We Have Another Caller on the Line
I'm lying in bed with the TV turned up, hiding. I can hear my father outside the door in the hallway in an animated conversation. He is talking to the dog. Since he retired twelve years ago, my father has become progressively needier and needier. In a path I can't quite trace, he went from despising human companionship to craving it constantly.
When we were kids, the only time I can really remember him being in a good mood was when he'd been drinking. The Coors Light he chose to while away every weekend with loosened his brooding, stilted personality into one of the life of the party.
During the week, the incessant yammering of his wife and children grated on him, and occasionally would wring a monosyllabic answer out of him, occasionally an open-handed blow to the head. But at the close of the work week at the dreaded government job he spent 35 years at, the good times could commence. He was on, entertaining and charismatic, eliciting the appreciative loud laughter of fellow bar patrons as well as the admiring looks of their wives and girlfriends. His well-honed wit was a favorite at the handful of divey dark bars he frequented in my small hometown.
That was twenty years ago. Years of drinking and two strokes have left my dad slow mentally as well as physically. He spends hours engaging whoever is nearby in lengthy discussions on topics such as aliens, the bible, and the stupidity of the people around him. He uses favored post-war racial terms such as "slope", "Heeb" and "coon" that one only hears in black and white movies now. His greatest source if information seems to be the all night radio talk shows of Rush Limbaugh and Art Bell. For someone who cannot recall what he ate for breakfast most days, he can repeat entire passages of these programs with astonishing detail.
I came back this week to spend time with my sister, having recently been reminded how mortal we both are. A large part of that time is spent listening to my dad talk about nothing in particular and trying to get him to end conversations and go back into his room. It's hard, because he has stamina combined with a refusal to acknowledge the vacant stares and fidgeting of a bored audience. So Laura and I listen to him, and then we take my rental car to Target so we can really talk.
I do miss him. I miss his sarcasm that occasionally still comes through, and the stories he tells about when he was a kid. But it's all changed around and backward now. The eye rolls and irritated single word answers come from us now, instead of him.
We listen to him and discuss the cats, his church and recent doctor visits. He recounts recent purchases he made at the Goodwill and we comment on them. TVs and heaping plates of biscuits and gravy fill in the awkward spaces in our relationship. I feel sorry for him, and sorry for us that we miss something that at the time was so unbearable. My feelings of remorse are always strongest here. I don't understand what it actually is I regret, and can't remember what it is that I miss.