his eyes are hard as he stares ahead of him, exhales a cloud of smoke that hovers around stubble on his face. his swollen gut juts out in front of him and he waddles as he turns and looks at me.
my grandfather is dying and i’m not sure how to feel about that. that harsh face that always looked at me and my sister with indifference has soften with fear. emphysema came first after almost 70 years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes. then the rib-rattling cough. and now, he’s gone from 170 kilos to about 80. all this not to mention the dozen or so tumors doctors recently found in his throat.
my father’s father can’t breathe and needs to eat through a tube now. that hard-ass figure that intimidated me growing up is nothing but a shell of his former self and as my father leaves my mother for the first time in their lives to go see him in mexico, in tears, i can’t help but feel guilty for not feeling, well, anything.
i don’t know if it was the way he treated my father with such disrespect or the way he never really accepted my mother for being as strong as she was. maybe it was the way he was always disinterested in hearing about my sister and i, our education, our drive and our accomplishments unless that conversation also involved a man or an imminent marriage. whatever it was, it has left me numb and confused.
i want to be there for my father in this time of great pain for him, but i find myself indifferent and to be honest, panicked. why can’t i feel sympathy for this man that is dying? why can’t i settle my differences and be there for my own father?
i guess sometimes need and want is inconsequential.
