daddy

I google his name and 10 pages of papers and honors and awards rise to the surface from this thing he does not understand, this internet. He retired in 1980, long before there were computers in every home and hand. I read ultraviolet spectroscopic analysis and biodegradation of hydrotopes and cyanoethylation of amino acids. I see his work translated into French, into Japanese, Spanish. I feel an almost intolerable rage over the destruction of such a magnificent intellect.

It doesn't help to wonder why, to agonize over the injustice of it, this fucking dementia. I speak to him several times a day and each time, as he repeats his queries about my sister, her kids, "the Floridians," my dogs, I can see in my mind's relentless and unflinching eye the black space on the MRI where the fullness of his frontal lobe used to be.

I fight off the rage with gratitude: he is still with us, he can still communicate, can still laugh. His personality is mostly intact. We are fortunate, in part, because of the magical combination of Namenda and Aricept. And still I miss my other father, the one with whom I would argue politics, human rights, and religion. He is here and I am grateful and so fortunate, and still I miss my Daddy.

It occurred to me as I walked to work this morning that he is 90 years old and yet I see him rarely. My priorities are out of whack and I don't want to live with regret, the most wretched of emotions. I will keep up with all of you, but I am done here for now. There is so little time left. Thank you for your support and kindness and brilliance over the last 18 months. It's been a blast. Hugs to all of you.

lily girl

Trying to catch up here, 24 hours into having the computer back. I started at the bottom of my blogroll to see what y'all have been up to, because it seems I always start at the top and run out of time.

I read "The trials, tribulations and jaundiced observations of a gay man over 40 in the shining Metropolis of Los Angeles," otherwise known as World O' Jeff.

As a result, I started bawling and had to quit reading. Blame him. But not really, because Jeff's Lily Girl was completely unexpected and so full of love and emotion and heartbreak that it's still making me weep as I write this. Jeff's tribute to his mother.

Yance Gray, Omar Mora, R.I.P.

American soldiers stationed in Iraq, two of seven brave enough to compose an op-ed for the New York Times speaking the terrible truth about the war. All seven were at the end of their 15 month deployment.

Two won't be coming back. Yance Gray and Omar Mora were killed in Iraq on Monday. About a month ago, these were their words:

To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day ...

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere ... In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act ...

As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

There aren't words sufficient to describe the travesty of this war.

amy amy amy

Catching up with blog friends yesterday, I was visiting World O' Jeff, my source for all things retro, gay and fabulous. Along with his recent near plane crash (which inspired my dream of a crash landing, thanks pal), Jeff introduced me to Amy Winehouse.

Oh lord, do y'all know this woman? Have you been keeping her secret? I am enchanted. I can't quit listening to this song. Delicious heartbroken diva. Love her.

friends

My friend Mick was just released from prison. I've known Mick for 15 years and about two years ago he went nuts, got drunk, went on a multi-state run of crazy behavior which included exposing himself to his wife's employer (who had mistreated Debra in Mick's mind) and peeing on her shoes, thus the sexual battery charges. He's out and I'm hoping he can stay sober.

Curtis is still locked up, my friend who went mad on crack after a couple of years of sobriety. The Board of Education did not approve and he lost his teaching job, wife, kid. He went nuts and barricaded himself in a motel room, ended up surrounded by cops and SWAT, TV cameras. He made a swan dive over the railing onto a parked car before he was dragged off in handcuffs.

Geo's dad died, and he divorced, both events triggering (or giving him an excuse for) a flat out hell for leather drunk which resulted in his arrest for assault. Geoff's the sweetest guy when he's sober. I met him as he was completing his master's and starting his own business. He's funny enough to do standup for a living.

These are three of my favorite men, sweethearts every one of them. Add some dope, some alcohol, and they are transformed into the kind of guys I read about in the paper, who show up on COPS or the evening news. Do you know any people like this? Folks you love to pieces who just can't get it together?

surgery

My father waits for the surgeon propped on pillows in a hospital bed. He looks frail in that ridiculous cotton gown, but the blue of the thing sets off his silver hair and every nurse who peeks in tells him he looks handsome and he does. He smiles at me and asks over and over if he's in Dodge City at the hospital where his sister died forty years ago. The nurse comes to take him away and I kiss the top of his head, clasp his hand in my own, whisper I love you Daddy.

I look into his eyes and see a ring of blue around them. The golden-flecked chestnut eyes I've looked at all my life, the ones I see in the mirror every day, have changed. They are nearly black, ringed in blue. It's startling, this black and blue, and disconcerting.

Those eyes have seen so much and now they're dark and closed somehow. I think maybe they're turning black and opaque to keep the memories in, like keeping the drapes closed on a winter day to hold the warm inside. A lifetime is stored behind those eyes in a brain that shrinks infinitesimally every day.

Each lost cell takes away another moment. But where do they go, these memories? How can the richness of his extraordinary life just vanish? Do the memories evaporate into the empty space where his frontal lobe used to be? Released from the wrecked cells of his brain, do they fly back out his eyes in the same way they got in? I wonder if these dark drapes covering my father's eyes will keep him with us a little longer. Him. Who he is, my daddy. Not the shell he will become.

I pray for God's will to be done with my father. And while I'm at it, I tell Him that dying with some measure of dignity, some remnant of self would be a generous gift to this precious man, to us. Please and thank you God. Please.