Fuck all of you. I’m driving him. Tiffany you grab the suction. Regina you are not part of this family. Greg, you’re cute and I want to grab your ass.
I won the battle. I had been the first in the family to learn how to care for my Dad. I learned how to run his respirator, what all the alarms meant and what not, and helped him find the perfect wheelchair. I was the first to learn how to change his diaper while he remained in bed. I was the last to walk him up a flight of stairs, and the first to call his suction machine the N-word. I had his neurologist’s phone number memorized and knew more about Lou Gehrig’s disease than Lou Gehrig himself.
And swollen-gland John McCain thinks him and his Joe six-pack, George-W.-Bush-with-a-vagina running mate are “Mavericks”. Please. When since the War have you been wrist deep in shit, McCain? And no picking Sarah Palin as a running mate doesn’t count.
A little political humor. No big deal.
I had given the most and given up the most, so fuck you siblings. I get to finish what I started while you were off having “real” jobs and get “blow” jobs from a plethora of different men throughout the Salt Lake Valley.
I got my Dad into the elevator. We had very few moments alone. Regina or my Mom were usually always around. The elevator only fit him and another person, so we got a lot of our intimate, one-on-one conversations done during these short rides.
Me: Can you believe today is the day?
Dad: [Shaking his head “no”]
Me: I can’t either. It doesn’t seem like it’s actually going to happen. Do you feel ready? It will be nice to get away from Mom won’t it?
Dad: [Using all of his neck muscles to full capacity to shake his head “yes”]
Me: You’re not going to turn back on us are you? Pull a Bret Favre?
Dad: [Shaking his head “no”]
Me: Well good, because I think we’re all fairly prepared for it, and if you pulled us through any more of this bull shit, I think I would shoot not only you, but the rest of the family and most of the neighbors. It would be all over the news. I would create a stand-off of sorts that would end with me standing on top of your ugly-ass van with a cocked shoot gun pressed against one of Mazie’s (our golden retriever) temples so hard, that she knows I’m not fucking around. Her eyes would dash back and forth nervously as she wondered what she had done wrong. She would spot the only remaining neighbor and want to jump on him and lick his face, taking her back to when life was easy and made sense. Helicopters would swarm around our house like flies around a pile of extra-fresh horseshit. A cop would get on his megaphone and say, “Please come down from the ugly-ass van. We can work this out. Remove the gun from your confused dog’s head.” They would ask me my demands and I would say, “I just want my life back,” before squeezing the trigger and blowing Mazie’s head off.
Dad: [Sitting in silence]
The accordion elevator doors swooshed open.
Me: Okay, here we are. Let’s go for a walk! Oh look, there’s Mazie.
Greg was standing in the garage with a water bottle in his hand.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She’s worry about the balloons, or she can’t find her notebook or something,” Greg replied.
This was sad. My Mom had somehow taken control of the stage, so it wasn’t about my Dad dying, but rather about her losing her husband. Pure rhetoric mastery. I’m surprised she’s a democrat. Another political joke. I’m on fucking fire. She had really ruffled our feathers and we were fairly upset with her. First, she sent my Dad’s sister sailing, then she had taken so many pain pills she couldn’t even think, and now she didn’t even seem like she wanted to spend time with my Dad. I didn’t really care if she was around, but I didn’t want my Dad to leave Earth feeling like the home and family he had created was in total flames. I wanted him to be calm, and think about things like love, and togetherness, and know that we were all going to be okay, that he was the only permanent victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“So she’s not coming on the walk?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. God, she is just so nuts. I feel like we’re losing the wrong parent. I mean, we’re stuck with her now. Things would have been so much better if she was the one dying and you were the one living,” said Greg while gently stoking my Dad’s hair to one side, placing poignant bluntness in the same bed as genuine kindness.
“Well, let’s not let her take the focus off our Daddy. Isn’t that right little cutie,” I said while pinching my Dad’s cheek, making sure he felt like a child that was being cared for instead of a man one last time.
Tiffany, Regina, Michelle, Chelsea and Rob’s pink pederass stood on the driveway. My Mom was still inside doing something. We waited for a minute, all of our eyes trained on the front door, hoping that old Debi would emerge and youthfully skip over to us and say, “I was just fucking with you. I’m totally sane. Now let’s enjoy this moment.” Maybe she would grab my Dad’s hand and say, “What a beautiful day, and what a beautiful family you and I created. Just know, Bob, that I intend to keep this family beautiful and not live the rest of my life like I’m some worn down, tragic widow. The future is bright as this day, Bob. I love you.”
We would all stand and clap, and pat her shoulder and say, “Great speech,” and, “Thanks Mom,” and, “that’s the spirit,” and, “this losing our Father thing isn’t going to be so bad because we have you.”
We watched the door for a few minutes, the sun also watching with its come-on-Debi eyes.
I finally said, “Come on. Let’s go. She can catch up if she wants to do this,” turning my back to the door and walking away like a disappointment child realizing that Daddy didn’t make it to his game once again.
So we began our push down Briarcreek Dr., our street for nearly 18 years, without our once functional, now drunk co-pilot.
“So Mom is not coming?” Regina asked.
“No, OUR Mom isn’t coming. You called her “Mom”. You should have said, “So YOUR MOM isn’t coming?”.
“Danny stop it,” said Regina.
“We are not paying you to tell us to stop things,” I said.
I had my video camera. I took it everywhere the last month to make sure that I would have all of this “My Father is dying” bullshit if I needed to use it, if say, I was out of money and the banks came to me and said, “Well we’ve taken your house. Bill from the Johnson account is fucking your wife. Your children are in slave labor in Montana. Do you have anything of value you could give us so we can give you your things back?” I could look around, with bags beneath my eyes and a handle of stolen Jack Daniels dangling from my cum-crusted hand like I was a shitty animatronics pirate from Disney’s Pirate’s of the Caribbean ride, and say, “Well there is one thing, my matie.”
“What is it?” the bank would ask.
“Well, it’s nothing really…just 30 days worth of HD video of my Father dying, including his actual death, that can be made into a incredible documentary about not only Lou Gehrig’s disease, but also the grieving and coping process a family of crazies goes through in the face of tragedy.”
“My God, that sounds like the greatest footage in the world. Here’s your house back, and Bill get your cock out of his wife’s mouth and refocus on the Johnson account. Your children are on the next flight home. Everything is okay,” the gleeful banker will say as I hand over the tapes.
Okay, so I don’t actually expect the tapes to get me out of trouble, but I knew that, even if it appeared that I was exploiting my Dad and this situation, that I would regret not capturing it, and would never have the chance to go back and do it all over again. It’s not Hawaii.
Because I had done so much of the filming, I wasn’t in many of the shots, so at this time I figured that instead of trying to be a member of our family, Regina should be focused on filming. The problem was that she was horrible at it. She would often talk behind the camera, and laugh, making all the footage unusable. And sometimes she would be so distracted by something else going on, that she would fail to capture an important moment. For example, my Dad made what would be his second to last trip up to the Huntman’s Cancer Institute to sit next to his fading wife as she received treatment. The two held hands as best they could, and talked about how they will miss each other, and what they wanted to do before my Dad dies, their Bucket List if you will, my Mom playing the role of Jack Nickolson and my Dad playing the role of Morgan Freeman. My Dad was talking about how he wanted to drive up his favorite canyon once last time, and how he wanted to sleep with my Mom as they mutually felt their terminally ill, little ribcages fill with and release air, maybe even timing their breaths as if they were competing in a synchronized breathing contest, earning extra points in the loving and togetherness category. As my Dad slowly described this, I looked over to Regina, who was manning the camera, and noticed that she had a smile on her face and the camera pointed out the window towards a pack of hard-bodied construction workers. It was always awful when I caught her in these moments, because I would be forced to bitch her out:
“Fucking, god damn it Regina. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Or
“Just give me the god damn camera.”
Or
“Regina, I’m not giving you a cameraman credit in my documentary if you keep fucking this whole thing up.”
Once, my Dad and I were on a walk. We were talking about all the places that he had lived throughout his life. He was describing and ranking his favorite homes. I asked Regina to film. About two minutes in, as my Dad began to describe his childhood home, I noticed her, with that same shitty smirk on her face, filming a cat running through someone’s yard. I was so upset that I yanked the camera from her hand and told her to walk back home alone, that we didn’t want to walk with her, that she wasn’t part of the family. The sad thing is that, instead of capturing great material, most of my footage is of me bitching Regina out for not filming things properly. The documentary might not be about my Dad dying, but rather about his pot-bellied, Del-Taco eating, asshole son bitching people out as he tries to exploit his Father’s situation for his own benefit. It might be a better story actually.
I trusted that Regina would do a fairly good job today, and thought it important for me to get into some of the shots, as I was my Father’s favorite and only not-gay son.
“Regina, you need to film.”
“I’m not filming because you just yell at me and I want to hold your Daddy’s hand,” She replied.
“You have to film. I told you at the onset of this job that there would be some light filming. Plus, those hands are for family members only today.”
I shoveled the camera into Regina arms as my Mom burst out of the door.
“Sorry. I thought I was going to shit my pants,” my jean-wearing Mother said.
I looked over at Regina and noticed that the camera wasn’t even on. “Fucking hell Regina. The camera wasn’t on. That would have been perfect-my Mom talking about shitting herself. You’re the worst cameraman in the world. Fuck.” I grabbed the camera back from her. When I barely missed important moments, I would often ask everyone to recreate them. There are several clips in which everyone is clearly acting.
“Okay, camera is on now. What did you almost do Mom?” I asked while pointing the camera at her.
“I’m not repeating myself,” said my Mom.
“I know but what did you think you were going to shit?”
“My pants,” she said, finally giving in.
My Father’s last day. What a mess so far.
We began to walk. Things started to sink in a bit more. This was it. This was the last chance we would have to be in the outdoors with my Father. This would be the last time the neighbors had the chance to look out the windows, look at my Dad and say, “That poor, poor man. To be stuck with both that awful disease and that awful family. My lord.” This quiet, physically disabled man was the life-vest that held this family afloat, and even as Lou Gehrig’s washed over the man he once was, he was still our source for reason and logic, the man we turned to when we needed help with or advice on anything. We only had him for another hour. We need to take advantage of this and ask all of life’s important questions.
“What’s you favorite color?” my pilled-up Mom asked.
“If you were a zoo animal, which one would you be?” Chelsea asked.
“Daddy, who are you the proudest of?” Greg asked.
“If you had to brutally murder one of our pet, which one would it be?” I asked.
My Mom leaned in and whispered, “Bob, do you think we’ll have time to go back and have some sex before you die?”
“No you won’t,” I interjected. “Listen, we all want to have sex with Dad. If one of us gets to, we all get to, and we don’t have the time,” I joked.
We pushed forward. I tried to capture the towering Wasatch Mountains in the background to remind us that the world and universe is huge and we are all merely parasites shit here by luck. Rob the Pederass even stopped us a couple of times and took some beautiful pictures of our complete family, as it was before he barged in with his cock to use Michelle in his Mormon plan to marry and have children, ignoring both that her Father was dying and that she was fucking 18. Regina tried to get into some of the pics. We let her in a couple, but I reminded her that the ones she was in would not be considered “family pictures”.
We rolled down a street named Keddington. When we moved to Utah some twenty years ago, we moved onto this street. It was a modest tree-lined street full of happy families and old couples that I always thought would die before my Dad. As we entered the street I envision all of our old neighbors storming out their houses and lining the streets four people deep. They would clap and shower the road with candy and flower pedals and porno, not forgetting me. But instead, no one was on the street. It was just us. It was better that way.
We were silent. We didn’t know what to say. There really wasn’t much else to say. The important thing was that we were all together. In a fucked up way, my Dad getting sick was good for this reason. Tiffany and I had never gotten along (I had punched her in the nose once as we argued over watching either Jay Leno or Jerry Springer), but after this we were no longer at war, but rather war buddies that had bonded not only over my Dad’s fight, but also over our mutual resentment towards out bat-shit crazy Mother. Greg and I rekindled our roles as each other’s best friends, and we had spent many nights talking about how much better and smarter we were than everyone else we knew, minus Bob Leavitt. Chelsea and I had been given the chance to make each other laugh, her with her rape jokes and me with my well times farts and angry outbursts towards our Mother and our dogs. And Michelle, well Michelle and I realized that we were buds and could turn to each other when we needed to. She turned to me when she needed help getting a pre-nuptial agreement drafted, and I turned to her when I was too drunk to drive but still really wanted to go to the bars to try to get some pussy.
We are a family. A nice big family that was certainly cursed with some misfortune, but was still a big family that looked after one another in a way that few families do.
Our walk came to an end.
We rolled back into the driveway of our home. Our friend Gary had arrived from Madison, WI. We all sat out on our backyard gazebo area looking at the mountains. Rob left to get the balloons. Greg and I played a bit of basketball as my Dad watched. We always play a game whereupon we would be the commentator announcing the closing seconds of a close game.
For example, I might say, “Danny is down by one point with five seconds to go. He has the ball. He is isolated one-on-one with Greg. He has burned Greg all night long, and is looking to add to his 78-point outing. Danny squares up. Oh, he blows right passed Greg. Three, Two, One. The shot is up……IT’S GOOD!!! DANNY WINS!!! DANNY WINS!!! He is such a great player and really good at everything. He is just too strong and too powerful for Greg, who will walk away a loser one more time. Oh man what a finish.”
But this addition was all about my Dad so it would have to be something magical, and something that made him realize how much better and more talented I was than Greg. I set the scene: “There’s ten seconds left. Danny is down by two. He’s out of time outs. His ankle is sprained. His Father will be turned off his respirator and die if Danny doesn’t pull some heroics out of his magical hat. Greg has looked sharp all night long and has forced Danny into some really difficult positions. They inbound the ball to Danny. He squares up. Greg is all over him, the faggot. Eight seconds left. Danny dribbles into the center of the court. Greg sticks with him. Four seconds left. Danny spins out to the baseline corner. Three. He squares up. Greg’s stays right with him. He’s going to have to take a fade away, thirty-footer. Two. Danny fires it up…”
The ball hung in the air as I noticed my smiling Dad.
Swoosh. The shot was a wasted miracle that I wish I could have used to actually save my Dad, but I still enjoyed the moment.
“It goes in! What a miracle shot! Danny has done it again! He has made his Dad proud and saved his life! Oh man! What a finish!”
I ran over to my Dad and celebrated, yelling in my commentator voice that I had saved his life, that I was amazing. I finally settled down. My Dad smiled and said “nice shot”.
But the fun was coming to an end.
The cunt, Sunny, from hospice had arrived and brought with her a chilly set of clouds. She carried a little black backpack full of all the elements that would be used to num my Father so the respirator could be shut off. It was time to go back in. We wheeled my Dad back into the elevator. The doors closed. It was just he and I. He looked up at me and said, “Thank you,” as he does every time we return from an outing. I’m usually a smug asshole and say, “Oh, your welcome. I know that I’m fantastic,” but this time I just thanked him back.
We entered his room and put him back in bed. The whole family was there, plus Gary, my Mom’s nurse and friend Kelly, my Mom’s oncologist Dr. Buys, our cleaning lady Stana, Regina, Sunny from Hospice, and my Dad’s neurologist, Dr. Bromberg, who’s uni-brow formed a straight line above his eyes, foreshadowing what my Dad’ heartbeat monitor would soon look like, if he was hooked to one that is. My Dad’s orange marathon hat had fallen off. He requested that we place it back on his head.
“Okay, so Bob we’re going to start the morphine drip. You’re going to start to feel numb, and will slowly fade out of consciousness. Then Dr. Bromberg will slowly turn down the respirator and you will, well, you will pass on,” said a cheerful Sunny.
We all took turns hugging and talking with my Dad. It was hard. It was really hard. I don’t remember exactly what was said. I love you was said a lot. There was a lot of crying. But I don’t remember exact words. They were all kind. It wasn’t anything like, “Thanks for pulling my ears when I was ten, you asshole” or anything. We had said everything we wanted to say to him before this moment so we didn’t have to cram it all in.
My Dad was going to die after putting up such a strong and heroic fight with an awful, awful disease. My Dad, like always, smiled and did not complain about a thing. There were no, “I wish I had done this” or “I wish I had done that”. He was at the end and he didn’t want to change a thing. He was surrounded by his loving family. He had no regrets.
The decision had been made.
We were all at peace, even my Mom. She had been in denial for most of this and been distracting herself from the reality of the situation. But she seemed to perk up and accept everything as best she could.
“I love you Bob. You are so strong and we all understand this decision. It’s okay for you to go now. Thanks for giving us all so much. I’m sorry you had to go through this. But you did it and we all did it.”
My Mom cuddled up in bed with my Dad, as did Michelle and Chelsea. Each of us touched a part of him, whatever part we could get to. Tiffany grabbed a hand. Greg grabbed his head. Regina had a calf. I grabbed a toe. Stana had the other toe. Dr. Buys, Kelly and Gary all stood in the background watching.
Sunny hooked up all the pouches of chemicals, and the morphine began to drip.
Now, I could go into the details here, but I think that it’s best just to stop and let the narrator take over as the camera fades from shot to shot, starting with the room, then fading to our house as, under Rob’s direction, all the balloons are released, then fading to our street, then fading to our town, then fading to our state, then fading to our country, then fading to the world, then fading to our solar system, then fading to the whole universe. As these cliché fades take place, the narrator will say something like, “And so there they were. A complete family all brought together by an awful disease that ended the life of the center of their universe. Bob Marshall, the courageous hero in this tail, will always be remembered for being a kind and caring man that helped everyone realize that there are some things in life that you can’t control, but that it’s important to master those things you can, like how hard you work, how often you laugh or smile, or how you treat other people, and let the rest of the universe work as it will. He will be remember and always have a place in this mad, mad universe.”
Fade to black, followed by fart sounds.