Dealing with Resentment for My Sick Dad
People have said that I look like my dad. Hearing it gives me a feeling of slight unease mainly because it’s true.
He bought me my first guitar and he told me that the best way to learn to play the instrument was to practice with songs by The Beatles. I learned well enough to be “cool” in high school.
There were never any questions from him whenever I asked for things. I was his weakness. I was an only girl (and a middle child) and I knew at a young age that he treasured me more than my brothers.
Then I started seeing the cracks.
My dad caused my mom’s mental breakdown when she was pregnant with me. I found this out through my aunts. They told me he was having an affair with someone who was close to the family. The heartache and post-partum depression destroyed my mother and she had to be institutionalized for months. It also doesn’t help that schizophrenia runs in her family.
Soon after, my dad was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to give up smoking and booze. He still takes a swig of rum every day to take the edge off and secretly has a smoke during his alone time in the backyard.
In 1998, when texting was just becoming a thing, our house had one cellphone. I naturally adapted to that piece of technology and could navigate it better than anyone else in my family. One day, I saw a notification for a voicemail and I had assumed that it was from one of my friends. I listened to it and soon realized it was from a woman who was not my mom, telling my dad that she loved and missed him and that she’ll see him soon.
I wrote this down in my diary. He ratted himself out as a diary-reading cheater when he confronted me about it.
It was my first screaming match with an adult and it was exhilarating! I knew I was right and I had the upper hand. He denied it, of course. And as an act of protest, I tore down all the posters on my wall and burned all of them like a witch. I had never known my capacity for anger until that day.
His illness ate away at his kidneys. He needed a transplant in 2009 and my mother endured many sleepless nights arranging for a donor (she wasn’t a match), getting the money together while simultaneously being his primary caretaker. I spent my 22nd birthday in the hospital and I remember walking through the halls at midnight thinking how unimportant and overrated birthdays were.
After his operation, I thought maybe he’d take better care of himself and perhaps not be an asshole to my mom. Guess I was wrong because two years post-transplant, he was sneaking off to drug stores in the next town to buy dick pills (ughh!).
This wouldn’t have been an issue if my mother had not told me (unprovoked) that she saw the pills but God knows he wasn’t using it for her. That was the day I officially became a part-time friend and part-time daughter to my mother. I guess a secret stash of dick pills brought my mom and me closer. Yey?
Now he’s 62 — old, beaten up, weak. His hair is all grey and his hands involuntarily shake when he tries to do anything like open the door or write on paper. I hear his exhausted breaths and laboured grunts when he tries to sit or stand or ascend the stairs. His cataracts are getting worse and he pees his pants sometimes. He continues to abuse his health and my mom is still by his side.
My brothers are off living their lives with their families and I’m here with two dogs and with very little excuse to not be available when they come to visit the city. I’m that one sibling — the tribute. Asian kids will understand this. But yes, as it stands, I have inadvertently become the one who got left behind with ageing parents.
I hate that he’s put us in a position where he’s too old and sick to be abandoned. It infuriates me that I don’t have the heart to tell him to fuck off and go be a burden to someone else.
My mother accepted that he was her cross to bear so I have to protect her and in doing so, keep me in close proximity to him.
Letting someone die alone is too cruel.
He’s still my father. I am still his daughter. And I resent this.
