-Sunday, July 20, 2003-
I’m pushing a Lawnboy mower through brambles, volunteer trees and grasses some of which are taller than I am. This was once yard now become field and I’m trying to reclaim it. It’s very slow, tough going - six inches forward, pull back, eight inches forward, the engine nearly kills, I tip the blades up and away from the turf, wait until the engine gains rpms then another six inches. I’m doing my homework; I’m feeling angry, I’m feeling a lot of pain, I’m thinking about my dad.
My dad is living and dying half a country away in Nebraska. He got cancer a couple years ago, did chemo and radiation and went into remission. Then the cancer came back this spring and spread all over his body. A cousin called me in late May just as Ellen, Ian and I were preparing to drive to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the first vacation I’d taken in nearly 13 months. My cousin had heard the latest reports on Dad, knew I was planning to get back to Nebraska in September and warned me I’d better get back sooner or he’d likely be dead. I felt angry. I thought maybe I should skip my vacation and head back to Nebraska, but what would Ellen and Ian do? They were counting on me to drive with them down to the Outer Banks where Ellen’s mother, sister and two aunts were planning to join us at a rented beach house. I was pissed. I was concerned about what my cousin would think of me if I didn’t return to Nebraska. His father had recently died. I think he was close to his dad and so figured I must be close to mine. I could tell my brothers that I felt ambiguous about coming back to see dad. They understood completely, but I couldn’t tell my cousin. I was ashamed to acknowledge to him the depth of my ambiguity and anger towards that dying man. This was doubly hard because my cousin’s wife and family seemed soft on my dad. I think he talks to my cousin’s wife more often than he talks to me. And I wanted my vacation damn it. So I pushed through my guilt and took it.
Now I’m holding the safety release on the mower with one hand so it won’t shut off. With the other hand I’m wrestling a dead eight foot tree out of the ground. It would be easier if I just let the motor die and used both hands to remove the tree but strangely I feel that I would somehow be defeated if I let go of the mower. Here’s some pathology at work. I’ve already got the darn mower going so why let it die, I tell myself, even if I gain the use of another hand in so doing? The mower usually restarts fairly well. I sense, pathologically, that I would be moving backwards, giving up hard won territory if I were to let the mower die. Silly. Anyway I’m manically navigating the mower about the tree as I pull and bend it from different angles and stomp on it where it enters the ground and is now splitting. Finally I get it out and clumsily toss it into permafield on the other side of a scraggly cedar hedge. I return to thoughts of my father, and doing my homework, which is feeling my anger at him and feeling the pain that’s always there when I think on him.
After my family’s vacation he went through another intense course of chemo. Then about a week and a half and one CAT scan later my brother Scott called to report that the cancer was still growing everywhere. He wasn’t going to tell me what to do but he said if I wanted to see Dad before he died I probably ought to get back before September. I told him I was feeling angry. Scott understood. I was angry at that old man, angry that his sickness had thrown a wrench into my vacation preparations, angry that he wasn’t making it easy for me to wait until September, angry that he kept asking me about the stupid state quarters I’d been collecting for him. The state quarters that come into my bank in Vermont are stamped with a "P" for the Philadelphia mint unlike the quarters shipped to Nebraska which have a "D" for the Denver mint. He’s got to have both. He gets excited when he tells me he’s compiling several complete sets of quarters, some for himself and some for my brothers and I. I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t care about the quarters. My thinking is to let him have his fantasy that he’s doing something for us but of course this lie of omission, like dozens of others over the years just increases the distance between us. I was angry that he’d been such an angry man, angry that he had never made an effort to prepare me for this world in which I flounder, angry that we were poor before he left us and poor after he left us, angry that I work hard at a job I dislike most of the time, live a life without extravagances and still can’t cover the monthly bills. Angry, I was just angry.
A year ago I began a big piece of work around anger.
I dreamt that I was in a canoe with a tall, strong man. He lands the canoe on an island village beach. We get out and watch as volcanoes at the center of the island start blowing. The lava flows toward us. Some villagers are running about in panic, others stand like the man calmly watching. I’m terrified and I want out of there. I get back into the canoe. An old woman joins me and we paddle through waterside markets now erupting into pandemonium. We are trying to gather supplies for a journey away from the exploding and melting island. This proves very difficult if not impossible. I’m driven by urgency and fear.
Notice that the tall man doesn’t get back into the canoe with me. My homework is to remain with the man, the animus, on the beach and watch the lava coming and feel afraid. God often comes to us as natural disasters in dreams. He’s come to me as floods, tornados, huge waves and now erupting volcanoes. God comes in many ways, but when he comes as a natural disaster I’m thrown immediately into my fear and that’s good. I’m thrown into fear and there is no possibility of fighting that force. If God comes as a man I can ignore him or argue with him or be in pride around him. The disciples did all these things around Jesus and don‘t get me wrong it’s important for me to have a relationship with God as man just as it was for the disciples. But if God wants to get my attention, shake me up and kick me out my shit for a moment, Old Testament style, He comes as a natural disaster. In this dream He’s present in the erupting volcanoes and in the calm man. If I were stronger in this work I would feel the fear of the approaching lava but I would stay with the animus/Christ/God as man, trusting that he would take care of me. But I’m too afraid and too untrusting. Marc asks me to gestalt the volcano. "Volcano, what part of me are you?" "I’m your passion." This is subtle but important, the volcano is God but it’s also a part of me, just as God is a part of all of us. It is through my passion that I am coming to know God. My passion is where God and I overlap. My passion is where God lives in me and it is where he speaks to me. Marc gives me a further clue; erupting volcanoes are usually anger. As I work on this homework over the next two weeks I realize that I can’t distinguish my anger from my passion and that by suppressing my anger, by being afraid of it as I was afraid of the lava, I am denying my passion.
Anger can be a dangerous commodity. But it seems to me that the danger of anger and the damage anger can do are directly proportional to my lack of awareness around that anger. My father was often angry but I bet if you’d have asked him if he was angry he would have denied it. I know that when I lash out at Ellen I’m not usually aware that I’m angry until I actually lash out. Afterwards I can see that I’d been angry for some time before my explosion but I was unaware of it. Therein lies the danger. It’s difficult for me to recognize then communicate my anger when it first rises up in me. For one thing I feel guilty when I feel anger coming up, it reminds me of my dad and my knee jerk response is to quickly push it back down and pretend everything is okay. I’m so quick and good at this that most of the time I actually believe that everything really is okay. Then some small event triggers me and I go off. If I have my wits about me, if I‘m not sucked in by the pathology, if I’m not unaware, I can say: "That really makes me angry" or better yet "I’m really feeling angry." The second statement is cleaner because I’m owning my anger and not trying to blame someone or something else for it. It seems that anger lives an independent life within me. My anger is not caused by events in the world, it is merely called forth by them and then one of three things can happen. I can suppress the anger which is my knee jerk response and the least healthy or I can release it which is tougher on the people around me but better for me, this feels a bit orgasmic in fact, or I can feel the burn, acknowledge it to myself and perhaps to others, accept it as a part of me and watch as the anger becomes transformed into something else. This third choice is the most deliberate, the most difficult and the most painful. It’s what I’m working on now. The more I can own my anger in this way the closer I can come to my passion and the closer I can come to God.
After our vacation on the Outer Banks I went back and forth about whether I wanted to see Dad or not. Ellen and Scott asked me the same question; "If he dies and you don’t see him again, how will you feel?" I couldn’t tell. Sometimes I just wished he’d hurry up and die so I could be free of one more drag on my life.
Also, I couldn’t see how I’d be able to get time off from my job. I was afraid to ask for it. I’m a salesman and wine consultant for a beverage distributor. We work in sales teams and our team always seems stressed out. Always. And I’m afraid to ask my supervisor for favors.
About a week ago Scott called to say that the nurse he’d tried to hire to care for our father said she couldn’t possibly work in such a disgusting apartment. She then reported the situation to the state and they were trying to evict him. Dad just wanted to be left alone. He had already changed the locks on his front door and apparently his plan was to simply not answer when the state and condo manager showed up.
Scott’s been spending an hour or more every day taking care of him. I can’t imagine. Things are pretty bad. He’s on oxygen all the time now. His apartment was a mess the last time I saw it over four years ago when his mother died. Every room was stacked floor to ceiling with possessions, a narrow canyon walkway snaking its way throughout. The only accessible piece of furniture was his bed. Apparently its gotten worse. Even the bathtub has become packed in and unavailable. Scott thinks it’s been years since dad last bathed. He’s spent recent visits digging through and throwing away a four foot deep pile of discarded molding fast food containers and rodent shit that fill the kitchen. He’s been hauling out piles of newspapers, magazines and junk mail. Some weekends my youngest brother, Jon, drives up from Kansas City to help. Scott says the only thing he can think of that would turn the inside of Dad’s toilet that pitch black would be just not flushing it. The nurse who reported the situation to the state saw the place after Scott and Jon had spent several days cleaning it up.
Back in Vermont my mower runs out of gas. I refill it, pull the cord, it doesn’t start. I pull again, there’s no resistance on the line. I try again, again no resistance. It’s broken. This sort of thing can really get to me but this time it doesn’t. This is a good example of the anger response I was talking about earlier. In this case I am aware of the anger within me because I‘ve been doing my homework. It makes no difference that the anger I’m working with has nothing to do with lawn mowers. I’m shielded by my homework, protected by the strength of the pain and anger I’m feeling toward Dad. Pain and anger can work in very different ways in me. If I have a tough day at work and feel stress and time pressure and just push on through the day I might come home and the least provocation will set me off. I spoke earlier about awareness, how awareness of being angry can diffuse my tendency to lash out. But awareness by itself isn’t always enough. To return to the example of the stressful day at work I might acknowledge to myself at points during the day that I’m angry and in pain. I might even pray about it and ask for help but at the same time continue feeling helpless and overwhelmed. What I have to do to gain insight and strength and blessings from the anger and pain is enter fully into them and accept them and feel them. Not just notice them but feel them. If I can truly and deeply feel my pain and anger then pain and anger can no longer ambush me. Ambushers always hide before they attack. If I can truly and deeply feel my pain and anger then I won’t be making bargains with the devil to avoid feeling my pain and my anger. Deals like listening to talk radio and getting wrapped up in political issues or drinking too much or overeating or masturbating or blaming others or going to sleep, anything to not feel those feelings. In the case of this broken mower I’m already inviting my pain and anger to rise up out of my past, rise up out that deep well of unexpressed life. When I do this it’s far less likely that an event in the world will disturb me. I’m already disturbed, already in motion, vulnerable and alive. What a strange peace this is - a peace not founded in happiness and silence but a peace founded on the necessary flow of pain and anger, a peace founded on my surrender to this process, a peace founded on my rocky surrender to God.
Last Wednesday at the end of the day I told my supervisor I needed to talk to him. We took a table at the back of a bar, I ordered a beer, took a drink and told him my dad was dying. I had been trying to figure out how and when I could possibly get away. I had been trying to figure out how badly I really wanted to go. Trying to figure out if I could afford it. This trying to figure things out before I ask for something is a typical ploy of my pathology. There are just too many variables, life is not a board game. I can never figure out all the variations in life and so I become paralyzed. This trying to figure things out keeps me from asking or doing many things. In the long run it has crippled my ability to make money and move through this world in a masculine way. What I’m describing here is an attack of the three thousand pound asshole, more like a siege. But this time, at the table at the back of the bar, I just told Bruce, my supervisor, what was going on. I told him from an un-figured out place of vulnerability and he became my ally. We talked of parents and death and ambiguity and he said he’d work things out so I could get back to Nebraska without using vacation time.
Later that night my brother, Scott, told me on the phone that the sooner I come back the better. We had been given a week by the state to make the apartment livable or dad would have to leave. Ellen and I talked. The two weeks after the coming week were bad for several reasons. I felt overwhelmed again, I couldn’t see wrapping up loose ends at work to get out of town this coming week and holding off for three weeks seemed too long. What to do? Finally I gave up trying to make it happen in a certain way at a certain time and just trusted that somehow things would work out, by God’s grace things would work out.
The next day, Thursday, I told Bruce I wanted to go the following week. He told me flat out it wouldn’t work. He was taking his vacation next week. I had no idea. It hadn’t come up during our conversation the previous day. My pathology told me to back off, find another week, perhaps go in two weeks and miss my son Ian’s third birthday, miss the dream work men’s group’s semi annual retreat up Norris mountain and apologize to my brother for not being able to help him in a time of need. But instead of listening to the insistent voice of the three thousand pound asshole I told Bruce I needed to talk to him again that night after work. He invited me to his house. Jeanine, Bruce’s wife, served me a big bowl of homemade minestrone and Bruce and I talked again. I let him know what I had learned from Scott the previous night and he agreed to let me go. I believe that if I had gone to him with the agenda; "I have to go next week." I would have felt less certain about the wisdom of actually going even if he had said yes. The truth was I didn’t fully know what I wanted and by being in my vulnerability with him I was led to a greater clarity. Again we spoke of fathers and mothers and death. His mother had recently died and Jeanine’s Alzheimer ridden mother is now living with them. Again Bruce, who had seemed an obstacle to my isolated, confused and unexpressed mind, became an ally in the face of my vulnerability.
That night I called my dad and told him I was coming. He sounded very weak and tired. Since Grandma died he just sleeps most of the time, but he sounded quite a bit worse than I’d ever heard him before.
"Hi Dad."
"Hello Mike." Less enthusiasm than usual but I can still hear a trace beneath his exhaustion.
"How are you feeling?"
"Oh, about the same." His standard response. I wish he’d say something more, talk about his approaching death, share himself. After all these years and this ton of disappointment I’m still looking for something real from him. Maybe dying will open him up. But in the brief silence I know such is not the case so I push delicately on.
"I hear the last report was pretty bad."
"I guess so." Still nothing, barely an acknowledgement in fact.
"Dad, I’m coming back next week to see you."
"Oh, good."
"This could be the last time I see you." Now I’m slowly cutting through to the heart of things. This is the first time I’ve alluded to his death.
"I know." Still nothing more. Who is this man? What’s going on inside him?
Sadly this is more direct and honest than I’ve ever been with him. Big pauses fill the phone line. I’m uncomfortable but allowing the discomfort and the pauses instead of bailing out into talk about football or my brothers or the weather.
"Dad, is there anything you need?"
"No. Not really."
"Dad - Do you believe in God?"
"Oh, I don’t know." Come on old man, give me something, throw me a bone, please! I want a relationship, a glimpse of intimacy, something.
"Are you afraid of dying?"
"No, not particularly." Nothing.
"Are you worried about anything?"
"I’m worried about the mess I’m leaving you boys." He sounds a little tender here, maybe even vulnerable.
"Well that’s one reason I want to come back. I want to see you but I also want to help you figure out what we’re going to do before and after you die." This is where the part of me that figured he’d never open up has been heading all along. Now I’m getting down to business and taking care of my surface needs instead of seeking openings to intimacy. My primary concern now is dealing with the physical mess he’s leaving us. I’m not just taking care of him now, comforting him and pandering to him. Instead I’m asking for what I need, that is clearance to deal forcibly with the mess he’s leaving.
"I don’t think I can figure anything out anymore." Dad says. This is a big thing for him to admit. Even more than I have, he’s always been one to figure things out.
"Do you trust us to take care of your affairs?" This is the question I most want answered. None of us had yet asked this question.
"Oh yes."
"I’m glad to hear that Dad. Is there anyone else you want to leave things to?"
"No."
We went on to talk about some of the assisted living options Scott had been exploring. Only in the past couple weeks had Dad been willing to consider assisted living. He’s been such a hermit, he hasn‘t even wanted a nurse around, but he‘s becoming very weak and he’s beginning to let go. I felt more raw, more exposed in this conversation with him than I ever have. He’ll be dead soon. This is as good as it ever gets with him.
Friday I had my session with Marc. I teared up when I told him about Bruce helping me out. Marc said it was a rabbity response based on my assumption that Bruce wouldn’t be there for me just as my father hadn’t been there for me. He said I was projecting my yearning for a good earthly father onto Bruce in that moment. Then he asked how I felt about going back and seeing my dad. I told him about the phone conversation and that I felt closer to Dad during that talk than ever before. Marc thought I was sidestepping again, chocolate coating things. The conversation wasn’t all that deep and at any rate it would have less bearing on my coming visit with my dad than would the great, long held weight of my painful past with him. So again, the question was "How do you feel about seeing your dad?" The answer I gave was hurt, angry and a bit afraid. The truth is I don’t yet know what I’ll feel when I see him. I’m peeling off calluses that have been in place since childhood, exposing all the loose nerve ends, feeling again. If I’m hoping for any healing around my relationship with him or even just hoping for a deepening in my process I have to let these dark feelings come up. And that’s just what I’ve been doing while mowing this field.
I turn the dead mower around, push it into the garage and go inside to shower.
-Tuesday July 22-
I’ve just landed in Omaha. My company doesn’t know that I’m gone. My supervisor, Bruce, figured they’d give me a couple days off for a dying father but not the four I‘m taking. So Bruce knows I’m gone but they don’t and though he’s covering my route I still have to check my voicemail periodically throughout the day and deal with problems before our office closes at 5:00 eastern time. That leaves me twenty minutes to buy a phone card, find a pay phone, retrieve my messages then call a secretary to process things. I have seventeen messages waiting. I try to access them but can’t because it requires using the * key and every pay phone in the Omaha airport thinks I want to make another call if I push the * key and so it hangs up on me. Now if I were feeling God’s love this wouldn’t get to me but I’m in my responsibility pathology and I’m going crazy, stupid crazy. I call a secretary and ask her to put me into my voice mail box since with these phones I can’t get there by myself. I’m really rushing now. The first message is a general voicemail that doesn’t involve me, without thinking I push *3 to delete it, again the phone hangs up on me. I call the secretary back, she’s about to leave, she puts me back into the system again, I listen to my next message and without thinking I again push *3 to delete and again the phone hangs up on me. I let it go, give up and head downstairs to collect my luggage.
It’s not there. The entire baggage area is deserted. I dive straight into my worst case scenario pathology. If I can’t find my keys or wallet in the morning when I’m dashing around the house trying to get out I figure I must have lost them someplace where they’ll never be found or Ian has played with them and left them in some insane place (he’s never done this). If the bank calls to say they need additional information for our mortgage application I figure they’re trying to wriggle out of the low rate we’ve locked in because of a minor technicality, (I‘d just heard about this diabolical practice on the radio). Chest murmurs and pains are early signs of heart attack. Lumps are cancer, though I seldom check them with a doctor, too expensive and who has the time? If the car needs repairs I figure it’ll be at least seven or eight hundred dollars though it’s seldom more than two or three hundred and if my luggage isn’t there it means someone probably stole it. I register my claim with the clerk and leave the airport not quite free at last.
Scott picks me up outside the terminal with his four year old daughter Ana. Ana is very friendly, loud and talkative. She already has a voice that would easily cut through the noise in a busy dinner. In fact she sounds like a hard boiled waitress who’s been working that dinner for about forty years. We drive to Lincoln and stop at the mechanic’s for Dad’s 82’ Lincoln Mark VI, quite possibly the most unwieldy car ever produced. Scott has to take his son, Tommy, to a T ball game so I’m left alone to navigate the behemoth cross town to Dad’s assisted living digs. Just as I’m about to enter an intersection where eight lanes cross six lanes, what the hell let’s call it a fourteen lane intersection, the car dies. Nothing, I can’t even run the emergency blinkers. The car behind me is honking like mad. I wave him around, luckily the electric window was down when the thing died, but he has a tough time clearing my bumper and pulling out into the fast flow of traffic on both sides of me. Finally he makes it, the light changes and another sucker pulls in tight behind me. I wonder how long before a cop takes notice. The Lincoln has one Oregon plate and hasn’t been registered for about fifteen years. I fish out an auto club card from my wallet hoping to arrange a quick tow. I get through to the friendly assistance manager, Bart. Bart tells me my account has been cancelled. "But my wife just renewed three months ago." I say. Bart goes away to check on things then comes back to politely inform me that no, it was never renewed. I call Ellen. She reports that she did renew it but come to think of it the charge never came through on the credit card so once again I’m screwed. I’m getting used to it now, it’s almost fun. What’s next? I call Scott, by now I’ve surrendered. I‘m standing behind the car hoping I don’t get slammed, waving drivers around the behemoth before they become poor stuck suckers. Scott arrives after rearranging his T ball duties, we deal with the shit and several hours later I arrive at Haven Manor.
Dad looks bad. I’d been warned. He’d already gone from 190 pounds to 125 when I last saw him two years ago. He drove east shortly after his first course of chemotherapy to visit us and meet Ian. Now he’s down to100 pounds. Cancer can gobble up over 3,000 calories a day. That’s more than a healthy, active adult needs to live. I doubt that running a marathon would consume that many calories. His thighs are no bigger than my upper arms. Every bone in his body is showing. He looks like a holocaust survivor or, because he’s only wearing a diaper, he looks like Gandhi at the end of one of his long fasts. It would be easy to break him, easier to break him than to mend our ties, easier to forget my pain and anger than to breathe into them and see where they lead me, easier to be polite than to love.
He’s sitting on the crapper. It doesn’t seem to matter. There’s a lump the size of a softball protruding from one armpit and two more thrusting out from beneath his ribcage right and left.
Thankfully Scott moved him into this assisted living situation the day before I arrived. He’s eating three meals a day for the first time since grandma died four years ago. He sounds stronger than when I last spoke to him on the phone. He’s new enough here that his room is not yet cluttered and he’s still polite to the staff. This also means we can work on his apartment without direct interference
I’m feeling my anger. That’s my homework. I’m not looking for anything from him, I’m not speaking out my anger or even acknowledging it to him but I’m not denying it to myself and that is big and that is the best I can do.
We talk mostly of trivia until he’s exhausted and I leave.
-Wednesday, July 23-
His apartment is disgusting. The smell is unbearable. What is it? I think it’s the smell of my decaying father. He’d kept the place at about 90 degrees because as thin as he was he was always cold. I’m alone. I turn on the AC and the overhead fan. Where to start? I try to clear a path to a heavily curtained window fifteen feet away in order to open it. This is like working a Chinese puzzle, in order to move forward it’s necessary to displace items from my intended path into the only open floor space which is directly behind me and minimal which means the only way to move forward is to block my retreat. After about an hour I give up, reverse course and dig my way back out. The bathroom is crammed with cleaning supplies, toiletries (many of these were Grandma’s moved down here from her apartment four years ago when she died and untouched since), first aid supplies and damp, molding clothing or rags that are trampled and decomposing into the linoleum.
I’m beyond overwhelmed. I clear a small spot on the living room carpet, clear off a folding chair and place it in the clearing, kneel down in front of it, rest my head and arms on it and pray.
I use three containers of heavy duty ceramic cleaner and several brushings to remove about two thirds of the thick, crusty black grunge in the toilet.. The sink seems to be growing hairs from it’s drain. Toiletries are mixed with empty unrinsed tuna cans. Did he actually eat in here?
Everything in the apartment is coated with a thin veneer of grease, dust and mysterious vile residues. Beneath this layer of filth is an equally disturbing mania of organization. Several filing cabinets and 40 or 50 plastic file boxes full of alphabetized nonsense. If you wanted you could look up junk mail he received ten years ago, carefully dated, sometimes with additional notes and filed away. Piles of very carefully stacked newspapers (of course), many of them addressed to other people. Scott had already nearly filled a dumpster with stacked newspapers before I’d arrived yet there were many more still to be removed. Foil paper from various pre packaged food products are carefully flattened then stacked in size order topped by an envelope containing carefully flattened, stacked and cataloged gum foils. Every shirt in his closet is seriously yellowed and stinks. Plastic bags flattened, stacked and cataloged, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, empty boxes...
I’m working. I’m working this vein of anger. I’m working this vein of anger because it leads downward. I need to dig deeper. As a child I was first afraid of then allergic to my father’s anger. I’m sure fear must be a typical childhood response to adult anger. I have seen it in Ian when I react angrily to something he does, a stunned look on his face just before he bursts into tears. It’s only happened a few times and we make up pretty quickly if I apologize and respect his tears. I don’t recall crying in response to my father’s anger unless he hit me, though I may well have when I was Ian’s age or younger. But I’m quite sure he never once apologized for his outbursts and so several things happened inside me all in a jumble. I imagined that I was somehow wrong and unloved. I became timid and didn’t express myself around him, and a sort of wound opened up. This wound never heals because his anger is never acknowledged or resolved, it just keeps biting me; fresh pain, fresh blood, festering sore. So much pain that I have to reject him to survive, so I can at least grow a crusty scab over this wound of pain and get on with figuring out how to live in a world without a father‘s love.
Then the allergy sets in. Now all anger, my father’s, any adult’s, any child’s, my own, all anger is stupid and dangerous and to be avoided. I become a very polite and seemingly cheerful boy without needs, at one with the chocolate rabbit and with the rabbit comes pride. I believe I’m better than Dad, better than anyone who gets angry. Better than they are because unlike them I am able to relinquish my wants and needs to placate anyone’s anger, including my own. Of course my childhood anger which was neither expressed nor acknowledged went underground then lashed out in pathological ways, mostly at my younger brothers because they were familiar and weaker and so safe targets. But even that pathological anger wasn’t pure. The chocolate rabbit saw to it that I justified all expressions of anger by first feeling victimized. Then, in my mind, it’s not about being angry or hurt it’s about being righteous! The rabbit rests his case.
This pattern still holds today. Out in the world I control my feelings and very seldom express my anger, but it builds up inside me and when I get home I often take it out on Ellen (the weaker). Sometimes my attack isn’t even direct, in this way my pathology tells me I can‘t be blamed. For instance it may come out when I spill, break or misplace something. I don’t yell at her, I just curse the situation, but a sliver of me is aware that my invectives are meant to hurt Ellen and pull her down into my pain.
As I said before, if I can own my anger and not allow it to fester in unconsciousness I’m less likely to unleash it on my family. Also, and this is the real crux of the matter, I have to let anger into the crucible of my self. In the Middle Ages alchemists used crucibles to melt and blend metals and other chemicals. In this work the crucible, the container, is our conscious experience of feelings. We talk about containing our feelings rather than submerging them or spewing them out. Our feelings are like the metals the alchemist put into his crucible, our awareness and acceptance is the fire that melts them and the mystical ingredient, the Philosopher’s stone long sought by alchemists is God, the Archetypes, Jesus. Right now I have to contain my anger without reacting to it or out of it. Anger is only one of several rejected feelings which I am reintegrating into my life, others are fear, pain, sadness, disappointment but right now my work is around anger.
I’m standing in front of storage unit number 2 at All Steel Storage just off West O street. When I was a young boy growing up in Lincoln, O street was touted to be the longest straight street in the world. The units are right up against the Hump. The Hump is a very large train switchyard, so called because they used to push a string of cars up one side of a hill or hump in the middle of the yard then let them roll down the other side where they were switched, switched and switched again until each car joined it’s new train. In other words a train might come in from San Francisco with cars destined for St. Louis, New York City and Toronto. Here’s where the sorting was done. As a boy I recall my father and other men speaking of the Hump with a sort of fascination, pride and reverence. It seemed cool to me. Today the engines sound just like commercial jet planes, great whining crescendos and decrescendos. It all seems strangely appropriate.
For many years my thoughts on the eventual demise of my father have circled around an image of my brothers and I standing in front of an open storage unit facing a nearly solid wall of insanely well packed stuff, tight as a ship’s hold. I’m feeling overwhelmed by the immensity of the task before us and excited by the hope of finding hidden treasure.
The reality is more mundane. Number 2 has a trailer in it, car stuff in one corner, a bunch of empty boxes, decrepit disassembled office furniture, an unassembled shed kit, a set of vibes previously owned and played by Sun Ra, stacks of repacked and taped empty Pepsi cans, (no deposit, no return), stuffed file cabinets, odd pieces of lumber, a half ton office safe and a whole bunch of worthless shit. Amazingly I can see most of this from the open door. The place is full but not sardine canned. There’s also unit number 4. More shit. He’s had these units for about ten years, he had units in Oregon before these. He may have had a unit in Las Vegas before that. My brothers and I figure he’s probably spent over 50 thousand dollars on storage units over the years and it’s clear at a glance that most of this stuff is going into a huge roll off dumpster. It will turn out that two huge roll off dumpsters will not be enough.
There are many times when it’s difficult to feel the feelings I‘m assigned to feel for my homework. This is not one of those times.
This, all this feeling, is preparation for my transformation. I want to be changed. I don’t believe I can change myself, except in superficial ways. I want to be changed in the deepest, most hidden, oldest, sickest parts of myself. I’m far enough into this work now, I’ve seen so much, that I don’t believe any human being could ever uncover these specific illnesses which have been revealed to me. Only God, through my dreams could show me this wasteland. I am frightened, unengaged, petty, quick to feel victimized, judgmental, lazy, a fool for comfort, sexually shut down, gluttonous. But these are generalities, the specifics... well, I guess this is a book of the specifics.
I want a hell of a lot more than I have. Most of what I do have is psychic garbage stuffed into my life like the shit stuffed into my dad’s storage units. I realize I’m asking questions and seeking gold that most folks don’t even consider. But I also believe I’m seriously fucked up in a socially benign, personally devastating, hyper Byzantine way. I’m asking for help. I can’t help myself. I’m convinced that none of you can help me. What would you have me do? At this point I either try to grow accustomed to eating shit or I go to God. I guess I’m writing now to the unbeliever in myself. Go to God Michael, go to God.
I’m back with Dad in his small room at Haven Manor. His brother Tom is here. Dad’s been angry at Tom for a long time. So long he can’t quite remember why. Tom is Dad’s youngest brother and the only one of those four boys well adjusted to this world. The only one to remain married. The only one whose kids are all doing well. The only one to make a good living. I used to imagine that Tom might be my true father. I think I look more like him than like my dad. When I started school the kindergarten at our district elementary school was full so they opened an annex at the high school where Tom was a popular history teacher. Every afternoon as I walked home he managed to make his way, mid class, to his window on the second floor and wave to me. Years later, time after time when introducing myself to young adults ten to fifteen years older than me they’d ask if I was Tom’s son. Never once do I remember anyone asking me if I was Dave’s boy. Tom was a somebody, my father was not. The first live musical I remember seeing was "My Fair Lady" and Tom played the drunken father, he was hilarious and I think he stole the show. The Tom Keene house was full of musical instruments, everyone played something. The whole Tom Keene family was on the cover of Nebraska Life magazine because they bicycled all over the state. They moved away when Tom was offered an opportunity in text book sales by a large east coast firm. He did very well for himself and his family.
When Dad first heard that Tom was coming back he was upset, but as I walk into the room they’re both laughing. Tom still has a salesman’s charm, social ease and sense of humor. He’s telling stories from their childhood and Dad’s as happy as I’ve ever seen him. Turns out Tom’s been doing hospice work the past few years so he’s an old hand at spending time with dying people. Everything’s going swimmingly until I hand Dad his mail. He opens envelopes and stacks the contents in several piles on the covers over his stick legs. At one point I see an exact duplicate of a piece of junk mail he opened yesterday. Thinking I’m being helpful I pick it up saying: "This is the same one you got and filed yesterday, I’ll just toss it out."
He snatches it back as if I’d taken his last scrap of food and shouts "You keep your God Damned hands the hell off my property! This is my property and nobody has the right to touch it! The whole world’s going to hell in a hand basket because nobody respects anyone’s property anymore!"
I’m pissed now. "Look," I say, "You can’t talk to me like that. I’m just trying to help. If you don’t want me around I’ll just go back to Vermont."
"You don’t have to go back." he grumbles.
Now there’s a long silence. Finally Tom changes the subject as if nothing happened.
Later, out in the parking lot, Tom mentions the snag trying to help me feel better. I’m still feeling raw and burnt. The cicadas are thrumming. I’ve been quite a few places in this world but I’ve never heard anything like the throbbing roar of midsummer cicadas in Lincoln, Nebraska. It takes me right back. I could just about cry. I say goodnight to Tom and we take our separate cars, me to my brother’s house he to his airport motel.
-Thursday, July 24-
My brother Jon and I are chowing down on juevo rancheros, beans, juices I’ve never heard of and other Mexican breakfast goodies in the parking lot of a funny little drive up across the street from All Steel Storage. We waited about an hour in a line of about five cars to get our food which is excellent. This is a slow food drive up. The place is tiny, no tables inside just a small kitchen and the window. When we finally arrived at the window we ordered our food then waited there the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to prepare it as does every customer here. If the food wasn’t so good the place wouldn’t have a chance but people are always waiting in line so they must do a pretty good business.
We talk about Dad. Jon spent a year alone with Dad in Las Vegas when he was in high school and the going got tough with Mom in Lincoln. Scott did the same thing. I was away at college. I can’t imagine such torture. I guess he was pretty bad about borrowing money from both boys. His life, even by then was so narrow and unexamined and unsuccessful and steeped in anger. I can’t imagine.
Breakfast done we head across the street to the storage units. As we turn into the lot a small thrill runs up my spine. There it is in front of unit #4, an empty roll off dumpster. Now we can really get moving. The work is hot and dusty, tomorrow I’ll bring dust masks. Scott joins us in the afternoon.
When Dad’s brother, another pack rat living in New Jersey, died a couple years ago apparently his oldest son walked into the house, surveyed the mess, ordered a roll off dumpster and threw out everything without even opening boxes, just tossed it. Our approach is more complicated. We’re on the look out for buried treasure, coins, stamps, gemstones (Dad cut, polished and made jewelry from semi precious gem stones in one chapter of his life), crystals (he worked in a glass shop at another time.) We’re looking for lesser things we can unload quickly at an estate sale; a dozen unopened boxes containing peculiar kitchen appliances all from the same manufacturer, old movie and slide projectors, an overhead projector, books, whatevers. We’re each making a pile of things we’d like to keep. Jon’s into Dad’s tools, some of them unused. I’m into the crystals, Ellen likes them. Scott doesn’t seem to care for much of any of it. I’m looking too for some sense of connection to this odd, angry loner. I feel a deeper intimacy with him here sifting through his hoarded things, painful though it is, than I do sitting with him in his room. I am finding a simple communion with my brothers. This is the biggest project we’ve yet done together and I doubt it’ll ever be topped. Of course most of the stuff goes right into the dumpster. Much of it is in dusty boxes carefully taped shut. I brought a buck knife from the apartment which we pass around, slicing open mysteries, memories and absurdities.
"Remember these lava lamps?" "Another box of empty, broken glass jars." "Remember this?" "What the hell is this?" "Those are worth something." Scott says when Jon shows a box of Playboys from the seventies. "Oh yeah, People collect those." I throw in. Scott works quickly, opening boxes making a quick assessment then tossing them. Jon and I root around more.
Cards, dice, matchbooks, match boxes, napkins and chips from casinos, beach stones, desert rocks, files from his days as county attorney in York, Nebraska. He used to drive back and forth between Lincoln and York about a one hour trip. He spent a few nights each week in York, turns out he was having an affair with his secretary.
I find things I recognize from childhood, plastic and balsa model kits, toys and other things I longed to play with but wasn’t allowed to touch, their magic now gone, too late, they seem nearly worthless except for the remembered longing and pain they bring up in me, those feelings are worth something. This is my real work here, not dusty boxes, buried treasure and dumpsters but holding things in my hands and following threads back to my childhood and salvaging forgotten, neglected and suppressed feelings; embarrassment and curiosity at his unhidden porn collection in Las Vegas, disappointment, shame and fear at his inability to support us financially or emotionally, and of course my homework - the steady red burning coal of my anger.
Uncle Tom joins us late afternoon. He‘s already been to visit Dad. I’ve decided I’ll see him once each day in the evening, that’s all I can handle. Tom helps a bit with the mess but mostly he just talks which is fine, then he leaves to run some errands.
After a bit Scott, Jon and I lock up and head over to the apartment.
The work here is more intense, claustrophobic, closer to the bone. My impulse as before is turn on the overhead fan, open the windows and get some air moving but Scott’s afraid of stirring up and breathing in nasty things we can’t see. We compromise with open door and windows. Jon works his way over to a window, the trail I failed to blaze yesterday, and gets it open. Curious old ladies cluster in the hallway gossiping and staring into the apartment they’ve doubtless been wondering about for years. It is much easier with Scott and Jon along. Scott works in the kitchen, Jon in the living room and I continue my attack on the bathroom, but we’re all within easy earshot. We quickly fill the Villa’s dumpster running shopping cart loads down the elevator. The Villa keeps shopping carts at each entry for the use of the residents but Dad has two of his own in the apartment. It’s good to work alongside my brothers but I also feel discomfort and shame. It’s true that shared hardships bring us closer together but it’s also true that we see our own pain in each other and if we want to avoid that pain we sometimes distance ourselves from each other. At least I do, I suppose I shouldn’t speak for Scott and Jon. One by one we leave. I stay the latest. Alone in the apartment I work more slowly and focus now on my inner work. Soon I’ll go visit Dad, I’ve got a list of things he wants. I’m not looking forward to seeing him but I am resigned and wonder if I can keep the painful connection I’m feeling to God.
It’s late when I get to Haven Manor. After ten. I punch in the entry code, the same code is required to leave, this to keep the residents from wandering off. Dad’s not sleeping much so it doesn’t matter when I arrive. Tom’s just leaving as I enter his room. I lay out the things I brought. Dad is appreciative then giving extremely precise instructions including exactly how to grasp each object he has me rearrange the room, stack and organize the things on the card table next to his bed so he can reach them, and install and pour distilled water into a reservoir on his oxygen generator so his throat’s not so dry. Chores done we go through today’s mail each piece of which he opens, peruses then carefully dates and adds notes to both envelope and contents, including junk mail, then refolds and reinserts the contents into their envelope, or presses the contents flat and carefully stacks those contents topped with the open envelope thus creating several piles stretching across his bed covers, these he has me grasp one by one and move to their destinations on the card table. No mail snags tonight.
We talk about the yellow plastic radio the Manor manager lent him so he can listen to his conservative talk shows during the day and music at night. I hold his wheel chair as he pulls himself up out of his bed and into the chair then I roll him the few feet to the toilet. There is no bathroom door, just an opening onto the three walled, sky blue tiled sink, shower and toilet space. He pulls himself from the chair and onto the six inch high plastic doughnut which sits atop the open toilet. He drops and pulls up his diaper, then back to the bed. He seems completely unselfconscious about all this which does make it easier for me.
The night wears on. I hang a clock on the wall at the foot of his bed so he can easily see the time. Somewhere around midnight I feel a shifting inside myself. I’ve been mining anger all day but here in the midst of our chitty chat the anger begins to melt and I find myself feeling compassion for this old man. He seems not so much an old source of my suffering, not so much the disappointing earthly father I’ve known, he seems something like a fellow sufferer along the way.
Marc talks of three tiers of love. The lowest tier is pity. If I’m feeling pity I’m thinking: "Isn’t it too bad about Dad." or "Poor guy." I may also think: "Well at least I’m not that bad off." and nothing more is done. In this way I can assuage my guilt or vague sense of responsibility. "There, I feel bad for Dad so I’ve done my part." I feel pity because I don’t want to squarely face his suffering. I don’t want to face his suffering because I don’t want to face my own suffering. Pity keeps me safe in myself and it’s a social mask acceptable to many. Pity keeps me from going deeper, yet gives me a way to respond to other’s suffering while keeping me from appearing indifferent. But pity is really just a small step above indifference.
The second tier on this ladder of love is mercy. If I feel merciful toward my father I desire to ease his suffering. I can call him, visit him, rearrange his room, refrain from disagreeing when he goes into a political diatribe, help him to the toilet. In other words be a good nurse. Clearly this is a step above pity. Portia in Shakespeare’s "Merchant of Venice" pleads with the judge to show mercy to Angelo, the accused merchant. The Hebrews of the Old Testament often pray to God for mercy. Mercy is great for easing another’s physical suffering but in a spiritual sense it still falls short because I can be the perfect nurse showing perfect mercy and do so in order to avoid feeling my own suffering. Not only am I avoiding the psychic suffering that can open my heart to God and thus lead to my true healing and transformation, but if I’m being merciful toward another in their psychic suffering I am keeping them from the pain which may be the door to their transformation and salvation. I think Ellen and I often get caught in mercy with our three and a half year old, Ian. He’d much rather have us take care of getting him dressed or building something with his toys than do it himself even though he’s demonstrated his ability to do these things himself. Ellen and I often acquiesce to his whining and do these things for him because it quickly lifts him out of his suffering and us out of ours.
The highest step on this ladder is compassion. This one is new for me and I’m in and out of it. But I’ve been burning in the honesty of my pain and anger toward my father and now, for a moment, I can see and feel him not as a source of that suffering but as a fellow sufferer. I can still do things to make him more physically comfortable but I’m not doing so to make myself more comfortable. I’m still engulfed in my pain. And I’m not trying to comfort him or protect him from his essential pain, that is the suffering in his psyche. Only God can heal that suffering and the only way He can do so is if we’re willing to feel it. If I try to protect myself or my father or anyone from this essential suffering I’m working to keep myself and them from God, the only one who can heal. Right now I’m suffering in my psyche and witnessing the suffering in my father’s. I’m also able, briefly and in small ways, to express my own suffering. "You know Dad, I really don’t like my job, in fact I’ve always found it difficult and painful to make a living in the world." He apologizes for being unable to help me in that way and acknowledges it’s been the same for him. This is close to what we dream workers do when we get together in the men’s group or the women’s group or the Bache group. We speak of our struggles and of the darker feelings we don’t normally express out there in the world, and we listen to each other without comment. We are learning to be compassionate. Christ taught us and continues to teach us compassion. This is why he had to suffer his passion, so we can meet him in that place where we both suffer, so I can meet my father in this place where we both suffer and so too with Ellen and Ian and my brothers and sisters in the work so that we can all surrender and let God in.
Long after midnight I leave Dad awake but perhaps finally able to sleep. Turning out the light, I take my leave.
Twenty minutes later I climb out of the behemoth at Scott’s house and begin laughing. There, alone, in a pool of light on his small entry porch is my lost luggage.
-Friday, July 25-
Ana’s sitting on the foot of my bed talking a mile a minute. It’s what?... 6:30 in the morning. How long has she been there? We’re the only two awake in the house and I’m barely so. It doesn’t seem to concern her that I’m blinking stupidly and scratching my head and yawning. She is talking to me but she’s totally free of any need for a response God bless her.
Arriving at the storage units I’m distressed to discover the dumpster much fuller than we left it yesterday. Someone’s been throwing their shit in our dumpster I’m quick to assume. We had carefully stacked yesterdays trash at the far end of the dumpster opposite the heavy, ill-fitting, swinging door/wall. We were careful loading the thing so we could jam more stuff in there. We’d left a fairly neat stack about the size of a Honda Civic but this morning the entire thirty-five foot length of the dumpster is two to three foot deep in trash. Then I realize that I recognize everything. Someone went through all this garbage. Unbelievable. "Dumpster Diver’s" says a storage neighbor standing in the open dumpster door sensing my dismay as I wade though thigh deep papers and bottles and appliances that had once been efficiently stashed in stacked boxes. Overnight the dumpster went from less than one eighth full to better than a third full and if the divers actually took anything there’s less stuff here than before. "Dumpster Divers" he says again. "They’ll be back tonight" and shaking his head he turns and walks away like the knowledgeable old coot in the movies who’s accepted reality and can help keep you alive the next time the zombies attack.
Nothing much more to report today. More of the same. More mess, more disgust, more pain, more garbage, more pity, mercy and compassion. My brothers and I keep our eyes out for the combination to the office safe in storage unit #2, but no luck. Dad thinks it’s in a wallet somewhere, but which wallet, buried where, he can’t recall.
-Saturday, July 26-
I’m standing in the open door of storage unit #4 with uncle Tom and Don Ficke. Tom hasn’t lived in Lincoln for nearly forty years but he seems to get back once or twice a year and he’s known Don since they were in junior high together. Don has an unassuming, easy going, simple, honest approach to things that can go a long way in the Midwest. Guys like him can pretty easily get rolled over here in the East by overt aggression, but in the Midwest Don is golden. Listen to Garrison Keelor, that’s what I’m talking about. Don is an estate auctioneer and appraiser. He says he’s seen worse messes than Dad’s then goes on to philosophize about the pack rat phenomenon. "You didn’t see this twenty years ago" he says. "Before that you’d go into a house and everything they owned they were using. It was all out in the rooms being used. I don’t know why things changed but I’ve wondered if it mightn’t be these folks that grew up without, during the depression, just aren’t able to let go of things in adulthood." We talk about all the mail-order collectibles Dad’s acquired over the years; plates, coins, stamps, LPs, books, glass knick knacks, scale model cars, porcelain replications of famous golf holes. He never played golf so I figure this was some oblique way of relating to my brothers and me who do play. Most of these collectibles are in mint condition, sealed in their original shipping containers, some unopened, others resealed. If he handled the items at all chances are he was wearing cotton gloves. Don informs us that even in perfect condition these collectibles usually sell for about one quarter what was originally paid. He figures a lot of old folks get into these collectibles because they’re lonely and enjoy looking forward to receiving things in the mail. There are salesmen out there who can really work someone like my dad. I found a letter in one of his files, hand written, from a mail order salesman congratulating Dad on his timely purchase of some four hundred dollar item we’ll be lucky to get a hundred for. The salesman tells my Dad he got one of the last such and such ever made, they sold like hot cakes and will surely appreciate rapidly. The friendly salesman goes on to write that he will keep his eye out for the next four hundred dollar knick knack my dad is sure to want to add to his valuable collection. What a racket.
That afternoon Scott, Jon and I meet at the apartment to dig in once more. I give the report from Don as I’m bagging up Dad’s clothing to throw it out. Scott’s sure he won’t miss anything. "Just leave him a couple outfits" he says. There was a brief scare earlier in the week when Dad asked Scott to bring him to the apartment to look around and spoke as if he might be returning eventually but he didn’t respond to our work there and seems to have accepted the fact that he’ll never live here again. Today all three of us seem to be slogging slowly through our self appointed rounds. After about an hour and a half, at a moment when all three of us happen to be standing in indecision over some object or file Jon says "You guys just wanna go play golf?" "Mike?" Scott asks. "Let’s go." I say.
We three learned to hit golf balls in the front yard of our house on Prescott street. That was the first and only house my folks bought together. We moved there right around the time Scott was born, using money from my mother’s recently deceased mother for the down payment. At one point my maternal grandmother had quite a bit of money but when she got a brain tumor and went blind, around the time I was born, her brother moved in to help her and when she died he disappeared. My mother and her sister Mary Anne then discovered that he’s taken most of her money. Apparently he’d tell her he needed a check to buy groceries and she would blindly sign a check he filled out for five thousand dollars and so week by week he built his little fortune. When she died my mom got about five thousand dollars which went for the down payment on the ranch house on Prescott street. That was a great house, not so much for the structure as for the grounds. It was a corner lot two or three times the size of the average lot in that quietly upwardly mobile neighborhood on the south side of Lincoln. When we first moved there I would kneel on the couch and look over it’s back out our large picture window over our spacious front yard across Prescott street to the large fenced field beyond where horses ran. What a view for a kid. Today you’d probably have to go three and a half miles south of Prescott street through housing developments and strip malls to find such a view, if it even exists at all.
Sadly we were decidedly downwardly mobile. Dad was never able to make a good or even steady living. Good Lord do I know now how painful it is to make a steady living for a family. The first year we were there they paved Prescott street. Since we had a large lot our share of the cost was pretty large, several thousand dollars.. I think the decision to pave Prescott may have been made before we bought the place. The next year some members of the neighborhood wanted to pave thirty ninth street, the other street defining our corner lot. Dad spear headed the movement to block the paving, we just couldn’t afford it. That wet spring of my fourth year, about the age Ian is now, at the height of the pavement battle, I awoke from an afternoon nap and wearing only my diapers crossed the very muddy thirty ninth street looking for my mom and became mired up to my waist. I began screaming bloody murder and several neighbors rushed from their houses. "See, see" the pro pavers said, "this is ridiculous!" as I was pulled "kersluck!" from the mud and shown about.
Thirty ninth street was paved that summer and my folks never climbed out from under that tax burden. We ended up, eight years later, having to sell the place. But in the midst of those halcyon days before we knew how precarious our finances were my brothers and I discovered Mom’s hickory shafted clubs and wound liquid center golf balls. We’d tee those suckers up and knock them around the yard. Soon the yard was too small and we were smacking them across Prescott street into the neighbor’s yard. I’d aim for their side yard but my younger brother Scott, who quickly became and has since remained the best of us, started hitting the eighty or ninety yard shot directly over the neighbor’s house and into their back yard. Sometimes we’d mishit and the ball would fly into their open, empty double stall garage and bounce around booming like approaching cannons and we’d drop our clubs and run into the house and hide. I can’t remember whether or not we broke any windows.
Today we head over to Scott’s house to pick up a spare set of clubs for me and Scott’s boy Tommy and head out to Pioneer’s Golf Course. It’s very hot and humid and we’re exhausted so we rent carts. Even so I need a full half hour at the turn to sit in the air-conditioned clubhouse and down liquids. I wish I could find communion with my blood brothers as I do with my brothers in the dream work. Maybe someday, but for the moment it’s good to play golf.
All three of us visit Dad late that night; pity, mercy, compassion, pain and anger. Finally we say our goodbyes. "I may never see you again." I say. "I know" he says. I kiss him. "Love you Dad." "Love you Mike."
That’s the last I saw of him.