Notes from Maine - 2022/05/22

During the last few weeks of his life, I said a lot of things to my father that I probably wouldn’t have said otherwise. They weren’t angry accusations or deep dark confessions, they were just things. Dad didn’t argue at the end. He listened and occasionally made a comment when he was having a clear moment. I wasn’t defensive and he wasn’t judgmental. It was like speaking down into a well. My words reverberated and maybe echoed back to me, but they disappeared into that black hole. Nothing I said could be used against me later as an indictment of my character. The shadows of my secrets wouldn’t haunt me. 

I didn’t know my father before he was a lawyer. He passed the bar when I was a baby, so I have no way of knowing if his disposition was shaped by his profession or if it was the other way around. Dad was masterful at finding the other side of a point of view. He could pivot and argue an opposing point of view endlessly. If I had a tough decision to make, I could always present it to him and he would expose the weak parts of my rationale. 

But he had no off switch. At the end of the conversation, when I came to a decision, he would still be attacking and undermining. It wasn’t personal—he wasn’t against me—he just didn’t have the desire to retreat to a neutral position. Because of that, I eventually stopped going to him with those type of conversations. If my decision turned out to have downsides, I didn’t want to suffer through that humiliation. I’m not saying that my father would have humiliated me. That wasn’t his goal. But I would have still felt the sting of having failed in his eyes, even if those were just emotions I was projecting on him unfairly.

And, sometimes, you just want to say something and have the other person be on your side. That wasn’t an experience I often had with him. Perhaps it’s more instructive to have a devil’s advocate across the table. It’s instructive, if not supportive. 

At the end, our discussions were different.

I voiced my fears and told him about little things I was proud or ashamed of. I shared some of the lies I tell myself, and then laughed. Sometimes, he laughed too. 

My sister and I were there in February and Dad mumbled something. I had to ask him to repeat himself several times and then put my ear close to his mouth. That day, he was beyond frustrated when he couldn’t make himself understood, so he abandoned the effort and decided to mess with me instead.

He whispered, “There’s treasure buried in the back yard.”

His sense of humor was indelible. In that moment, it was more important to him to make a joke than to repeat whatever information or request he had been trying to tell me. 

In order to effectively take up an opposing point for the sake of argument, you have to create a separate reality for yourself. This new world is built with slightly shifted perspectives and rules. Over the past couple of years, Dad was living in a reality that was gradually drifting away from the rest of us. Things would get stuck in his head and nobody could dissuade him from believing them. At the time, it was frustrating. In retrospect, that was just Dad’s way. He built temporary encampments, bolstered against assault, and defended them to the end. 

I had to go up to his camp the other day to do a few chores. When I was done, I went down to the water, where he used to sit. There, I told him the things I left unsaid previously. I guess there were a few things left that I still couldn’t say to his face, even at the end. 

The last night I sat with him, he was dizzy in bed and thought he was falling. 

His hand would shoot out and he would say, “Catch me! Catch me!”

Grabbing his hand, I assured him that I was there and he was safe. He sounded so much like a little kid then. All of the facade of adulthood was stripped away. Whatever is built up can be torn down by time and eroded by illness. I think his last argument was with himself, over the nature of mortality. I wonder what position he took up.

Thank you all so much for the kind notes so many have sent. I haven’t been able to respond to them all, but I have read them and was deeply touched.