by Dan Marshall
Jessica and Chelsea both piled into bed with my dad as they cried. Each of us touched a part of him, whatever part we could get to. Tiffany grabbed a finger. Greg touched his head. Regina had a hairy calf. I grabbed a big toe. Stana had the other big toe. Dr. Buys, Kelly, and Gary all stood in the background watching.
Sunny hooked up all the chemical pouches and the morphine began to drip.
My dad looked over his battle-tested family one last time. Better people have been through worse, but we had finally finished going through this. It had been a bumpy road, but the struggle made us stronger. We treasured our dad more than anything. He had given us so much love, laughter, and life. We would never forget all that he had done for us, all that he had taught us, all the happiness he had brought us. But it was time to finally let him go.
Soon, my dad was unconscious. Dr. Bromberg looked us all over with sad eyes. This was the worst part of his job, but it had to be done. He started turning off the respirator. Its rhythmic sound began to slow—the time between artificial breaths getting longer and longer.
“It’s okay for you to go,” my mom said one last time.
The respirator pushed its last breath into my wonderful dad, then stopped. The children released the balloons into the blue sky.
EPILOGUE
“Goddamn it, Mom. This is so embarrassing,” I barked as we struggled to keep up with a pack of prospective writing students marching through the University of Southern California rich-bitch campus—the endless Los Angeles sun beating down on our tired souls. I had applied and been accepted to their Master of Fine Arts screenwriting program. We were at an orientation day, checking out the school to see if it was a good fit for me.
“I’m trying my best,” she said back. She was a mess, carrying her shoe and limping. “I just had surgery to remove cancer from my leg, you little shit,” she noted.
“Well, I told you not to come. But you insisted,” I said as I strutted well ahead of her, trying to catch up to my potential classmates.
“I’m sorry,” she yelled.
I looked back at her—a frail, widowed woman just trying to cling onto a little morsel of happiness and support her son’s minor achievement. I walked back and helped her walk. “Come on. I don’t want to miss the speech from Dean Daley,” I said as she placed her hand on my shoulder for support and limped toward the group.
* * *
We had had a rough couple of years, dumping everything into caring for my dad. After his peaceful death, a strange silence settled over our house. We had been so used to hearing the hum of all the medical devices keeping him alive, and now everything was shut off. The traffic of visitors stampeding in and out of our house had stopped. Neighbors no longer brought over lasagnas. Regina’s cheerful laugh had faded away. It was just us. Alone. Looking over the damage Lou Gehrig’s disease had caused to our home, our lives, our world. Stana put it best: “Home is so, so quiet now Daddy is no more.”
We were tired. There were bags under our eyes. Our shoulders were slumped. We needed to sleep for the rest of our lives. We walked around our house as if it had been burned to the ground, inspecting all the damage. Our carpets were stained with cat piss. The yard was littered with leaves and dog shit. We had a raccoon problem. Balls of unswept animal hair passed over our feet like tumbleweeds in an endless desert. Boxes of unused medical supplies cluttered up rooms already full of commodes, cans of Promote, and wheelchairs. Our sad, confused dogs wandered the house, not sure what had happened, wondering why no one was petting them. It was as though everyone and everything had aged ten years. It had become a dilapidated museum of our once prosperous life.
We had to rebuild everything with our tired hands. It wasn’t going to be easy, but we had to move on. We had to awake from this nightmare and start our new lives.
My mom was in a state of absolute panic and depression. She now had to learn how to do everything on her own, without the help of my dad. Despite her best efforts, she was unable to learn the family finances, as her head was too mixed up on pain pills. I tried to help her as much as I could, but I was so exhausted and angry. I couldn’t help the family anymore. I had nothing more to give. I had to worry about fat Dan’s big, fat, stupid life. My mom was still overusing her Fentanyl patches. Anytime we’d go out to dinner, she’d fall asleep at the table, leaving her food completely untouched. When she was home, she’d grab a couple of yogurts and cuddle up in her bed with Brighton, her chemo kitty. She was nearly as dead as my dad.
I was a confused mess in the weeks following my dad’s death. I felt like I was waking up from a coma or returning to a neighborhood swept away by a tornado. I had nothing. I was living in my mom’s basement, where I got drunk and played pinball alone—chasing after any feeling of pleasure. I was the poster boy for loser. Years ago, my grandparents’ house had burned down after my grandpa Joe left his electric blanket on during the night. The ensuing fire took just about everything, but left their living room and TV. When we went to visit them in Twin Falls, we found them sitting in the smoky living room—its walls blackened, everything in shambles—eating soup and watching TV. That’s how I felt—like my home had been destroyed, but I was still hanging around.
I didn’t want to be at home anymore, but I was stuck. I had no outs, nowhere to go. Abby was already dating someone else in San Francisco, proving that cute, happy girls can move on a lot faster after a breakup than dumpy, depressed dudes. She posted a picture on Facebook of herself in a swimsuit standing on a beach next to her shirtless new boyfriend, drinks in their hands. They were living the good life I had wanted to be living with her. I had officially been replaced. I cried as hard as I’ve ever cried when I saw that picture. Fuck Facebook.
I was also worried about the strange gap on my résumé.
“Looks like you weren’t employed for the last year?” I expected any potential employer to ask.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. I was just taking care of my dying father. Lou Gehrig’s disease. I’m pretty sad and lonely and beat up over it. I might now be dead inside forever. Anyway, you’ll notice that I got my business and psychology degree from Berkeley…” I’d say back, wishing I had stayed in bed that morning.
After a few months of moping around, I got a job helping a friend write copy for his motivational Web site. He was building programs to help inspire people to work harder and build the lives they dreamed of having. It was a good job, and my boss was incredibly generous, but I should’ve been going through the program myself instead of helping to write it. I was completely depressed and didn’t have a positive thing to say about the world, or aspirations, or dreams. I was a cynical asshole with a “What’s the point? We’re all going to die anyway” attitude. “If I learned one thing from my dad’s death it’s that we all die,” I repeated to anyone who would listen.
I was mainly consumed with trying to move on and meet a new girl. Becca was on-again, off-again with her boyfriend, so I decided to leave that alone. It was too messy. I started going out a lot and drinking with my friends. Dom and I were closer than ever now that I was an official member of the Dead Dad Club. I rented a loft in downtown Salt Lake. It was nice to get away from the cat piss smell and to be out on my own again. It was just too much to live in our broken-down house. I turned into quite a party animal, making up for my lack of a social life while my dad was dying. My work hours were flexible, so I didn’t have to worry too much about hangovers. So I started a year of living it up a little. Loft parties. Late-night drinking. Lots of dicking around and dead dad jokes. That sort of stuff.
Somewhere in the middle of this sloppy year, I pulled it together enough to apply to some screenwriting M.F.A. programs. This whole situation had given me a restart button at twenty-six. I had liked my old job in Los Angeles, but the business world now seemed so artificial to me—a bunch of slaves giving away their lives for a paycheck and an attempt to buy happiness. To become great at something, you truly have to love it. Over the course of caring for my dad and dealing with his death, I
had grown to love writing and movies. They were an escape. So I figured I’d actually give screenwriting a go. I owed it to myself to at least chase after my unrealistic dreams a little. I applied to USC, NYU, Columbia, Austin, Miami, and UCLA, and waited.
Meanwhile, my other siblings were getting on with their lives. Tiffany was still dating Big Cock Brian, who was still out in Maine at law school. Tiffany finished up her M.B.A. at Westminster College the next spring. I went to her graduation drunk and whooped it up louder than anyone when they called her name. Afterward, she moved to Maine and started working an event-planner job, then she and BCB moved back to Park City, where they now live with their adorable golden retriever, Lilly. The year had made us closer than ever. Now we knew we had to have each other’s backs. We had lost a lot, but we had finally gained a solid relationship with each other.
Greg continued working for The Park Record in Park City. The winter after my dad’s death, he got to cover the Sundance Film Festival. Somewhere along the way, he ended up with my dad’s Lexus. I always thought it was funny that he was supposed to be some poor reporter grinding it out in a small mountain town, all while driving a $60,000 Lexus. He had my dad’s easygoing temperament and approach to life, so he seemed to move on pretty fast and not dwell on the death. Greg went on to study fiction writing at Austin’s Michener Center on a full-ride scholarship. He just finished a memoir about his childhood called Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane. I’m endlessly proud of him.
Jessica got busy building a new life with Todd. I got to know Todd a lot better and stopped calling him Creepy Todd once I discovered that he was a pretty good guy. I still thought the timing of their marriage was horrible. It seemed to be the event that marked my dad’s downward turn. But Jessica was happy, and Todd was doing a great job of taking care of her. She decided that school wasn’t for her. It’s not for everyone. So she focused on creating a family. On February 2, 2009, she had her first child. She’s a terrific mother.
Chelsea continued dancing her skinny ass off. God, she loves dance so much. We eventually taught her how to drive, and she passed her driving test on the first try. It took me three tries. Once she got a car, she proudly placed an I LOVE DANCE sticker on the back windshield. Every time I borrow her car, I have to act like I really love dance. Chelsea was clearly affected by my dad’s death, though she didn’t show it. She spent most of her time at the funeral shaking her head and saying, “I can’t believe we got that slut Erin to be the pastor for this.” Her silly jokes kept me sane while everything else was crumpling to shit. I continued to try to step in as her horrible father figure. I’d ask her, “So, Chelsea, now that Dad’s officially dead, who’s your father figure?” She’d usually say, “Probably Greg, or our dog Berkeley,” then giggle. She went on to graduate with honors from the University of Utah with a degree in psychology, then moved to New York City to attend the Joffrey School of Ballet.
* * *
As the year after my dad’s death marched on, I continued working on motivating people and getting too drunk. The drinking started to become a problem. I was always the last man standing at the end of the night, which is a depressing party position to hold. It’s lonely when everyone is gone and you’re still going after it. Most of my college friends were a few years into working a corporate job, or were about finished with law or medical school. And here I was, stuck in Utah, moping around and trying to rebuild my life by drinking alone in a loft and writing “You can do it” bullshit for fat housewives.
I look back on the situation and realize I was a little angry. I was angry that I had dumped so much of myself into the tragedy. I was angry that I had let myself be so affected by it. I was angry that my siblings hadn’t given up as much as I had. I was angry my dad went on the respirator, thus extending his life, and putting us through all that. I was angry that Abby had moved on so fast. I was angry my mom had placed so much guilt on my shoulders.
But eventually the clouds started to clear.
My mom’s cancer was in check again, for the most part. She still needed IVIG and the occasional chemo or surgery, but she wasn’t being bombed. Her hair had even grown back, down to her shoulders. However, she was still struggling with the Fentanyl addiction. One night she found my blog and read all the horrible, but true, things I had written about her. She was furious. She called me at 5 a.m., threatening to sue me for character defamation.
“How could you write such horrible things about me? I’m your mother.”
“Because they’re true, Mom. You were insane,” I explained.
“No, I wasn’t,” she sniffled. “Was I?”
“Yeah, you were,” I said. “Everything I wrote happened.”
“Oh. Well, still, fuck you,” she said. “Stop writing about me, you little shit-eater.”
But it was a wake-up call for her. She seemed to realize that she couldn’t put us through anything else. She realized that having one parent was better than having no parents at all. For a while, she was convinced that we would have been better off if she had died instead of my dad. “It’s not a fucking trade, Mom,” I explained. “We want you both alive.” So she decided—as she had when she was first diagnosed with cancer in 1992—that she had to continue to survive so we could continue to have a mom.
It wasn’t easy, but she quit all the pain pills cold turkey, all by herself. With no help. Oh, fuck, yeah! Fuck you, Lou Gehrig’s disease! You didn’t get our mom, too!
She started to slowly move on. She had to clear all the pictures of my dad out of the house because they made her too sad. She also started going by Frankie, the name that her parents had originally wanted to give her so long ago. I asked her how she was able to turn it around, how she was able to cope so well with the loss of Dad. “Remember how Robin said that every time I found a penny, it was your dad looking after me?” She lifted up a jar of pennies filled to the brim. “Well, apparently he is.”
Everything was looking up for everyone while I was still struggling.
In the spring of 2009, I was sitting in a coffee shop, Salt Lake Roasting Company, in downtown Salt Lake, trying to blend in with the other patrons attempting to publicly appear busy and interesting, when my mom called.
“You got a letter from USC,” she said with excitement.
“Oh, man. Okay. This is it,” I said, suddenly nervous. “Is it a big or small envelope?” I asked.
“It’s small, like a regular envelope,” she replied.
“Fuck me,” I said. Small envelopes from schools—undergraduate or graduate—usually mean rejection.
“Do you want me to open it?” she said.
I thought for a second, then said, “Yeah. Fuck it. Why not? Open it up.” I took a sip from my disgusting Americano. I was expecting another punch to the gut.
My mom screamed.
“What? What does it say?” I yelled.
She started crying. “Stop fucking crying, Mom. What does it say?” I demanded.
She pulled her shit together. “It says, ‘Congratulations! You have been admitted to the Fall 2009 Writing for Screen & Television MFA Program in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.’”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s unexpected.”
The storm was over.
“God, I’m so proud of you. Wow. What an honor. What a fucking honor,” she said, barely keeping it together.
My eyes welled up, and I started to weep. I was making an ass of myself in front of all the hipsters, but I didn’t care. The acceptance, it wasn’t much. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal. Millions of people go to millions of schools every year. But to me, it meant that I could officially start to rebuild. It meant that I had a way out of this situation. It meant that I was finally able to move on. Sure, it was going to still be a horrific battle to turn that education into a profession in such a batshit crazy industry, but at least I would get to try.
In an abstract way, this whole thing—this whole Lou Gehrig’s mess—got me to my dream. Quitting my job, moving home, caring for
my dad, feeding him, keeping him alive on a respirator, trying to make the end of his life as good as possible, dealing with my crazy mom, driving Chelsea around town—it all seemed worth it. I now had a chance to start my life over. And, fuck, it was about time I got some good news.
* * *
So there I was, with my cancer mom, stumbling around the USC campus. I knew I was going to go there. I didn’t really have to look at it. The school could have been taught in a shed in the middle of a mudslide, and I still would have attended.
“Come on, they’ve stopped. We can catch them,” I said, looking up at the group.
My mom winced in pain. Her leg was acting up again. “Shit, you okay, Mom?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, sitting on a bench in the shade. I looked up at the group of students—their biggest worries being about which classes to take—then back to my mom. I was torn. Should I stay and help her? Or should I move on? Could I just leave her here? Would a little, weak woman be okay on this campus in the middle of South Central Los Angeles?
“Dan, go ahead. I’ll be fine. I just need to rest,” she said.
“I don’t think I should leave my crippled mom in the middle of this neighborhood. You’re liable to get raped,” I said.
“Who’s going to rape a little old lady with cancer?” she said, smiling.
“Good point,” I said. I looked around. The campus was filled with students hustling about, chatting it up, planning the next party, working toward a career, trying to get laid, etc. A few campus police officers drove by. My mom was safe. It was time to move on.
“Okay, well, call me if, you know, you’re about to get raped, or whatever,” I said.
“I will,” my loving mom said. I was thankful she came. She needed this, too. She needed to see that her kids were going to be okay. She needed to see that there was still hope for us all. She needed to see me go.
I started off. “Wait,” she yelled. I turned back, expecting some horrible shit to have already happened. “Thanks for letting me come. Dad and I are very proud of you.” She extended a shiny penny my way. “I found this. You take this one.” I smiled as I grabbed the penny from her and dropped it into my pocket.
