Fuggeddaboudit

by Gil VanWagner

Block

  Sometimes I get sick of sameness. That passes quickly. Fuggeddaboudit is like living in the movie “Ground Hog’s Day” but it is as far from comedy as things can get. People die at the end of this rat race of repetition. Enjoy your popcorn while you still can.

  All that and even darker thoughts as I walked around the block with Dad. Not even around the block after a while. Just a few houses and he was pretty well out of it. I tricked him, sweetly. That has to be enough when dealing with victims sometimes. We would get just eight houses up the block. To the corner of the Dead End street. He would pause to catch his breath. I let him and then headed back where we came from as if we were headed in that direction when he stopped. He didn’t notice.

  So we walked. Used to be around the whole block. Then it slowed. Then it shortened. That it was skipped a few times. I didn’t let it go more than a few days though. Want to say it was because he needed the exercise. Want to say it was because it was good for him to get out and see things other than what was in the house. Want to say that. Could say that. It would be true. The real reason was that I needed it. Needed to be outside. With him or without him. Wanted it to be with him for as long as that was possible.

  Sometimes I had to drag him. One time, I had to scream at him to get him to go. Tom finally touched my shoulder to get my attention. Helped me see I was pretty much being a lunatic as I screamed at my father to get his ass outside and go for his walk.

  Those screams were real. Every word was about the walk and why he needed it and why he would do it and why I would make him. None of the yelling was about that. The yelling was the dam bursting before I exploded in some other way. The yelling was dark and real and scary. I am glad Tom touched my shoulder that day. I was on the verge on really losing it. I walked alone that night. It was very rare for me to walk alone. Back then, at least. Now I walk alone a lot but that is whole different story.

  The walks back then were about Dad. Dad and me just doing something other than sitting. Other than being inside. Other than being inside of Fuggeddaboudit. We walked and talked and waved and smiled. It was really nice. It was damn near normal.

  After a while, it took longer to get him ready and then settle him back in the house than the entire walk took. That didn’t matter though. It was still worth it.

  After a while, there wasn’t really any variation. This block we walked was loaded with memories. Who lived where and when they moved on. Who lives there now and what they do for a living. A block of stories and memories and connection. It was sweet and easy and rich. After a while, it was exactly the same and lessened a bit each day.

  The fourth house down was my gauge of where Dad was. If he asked about Mister O’Malley, it was 1956 or so. O’Malley was long dead. He left the neighborhood long before he left this life but in the late 50s, the fourth house down was his place. He was a local politician. He held a rather unusual honor. He was the only politician my Dad ever liked.

  If Dad wondered what Mister O’Malley was up to, he was in 1956 and I was just a kid. Maybe I was Mom. It depended on…..well it depended on the god damn disease, just like everything did. Dad would mention him and usually then explain to me that it was nice to know a guy could be in politics and not be a complete asshole. That was high praise from my father who said you could put all the lawyers and politicians into a pile of shit and it was just be a bigger pile of shit. O’Malley was an exception. High praise indeed. Plus, Dad liked his lawn.

  When the Tanners were mentioned, we were in the 60s. They brought the house from the one close to decent politician on the planet and lived there for ten years or so. Dad liked the Tanners but didn’t trust their son. I blushed when Dad talked about the Tanners. He was right not to trust their son. That too is another story and you are not gonna hear about that here.

  Dad liked the Tanners. Gus, the father, knew, in my father’s words, his way around an engine. My Dad thought he himself knew his way around an engine and reserved that compliment for those that really did. Gus Tanner worked on my Dad’s car once or twice and “didn’t charge a dime. Heck, I hadda almost force him to have a cold one with me.”, Dad remembered people that shared skills and helped neighbors. I learned that lesson for myself looking for the best way to help Dad as the disease chiseled away at his brain more and more.

  If Dad talked about the Renters, it was not about any one family in the fourth house down. In the early 70s, the Tanners moved and decided to rent the house rather than sell it. Since then, Dad spoke about the Renters in that house. Sometimes the families stayed for a few months, sometimes longer. To Dad, there were all The Renters. He didn’t usually have many nice things to say about them. If fact, he had none.

  The Renters just did not care. They did not take care of the place. They barely cut the lawn. There was about a snowball’s chance in hell of getting them to paint the damn place. How the hell could Gus Tanner let that happen to what was such a nice home? O’Malley must be spinning in his grave.

  The theme was consistent and let me know that Dad was pretty close to current day on his walk. The next house down was nice and was still “in the family”. Dad liked that. When he said that, I smiled inside. Proud in a silly way. Proud that Dad’s house was “in the family” again. Proud that I was there for him. Then I realized a terminal illness brought me back home. Proud disappeared quickly when the man holding your hand was dying. I smiled though. Happy to be there with him on the walks.

  Sometimes, a walk around the block is a heck a lot more than a walk around the block. Sometimes, a walk around the block is enough. Dad and I even headed to Brooklyn once to walk around his old block in his old neighborhood. Something inside of me said it was important to do that. A walk into yesterday. It was Dad’s idea. Sort of.

  The Old Neighborhood

  Dad brought up Brooklyn more and more as the disease ate away chunks of him. Sometimes it was reminiscing. Sometimes it was being there. Either way, I learned things about his youth I knew and a heck a lot I didn’t.

  We lived just a few hours from where he lived as a child. Avenue N in Brooklyn. Just a short hop in the car but it might as well have been on the other side of the planet instead of on the other side of the Outer Bridge and the Verrazano. We just did not go to visit. Had not been there for over twenty years.

  Hearing Dad’s stories made me want to go. To go to those places and feel them through Dad’s eyes. To be with him there when he shared his memories at the place where they happened. To be part of his past before he was part of mine.

  It started as an idea and moved quickly to an obsession. Dad was lukewarm at first. “It ain’t the same, Mally. Most of the folks are gone. The neighborhood changed so much. Likely most of the things I knew aren’t even there anymore.”

  I wore him down. Soon, he was on board for a day trip. A Father-Daughter outing to his old neighborhood. It was our primary topic of conversation for several weeks. The more we talked about it, the more excited we both got about it.

  The day arrived. Along with heavy rain. I almost went anyway but finally realized that was more stubborn than smart. Spent the day moping. Moping. Like a spoiled kid that did not get her way. Dad was a little disappointed and then turned on “The Price is Right” and forgot all about it.

  At the dinner table, Tom said, “Sorry you two didn’t get to go today. Just not the right weather for a trip to Brooklyn.” Dad replied, “Brooklyn?”

  Perhaps the rain was a good thing that day. I slipped the trip a week and we went for Plan B. Actually it was Plan A on Day B but that mattered very little. Both of us were excited again.

  That morning, Tommy was sick. He had a slight fever the day before. That morning, his slight fever was far from slight so I kept him home from school. Dad and I stayed with him. By mid-morning, Tommy’s fever broke and he was much better. Dad insisted I make up the couch in his living room
so the two of them could be together.

  Soon, Dad and Tommy watched “Ghostbusters” and laughed like two kids on a field trip. Tommy later told me it was one of his best times with his Grandfather. Brooklyn waited another week.

  Finally, we actually headed out. A wonderful spring day and all was right with the world. Brooklyn, here we come.

  Yesterdays

  The lessons that day were on the street as well as on the way to lunch. Dad’s old house looked a lot like it did when he was a kid. Being there helped him. He was present that day as we stood in his past. It showed in his eyes. In the lilt of his voice. It was wonderful to hear him. To see him touch a tree and share about standing there as a youth. To see the boy that was now the man and soon to be a memory as his memories sprang to life on a street that was someone else’s now.

  It may sound sad but it was something else. It was important. Important for me to realize how human my Dad was. He was a kid with hopes and dreams and little clue about what was ahead. He spoke of his mother and his brothers and his God’s-gift to-the-universe sister as well as friends. Some names I knew. Some I heard for the first time that day. We walked around the block and each step held a memory that he gifted me. It was sweet.

  Just up the block was the church he was supposed to attend on Sundays. He spent more time avoiding Mass than he did attending it. I heard the stories of his shenanigans for years. As we knelt in that church that day, the stories came to life. My father might have skipped Masses but he respected what drew the collected to that building and others like it. We sat on the wall outside and the boy spoke to me from within the man.

  Dad was in those days as we sat there. The days when he hung outside the church and enjoyed nature, shiny cars, and quiet neighborhoods. While he wondered why he felt better outside than inside. While he decided he belonged somewhere other than where he was told to be. He questioned rules. He said no until he really wanted to say yes. He became a man outside that church. He became the man that became my father.

  It was one of my best moments with my father. He was boy sharing his stories and I was his friend. I kinda wish there was a Mass that day. We could have skipped it together.

  Our service lasted over an hour and was sweet communion. We got in the car and headed out to find a bite to eat. Dad gave directions, pretty exact ones. He had a place in mind and I made the turns as he navigated. It was nice to sense he knew exactly where to turn even after all these years. When he said to park alongside a graveyard, I wondered if Fuggeddaboudit just invaded our day again.

  “Let’s stop here for a bit, Mally. I just need a few moments.”

  We headed into some yesterdays marked on Tombstones. Dad visited his Mother, his Aunt, several cousins, an uncle, and a father he hated most of his life. I headed to Brooklyn to learn more about my Father’s yesterdays. He had a few yesterdays that he spoke of for the first time that day.

  Grave Lessons

  This was one of the older parts of the cemetery. Pretty well planted. Decaying above and below the ground. Some here were dead to the world while others danced the slow death of being forgotten. We meandered with some purpose through tombstones and vanishing memories. I listened as my father spoke of things long silent. Things dark at the time and darker over time that tasted the light of sharing the first time that day. Family drama. Who did what to whom? Who disappointed so and so. Routine life things that some carried to the very end of their days. By the sounds of it, some carried beyond even that. People like my father’s father.

  Dad rarely spoke about his father. He shared some of the reasons that day. There was a hurt in the words that the boy spoke. A hurt real and deep and dark. At first it saddened me. Then it shocked me. As Dad continued to talk, it helped me.

  It helped me see how much we mean to each other and how what we do not do can be as important as what we do. As my father spoke, he let go of things deep inside. Things that festered too long in a man that remembered what the boy felt. Dad forgave his father that day. Dad forgave himself that day. Dad said good bye that day. Maybe it was hello. Maybe it was see you soon. Maybe it was I am afraid and just want to do what is right. More likely, it was all those things and more. Dad went into that graveyard that day because he had to.

  I thought the trip to Brooklyn was for me. It was really for Dad. He had some unfinished business and had to do it in person. Just him and the ghosts that haunted him in his silence for a few decades. The graveyard wasn’t haunted. Dad was. Right up until he let go of the hurt. He did and I was there to witness the healing.

  We had lunch at Coney Island. Not that it mattered really. We had enough to digest already. We stopped more out of habit than of need. Coney Island was not the same as Dad remembered it. It was not his anymore. He grumbled a bit about how much it had changed. Guess he had he fill of yesterdays by the time we got to Nathan’s. Yesterdays can be a place where people hide from the future. Dad faced his yesterdays in a graveyard. The stop at Coney Island was just for some French Fries. We didn’t talk much about yesterday’s anymore while we ate. We had enough yesterday’s today.

  War Cries

  Somewhere along the way, I declared war on Fuggeddaboudit. Why not? It invaded my father’s body, my life, and already knew it was going to kill my father. I might be slow but I knew a war once I am sucked into it. So in I went.

  Just like most folks that are invaded by this vile enemy, for a while, I thought my father would be the exception. The one that beat the odds, proved the research, found the cure. As you already know, that was not the case. He died. Just like the millions of others before him and who knows how many that follow. Someone said it is the sixth biggest cause of death in the world. I wondered why the heck that mattered. Death rankings celebrate last place. Dead was dead and this was personal.

  At first, I fought conventional warfare. Doctors. Clinics. Drugs. The standard battle against an invulnerable enemy. I kept one foot in that approach all the way through to the end. I believed. Hoped. Prayed. Then I accepted that conventional warfare was a fool’s errand. Even the Medical Community admitted they were clueless. In their own way that is. The “let’s just keep trying stuff until something really does work” approach. No promises. Just prescriptions. They pumped out drugs of false hope and high profits and insurance companies sanctioned it. So down the rabbit hole I went and waited for my father to pull the dirt in over him.

  That is not to say there was not hope. Hope just came from other places. Places not on the approved but futile path covered by insurance. Hope surfaced in what I would have considered borderline wacko before desperation opened me to alternatives. First I dabbled by asking. Then I tested the waters via computer. Soon I dared to enter Natural Food stores, a gathering place for open minds. In time, if I suspected that a vegetable strainer hooked to a D Cell Battery licked under a full moon held a cure, my head was in an Almanac to know when the moon was fullest. This was my father’s life and I decided that if you couldn’t tell me what did work, shut the hell up about what didn’t.

  At first, I looked exactly where I was told not to. Aluminum and how it might have caused Alzheimer’s. It was an urban legend and denied as essentially, poppycock. Poppycock. One of the many Doctors I talked to about the disease actually used that word about the alleged tie of Aluminum to the advance of Alzheimer’s. He was so arrogant in his tone; I knew that was the first place I would look.

  Along the way, I discovered a lot of interesting mysteries and met some of the most wonderful people I ever encountered…..before or since. One pointed me to B-12 shots and how that could help. He already heard there was no cases of Alzheimer’s in India and, like me, wondered why that was not investigated more aggressively. Another introduced to me to Turmeric and how to ease it into my father’s diet. Have been using it ever since and it feels better each time I do. Like I am flushing a useless pill eac
h time I stir Turmeric into my spaghetti sauce.

  The folks at Good Earth knew exactly where the Ginkgo was. More importantly, the clerk suspected why and spent thirty minutes with me over a cup of herbal tea. In the process, she mentioned several other possibilities folks had shared, cautioned me that what she shared was anecdotal, and then just listened as I spoke of what I knew and wished I knew. What stunned me the most was that in the entire time, she did not try to sell me a damn thing. I have shopped there ever since and likely always will.

  Soon, I was making Chinese Herbal teas for my father and myself. He loved watching me do that. I liked going to the Herbalist. It was like going into a Harry Potter movie or some Alchemist’s shop. They accessed, filled a bag with twigs, bark, and heaven knew what else, and sent us on the way for less than the price of half of an Interceptor pill. I brewed it up at night and Dad said it smelled like some witch’s concoction. We drank our tea and laughed as we did. It might not have worked. It was a helluva more fun than anything that came in a capsule.

  Some things in the Homeopathic world did look a bit like the stuff that came from the mainstream medical community. Still, I opened to the possibilities. Baryta Carb 30. Others. I researched and asked and explored. One foot in the approved and sanctioned medical approach, the other on the path of hope that bordered on desperation. One didn’t promise yet showed hope. The other promised and showed less hope over time. One Doctor made the mistake of commenting on my efforts in the alternative healing in exactly that way. He said, “It makes you sound so desperate.”

  I looked at him and let the words echo. “It makes you sound so desperate.” I felt them and what they meant to him and from him and from everyone like him that said them or thought them or, even sadder to accept, believed them. He hit a nerve; dead on. So I responded.

  “I am desperate, Doctor. I am so damn desperate I keep coming back here knowing it is not doing my father any damn good. THAT is how desperate I am.”

  Still, I returned for the next appointment and the next appointment right up until the last appointment. Still, I filled the first prescription and the next prescription and the ones after that. The Doctor was right. I was desperate. Along the way, I realized I was losing.

  In my panic, I tried anything. Reiki. Prayer. I wanted my father to live. Along the way, I met many people who fought the same losing battle for their loved ones. I also met