Note: All words spanning various timelines, characters, and perspectives are written by the author.
Matthew April 2007
Is he still in that damn chair?
At the bottom of the stairs, in the 14-hour home, my father sits in the corner, the blue light from the television reflecting his misery in the darkness. I have already gone to school and back, to work and back, but he is sitting in the same place as when I left this morning, my aging father. My sympathy for the man is waning. The catheter bag at his waist is no longer an excuse I want to swing around. The man is lost, a guidepost of everything I do not want to become.
He hears my steps, his eyes catch mine, looking briefly while glancing away. But I do not nod, I say nothing. I look away, open the bedroom door, turn on the lamp on the desk, and close the door behind me.
“Goodnight, Pops,” I murmur to myself. He shouldn’t still be here.
My resume festered like a pain that refuses to heal. Mom and Pops have been swirling toward divorce for ten years. They chose separation because they couldn’t afford the legal fees. But since they couldn’t afford to buy separate homes, my father’s apartment is triangulated between the basement chair, the television, and the bathroom in a 50-square-foot area. It is meant to be temporary, but my father rarely has the will or ability to initiate a solution.
None of us were prepared for his diagnosis. The blood in his urine and the small black pellets were signs of something dreadful. The prognosis was worse than we had imagined. Stage 4 bladder cancer. A death sentence for many at his age and condition.
Pops could live for two months. The only solution was immediate chemotherapy or radical bladder replacement surgery. We opted for the latter - more dramatic, quicker, and efficient, assuming it would work and that insurance would cover it. It made me more anxious. It was a blind experiment where they removed the existing one…