Devan Hite dissertation

Institute for Clinical Social Work

Mourning in Madness: An Autoethnographic Eulogy

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By Devan Hite Chicago, Illinois

Abstract

This autoethnographic, interpretive self-analysis examines an adult son’s experience of a “complicated” type of anticipatory mourning that is stimulated by the impending death of his father with terminal cancer It provides a personal, autobiographical account of the author’s experience of the final year of his father’s life, followed by a thoroughgoing self-analysis of that year using psychoanalytic theory concerning the vicissitudes of object loss. In the narrative, the author is motivated by the ambition to make best use of the little time that he has left with his dying father to work to change the quality of the internal investment of their relationship. He does this by engaging his father in several, meaningful conversations regarding their life together, including attempts on his part to confront a past of emotionally- and sometimes physically-abusive behavior. Ultimately, the study reveals the ways in which the prospect of loss serves to amplify or intensify the negative, internalized ambivalences of their relationship (a phenomenon that the literature on the topic fails to consider or represent), which challenges the author’s capacity to effectively mourn both the anticipation of and the actual death of his father.

“When we tell our tales, we give away our souls.”

~ J. Hillman

Acknowledgments

Throughout the writing process of this dissertation, I have had my committee in mind as my primary audience, especially the chair of my committee, Jennifer Tolleson. Yet, doing so was not merely about completing program requirements; it was mainly about laboring to create a work for which I believed they would be proud. I allowed this to inspire me to ask deep, probing questions of myself and of my work – of the language I’d use, the thoughts and ideas I’d express, and so on. And I believe it has encouraged me to excel. So, it is for this reason that I extend my warmest gratitude to Jennifer and the rest of my committee for inspiring me to work to live up to my greater potential. I decided to become a psychotherapist because I wanted to help others do this, and I feel all the more capable or equipped of delivering on this as I’ve journeyed through and completed this process with Jennifer in mind.

DH

Table

Table of Contents – Continued

Chapter

Page II. Literature Review …………………………………………………… 35

Coddiwompling: A Prelude

Introduction to this Chapter How I Conducted this Literature Review

A Theoretical Overview of Anticipatory Mourning

Anticipatory Melancholia

A “Madness” in Mourning Relevant Autoethnographies

III. Research Methodology

Introduction Research Sample

……………………………………………… 78

On Methods of Data Collection

Research Design: Creating an Autoethnographic Story

Unusual Compositional Elements of the Story

The Process of Analysis & Interpretation

Doing Autoethnography Ethically

Regarding the Issue of the Study’s Trustworthiness

Limitations & Delimitations of the Study

Conclusion

Chapter Page

IV. The Autoethnography 118

A Fatherland Museum

Good Dad/Bad Dad Moving Toward the Ill One the father You could not be Fait Accomplii Dearest Father Dad’s Cancer Miracle Reparation Primary Caretaking Epilogue: Life After Life

V. The Self-Analysis

343 Introduction The Intensification of Mourning Pining for Dad Conclusion VI. Concluding Remarks

Table of Contents – Continued

Appendices Page

A: A Fatherland Museum 434

B: Trump’s Tweet 444 References ………………………………………………………………. 446

Chronology of Dates & Events Significant to the Autoethnography

July 22, 1979 I am born in Provo, Utah

Summer 1984 My parents divorce for the first time; my mother removes my siblings (Ryan and Heather) and me to Mesa, Arizona.

Summer 1987 My parents remarry each other in Mesa, Arizona.

May 2, 1988 My younger brother, Danny, is born.

October 2, 1988 My parents move our family to Pinetop-Lakeside, Arizona

Summer 1993 My parent divorce again; my father moves to Mesa, Arizona; my mother, siblings, and I remain in Pinetop-Lakeside, Arizona.

April 1994 My father is diagnosed with renal-cell carcinoma. His right kidney is removed, and he is told that he is cured.

Fall 1995 Heather and my father move to Cedar City, Utah.

February 1996 I move to Cedar City, Utah to live with my father and sister; my two brothers and my mother remain in Pinetop-Lakeside.

June 1996 Ryan departs to England to serve a Mormon mission; my mom and little brother, Danny, move to Cedar City, Utah and live across town from Dad, Heather, and me shortly thereafter.

May 1997 I graduate from Cedar High School.

September 1998 I suffer brain trauma from a car accident.

January 1999 I leave Utah to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

December 1999 I begin serving a Mormon mission in Washington, D.C.

January 2002 I have returned from the mission and enroll in the spring semester at the University of Utah, studying classical languages and philosophy.

Fall 2003 My father and Danny move to Lancaster, Pennsylvania from Cedar City, Utah.

May 2006 I graduate from the University of Utah.

Fall 2006 I enroll at Yale University, and work to complete a master’s degree in philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion. I graduate June 2009.

January 2010 My mother moves to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to live with Heather.

Fall 2010 I move to Chicago, Illinois and enroll at Chicago Theological Seminary to begin a program in pastoral care and counseling.

Winter 2011 I learn that my brother, Ryan, is using methamphetamine and will begin his first in-patient treatment for it.

Fall 2011 I begin teaching courses in philosophy, religion, and ethics at Triton College in River Forest, Illinois.

May 2013 I graduate from Chicago Theological Seminary in pastoral care and counseling. I then begin practicing psychotherapy professionally at the Center for Religion and Psychotherapy of Chicago (CRPC).

July 2014 I meet Joel Sanchez.

I am promoted to direct the education program at CRPC. I discontinue teaching classes at Triton College.

September 2014 Ryan moves to Lancaster, Pennsylvania because treatments for meth addiction aren’t working well enough out west.

January 2015 I enroll at the Institute for Clinical Social Work (ICSW) in the middle of the 2014-15 academic year to begin a doctorate program in clinical social work.

July 2016 My father is diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He begins chemotherapy treatment.

July 15, 2017 I begin a private practice at 8 South Michigan.

April 2018 My mother and sister move to Billings, Montana; Ryan moves home to Pinetop-Lakeside, Arizona.

September 2018 Intentional conversations with my father begin. This is also where the story of autoethnographic story of Chapter IV begins. Ongoing

topics of conversation with Dad include our family history, his life, an exploration of his beliefs, and memories of our life together.

The tumors in my father’s lungs are also biopsied. His doctors learn that his renal-cell carcinoma has returned and grown into several tumors in his lungs. Prognosis does not look good. He begins immunotherapy treatment.

February 2019 We learn that my father’s immunotherapy treatment is not working.

April 6, 2019 A carcinoma tumor has eaten away my father’s left humerus bone just below the head of it and it breaks in half. My father enters hospice care.

June 2019 I spend Father’s Day with my dad in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with my three siblings: Ryan, Heather, and Danny.

July 22, 2019 My partner, Joel, my father, Heather, and I spend my 40th birthday together in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

August 31, 2019 My father dies at 1pm.

Introduction

Father, My Father1

Father, my father, move past the mire, and grasp what can’t be spoken. The man who knows it, sees the boy’s desire, to find himself unbroken.

Father, my father, our time is short, and the want grows ever acute: For the boy to know his own import the man, himself, in you.

The Beginning of the End

The tumors in his lungs.

The journey from Chicago to Lancaster is an ambivalent one. Dad is in the hospital again, and I am on my way to provide support and care. I am unaware of it, but the procedure of making this trip will be one with which I become rather familiar.

Just a week before, in one of our regular conversations by phone or Facetime, Dad informed me that his oncologists were wrong about the nature of the tumors recently discovered in his lungs.

1 The poetry of this work is original unless otherwise indicated.

“We’re not sure what it means just yet, but I will have a biopsy next week.”

“Wait, Dad, I’m confused,” I respond. “I thought you had lymphoma. ”

“I do.”

“And that’s of the blood ”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“

So, how are there tumors. Does lymphoma do that?”

“They think it might be the renal carcinoma.”

I recall that renal is from the Latin term for the kidney, and I begin to put it together. Dad’s kidney cancer has returned, latching itself in his lungs like an unwanted parasite and complicating the lymphoma he’s been battling for several years now.

“I thought that when you had your kidney removed, they told you that that cancer was cured,” I say to him, somewhat flummoxed. “Are you saying it’s back?!”

I remember well the Saturday morning in 1994 that my father sat my siblings and me around the kitchen table of our modest, rural, cabin home in the White Mountains of Arizona. I was a few months away from my fifteenth birthday. My oldest brother, Ryan, was seventeen; Heather was just thirteen, and Danny a small boy nearly six. I doubt any of us really grasped what Dad was telling us, except that his doctors found a deadly tumor lodged in his kidney, and that the removal of it (the kidney, that is) would do the work to keep the carcinoma from spreading. It was also the first time I had heard concepts like “metastasize,” “carcinoma,” and even “deadly” in a personal sense. Nevertheless, Dad underwent the procedure, recovered from it, and that was supposed to be the end of it.

“So, what is it that went wrong?” I ask. “Help me out. I mean, a cure is a cure, right?”

In June of 2016, two months before his sixty-fifth birthday, Dad was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s, mantle-cell lymphoma. It is a terminal cancer of the blood that’s akin to leukemia, originating in the body’s lymphatic system. Dad began chemotherapy treatment shortly after this diagnosis and was given a three-to-five-year general prognosis regarding the time left in his life.

Over the next few years, his condition would oscillate through a series of shortlived improvements. His oncologists detected the tumors in his lungs as early as February of this year, but they didn’t put the pieces together until this past July while assessing for reasons for why Dad was coughing up blood. The experimental trials to treat his lymphoma appeared to be working, causing it to slip into remission by this time, which gave him hope that his life would be extended, perhaps indefinitely. But, he knew that the hemoptysis (pronounced hee-MOP-tuh-suhs) indicated a serious plummet in his physical health. A wrong turn.

As I disembark from the plane in Baltimore, I am accosted by the steamy mix of moisture and heat, swelling wantonly in the jet bridge that connects the aircraft to the terminal. It is a sunny Thursday at the end of summer September 6, 2018. As sweat accumulates under my arms and throughout my upper body and groin, I lament in secret the disdain I feel for inheriting so much of my father’s body.

I pick up a black, Toyota Corolla from Budget Rental and begin traversing the two-hour trip north into southeastern Pennsylvania. The drive stimulates a standard, stock

set of memories from voyaging this route in the past, as if on auto-trigger. Dad moved to Pennsylvania in 2003, after absconding from the home of his roots in a thirty-plus year hiatus. He never really belonged out west. Nothing made this clearer to me than the way his vocational life took off shortly after his prodigal return to Lancaster. Dad was home and he knew it.

The year he left Cedar City, I was entering my sophomore year at the University of Utah in Salt Lake. Visits to see him became fewer and far between. Nevertheless, my mind recalls, now, as I journey to his bedside, Dad’s heightened delight and joy (and consistent promptness) when greeting me at the airport after I would take the flight eastward to visit him. Life felt stable and dependable, even wholesome.

Our greetings were amiable, usually covering the weather, details of my experience of the flight, plans for the duration of time that I’ll spend with him, and so on. I’d look forward to the respite that Dad’s home provides. When we’d arrive in Lancaster, depending on the time of day, Dad would usually take me to Costco and his local supermarket as we’d plan our meals and snacks. These activities appeared to elevate his self-esteem, and I was only too glad to participate.

As I venture north on the beltway, now, I pass an exit that will take one either toward Towson, Maryland (and by extension, southeastern Pennsylvania) or south into downtown Baltimore. Snippets of another memory come to mind. My flight had arrived late at night, and Dad accidentally took the wrong exit at this pass, leading us toward downtown Baltimore instead of Towson. I recall how quickly he became anxious as he realized his mistake, and then furious at himself for making it. Dad has always been so nervous and afraid of big cities, I think to myself. Always had this anxiety of what bad

things can happen. It was common for me to experience him this way, a noteworthy aspect of our relationship together; anxious responses, for him, always seemed to convert into one in a limited set of standard options i.e., fury, rage, or anger. It was as if he were saying to himself, “Goddammit, Mark! You are fucking moron!” “You make foolish mistakes!” “You put your life in danger!” “How can you trust that you even know what you’re doing?!”

I grow uncomfortable with these thoughts. Dad and I are too much alike, I think to myself.

Puncture wounds.

When I arrive at the hospital later that morning, I don’t know what to expect. A nurse at one of the random stations directs me to the hall where I will find my father. As I near the area of his room, the echoes of a baseball game on television alert me that Dad is in close range

I enter his room and render a loving and encouraging greeting: “Hey Dad!” His face confesses that he is glad to see me safely arrived, but he is distracted as he struggles in conversation with a nurse, seeking a solution to the difficulty he had sleeping the night before and the post-biopsy pain he’s now feeling. At one point during the conversation, he pulls up his gown to reveal to the nurse several, fresh puncture wounds on the left side of his body, surrounded by scattered splotches of small purple, red, blue, and black dots discolored and bruised hair follicles that are now consumed with blood.

Standing about six-three, my father inherited a tall, beefy physique that was lean and athletic throughout most of his adolescence and early adulthood. He’s lost weight, now, and his skin looks thinner, bare, and more fragile. At the center of each wound is a

baleful, black dot, indicating where the oncologists have pierced his intercostal muscles to peer into his thorax with needles and scopes that would score small samples of the tumors installed in his lungs.

As part of my idealized hope to become a physician, I completed a demanding course in human anatomy my freshman year at the University of Utah. The course had a reputation for its tendency to weed out those not fit for medical school. It succeeded in this, but not before I was able to take advantage of learning from the anatomy lab. Now, as I observe the puncture marks on Dad’s body, I recall an impression I gleaned from examining the secondhand cadavers the way the facial tissue tightly wraps the intercostal muscles, creating a condensed and solid fixture between the ribs. I imagine the force required to penetrate them and I quietly wince to myself.

I make a request.

The nurse leaves us, and Dad and I have a moment alone. I ask him about how he’s feeling and, again, about ways that I can help. He doesn’t appear to be in much pain or discomfort, which is a relief to see. In fact, he appears to be enjoying the respite, but I think he is primarily relieved that I found my way to his bedside without incident, even though the activities of my life have been remarkably accident-free.

“Do you mind,” I ask, when the moment seems right, “if you and I take some time before I go to talk?”

“What about?” Dad asks.

I fear, for a brief moment, that my request may overwhelm my father; so, I quickly offer a tidy disclaimer. I respond, “I have some questions I want to ask you that come from the conversations I had with Doris last fall. Do you remember me doing that?”

“Sure, I do,” he replies. I think he might be relieved.

“She got me thinking about Pop and grandpa, and people like this from our family. I think you’d appreciate hearing what she had to say, and I would enjoy hearing about some of your own memories, too. What do you think?”

Dad agrees to this with some added enthusiasm, but he also appears to remain realistically cautious, given concerns he has about his recovery, or perhaps other matters. “But, I think for the most part,” he says, “I should be up for it.”

I take comfort in this. I begin to reason to myself that if Dad and I can address a few core topics that are on my mind that have been on my mind for some time now I’ll feel confident my time in Pennsylvania would be well-spent.

The Purpose of this Study

Lest a curse.

“See, the day is coming, burning like an oven … so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. … Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse” (New Revised Standard Version Bible, 2006, Malachi, 4:1-5)

A general statement regarding the purpose of this study.

The following work is an autoethnographic, interpretative self-analysis of my experience with anticipatory mourning throughout the final year of my father’s life, before he died of cancer. Herein, I consider two central phenomena: First, my personal experience of my father’s illness i.e., of witnessing the process and journeying with

him through diagnosis, treatment, palliative care, and death. Second, it is the analysis of how much my experience of anticipatory mourning influenced the relationship I had with my father and my own mental and emotional health.

The Significance for Clinical Social Work

“My self-analysis is the most important thing I have in hand, and promises to be of the greatest value to me, when it is finished” (Bonaparte, Freud, and Kris, 1954, p. 221; Letter 71 to Wilhelm Fliess).

“If we are willing to take an honest look at ourselves, it can help us in our own growth and maturity. No work is better suited for this than the dealing with very sick, old, or dying patients” (Kubler-Ross, 1969, p. 47).

Psychoanalysis and the loss of a father.

In the preface to the second edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud (1900) wrote that a man’s loss of his father was the most important event of his life, to such an extent that he “felt unable to obliterate the traces of the experience” (p. xxvi). He repeated the sentiment in a letter to Ernest Jones in 1920, stating that his father’s death “revolutionized” his soul (Schur, 1972, p. 318). Mahl (1994) even argued that “Freud’s beginning his systematic self-analysis was, in part at least, a delayed reaction to his father’s death” (p. 34).

Broadly speaking, when Freud wrote that his self-analysis was the most important to him, he couldn’t realize how significant it would be for the future of the movement he created. In the conclusion to his book on this topic, Anzieu (1986) notes that Freud experienced a “creative surge” in 1895, and that, from that time through 1901 (i.e., during

the period of time that Freud was most engrossed in his self-analysis), he discovered and invented names for 116 clinical concepts of which he would later make considerable use to shape the burgeoning movement. Anzieu reports that Freud stored these concepts away; then, “over the twenty years that followed,” he “drew on this reserve to elaborate the whole of his theory of psychoanalysis” (p. 567). Freud’s self-analysis was “a quite exceptional event in that it coincided with the very discovery of psychoanalysis itself” (Anzieu, p. 568). The implicit message here appears to be about the understated positive and generative contribution that a self-analysis can lend to clinical theory and practice.

Two General Problems That This Study Seeks to Resolve

Mourning without grief?

In the periods of time before (and after) my father’s death, I didn’t feel grief not what would appear as conventional grief, I should say. I can only recall one or two moments when I felt something like it during the year in question for this study i.e., from August 2018 – 2019. To give an example, in Chapter IV, I write of a heartbreaking experience saying “goodbye” to Dad just before departing from our July visit with him. I didn’t know it at the time, but the incident occurred around a month before he would be gone. As Joel and I were leaving, Dad broke into tears. By this time, I had become accustomed, cognitively at any rate, to elevations in the frequency that Dad conveyed mental and emotional suffering, but this incident continues to stand out above the rest. Dad wept a torrential storm, you see, and my younger sister Heather, who was serving as his primary caretaker, mirrored to us, rightly, I think, that he was rapt with the sudden realization that this may be the last time he’d see us.

Since this episode occurred, I have toiled a bit to better understand it in terms of what it may indicate about my own grief in the anticipatory mourning process, given that my heart breaks with sadness and my eyes swell with tears whenever I recall it. Yet, this reaction is incongruent with the cumulative experience I had throughout that year, such that I have come to reason that the feelings that are evoked when I recall the episode in question resemble more of something like the experience of feeling deep, empathic sorrow for my dad, rather than a grief I might have been feeling over his impending death. It has seemed as if my grief were merely an installation of my dad’s, as enacted in this departing moment, as if to have my own feeling about his death, independent of his own, were impossible. I may be getting ahead of myself as we anticipate what’s to come, but nonetheless, as I have contemplated how the body of literature dealing with anticipatory mourning applies to my experience, I enter a state of (theoretical) crisis.

After the proposal phase of this project was completed, I began to rigorously examine the plethora of journal entries I had made throughout that year with Dad, about Dad, concerning my relationship with Dad, and so on, scouring it for evidence for what might indicate why I didn’t feel more of what would have looked like conventional grief. I compared my findings with psychoanalytic and attachment-based literature. This process was exceptionally stressful and decidedly painful, to some degree because I wondered if I had chosen the wrong topic of study, but, in most part, because it seemed to indicate that Dad meant little to nothing to me, which I knew couldn’t possibly be the case, given how much of a presence he has typically had in my life in my soul.

Did I actually mourn? I frequently grappled. After all, Therese Rando writes that anticipatory mourning is rare. 2

I then happened upon the seminal paper by Helene Deutsch (1937) titled “Absence of Grief,” where she resumes Freud’s argument that mourning is a process that does not always follow a normal course, adding that the degree of intensity imbued in that process is relative to the negative ambivalences in the relationship between the lost object and the one who lost it:

If the work of morning is excessive or delayed, one might expect to find that the binding force of the positive ties to the lost object had been very great. My experience corroborates Freud’s finding that the degree of persisting ambivalence is a more important factor than the intensity of the positive ties. In other words, the more rigorous the earlier attempts to overcome inimical impulses toward the now lost object, the greater will be the difficulties encountered in the retreat from that ultimately achieved position. (p. 12, emphasis mine) Might the absence of grief in the mourning process, pre- or postdeath, suggest or indicate the presence of a type of persisting ambivalence of a sort of relationship with the lost (or about-to-be lost) object that is characterized by a history of attempts to overcome inimical impulses that are directed at it?

Admittedly, Deutsch is contemplating the vicissitudes of grief under the rubric of Freud’s seminal assertions about mourning i.e., that it entails a decathexis from the

2 Theresa A. Rando is the conclusive authority on the topic of anticipatory grief and/or mourning, as I show in the following chapter. She argues with others that these phenomena are rare. See Rando, 2000, p. 6; see also Parkes & Weiss, 1983).

lost object. This point is central to the argument against the legitimacy of making theoretical comparisons between pre- and postdeath types of mourning that are extant throughout the conversation around anticipatory forms of it something that I explicate in greater detail in the following chapter. Researchers argue vehemently that anticipatory grief or mourning does not (and should not) include a decathexis from the dying loved one. Deutsch is asserting that the decathexis of grief will become far more complicated when “persisting” ambivalence is indicated in the relationship between the lost object and the one who mourns it.

As of the turn of the millennium, the study of this phenomenon “occupies the interesting position of being an arena of significant controversy,” that is, “one in which relatively minimal research exists” (Rando, 2000, p. 17). To drive this further, Miriam and Sidney Moss (2007) contend that even more scarce are investigations into the effect that anticipating the loss of a parent might have on their adult children. They attribute this tendency to multiple factors, most notably that these deaths are the most common.3 Academics “have tended to ignore the impact of the death of an elderly parent on an adult child,” because these deaths evoke “a less intense emotional response than the death of a child or a spouse” (p. 256). Furthermore, the authors also argue that “ageism” and what was termed by Kenneth Doka (1989) as “disenfranchised grief” provide insight into why researchers tend to neglect this topic (Doka, 1989; see also Moss et al., 2007, p. 257).

3 They write, “The death of a parent is the most common form of bereavement for adults in western societies” (p. 256). Furthermore, research tends to focus, they argue, on “the impact of deaths that are not normative,” e.g., death of a child or spouse (p. 256). This does not necessarily dissuade them, however. Given demographic changes, and the unique tie an adult child may have with their dying parent, the authors concede that multiple issues arise for adult children that are worthy of study.

Regardless, in this work, I show that although grief is often part of the larger phenomenon of anticipatory mourning, the research dealing with both has yet to investigate what the operations of predeath mourning might look like in the internal worlds of those involved in an intimate yet decidedly ambivalent relationship, especially between an adult child of a terminally-ill parent. There is, after all, not a single study of which I am aware that ties these factors together.

Epistemological concerns.

In a broader sense, this study also seeks to help address epistemological concerns about the dubious nature of the assumption in research that positivistic, quantitative research methods trump the sort I have conducted. Autoethnographic research tends to observe, uphold, and represent an extended response to criticisms that have been launched against nomothetic, deductive, positivistic, quantitative research enterprises that purport to prove a priori hypotheses and to explain, predict, and control generalizable phenomena. Although deductive and positivistic (etc.) methods might conjecture about human behaviors and practices, such a research method can “never [truly] predict what other people might think, say, or do” (Adams, Jones, & Ellis, 2015, p. 9). They cannot “establish singular, stable, or certain ‘truth’ claims about human relationships” (Adams et al., p. 9).

Adams, Jones, and Ellis (2015) refer to the leading problem that autoethnographic research intends to address, as a method, in terms of an epistemological “crisis of representation” (pp. 9, 11, 22, 83-84; Reed-Danahay, 2002, p. 423). This crisis asserts that researchers cannot separate themselves from their culturally-embedded experiences of carrying out the research itself. As “existence precedes essence,” in Sartre’s (2007)

famous slogan, there is no data before the researcher. To attempt to separate data from the researcher is not only impossible and renders incomplete results, but the effort otherwise tempts researchers to take advantage of vulnerable participants (Adams et al., p. 11).

Naturally, the observance of the crisis of representation and the philosophy that underscores it informs the ethics of conducting research projects that deal with the terminally-ill and dying. Adams et al. write, when contemplating the history of the qualitative movement, “Ethnographers who focused on the experience of anxiety, disability, illness, death, and dying recognized that they could not ignore the ways emotions infuse and are intertwined with physical experience and embodiment” (p. 11). Autoethnographies respond to these problems by emphasizing aspects of qualitative approaches that situate the researcher in the center of the study, having accepted, prima facie, the methodological quintessence of this enterprise. Thus, autoethnographic research works to think aesthetically, use language in unique and creative ways, provide thick descriptions of phenomena, and to focus on “meanings that can take readers into the heart of lived experience” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, p. 34; Geertz, 1973).

This is, of course, what I have endeavored to do for this project.

Objectives Achieved

“The goal of autoethnographic projects is to embrace the vulnerability of asking and answering questions about experience so that we as researchers, as well as our participants and readers, might understand these experiences and the emotions they generate” (Adams et al., p. 39).

In the study that follows, I have endeavored to observe these principles as closely as possible. As I combed through the journals I created throughout that final year of Dad’s life, and as I have reflected earnestly on the implications of where I was at the time, how I felt, the moods that conversations with Dad generated as I contemplated the roles I played and the conflicts this raised for me as I attempted to penetrate and apprehend the relational dynamics between myself and other members of my family and, of course, as I contemplated the existential realities of dying and death in all of this, I labored, sometimes with great exertion, to recognize, comprehend, and accept what seemed to matter to me, what I seemed to care about, and most importantly, what it was that I felt I was blocking Ultimately (and broadly), I hope to have accomplished the following:

1. To identify major themes and noteworthy or outstanding events that occurred in my subjective experience of my father’s battle with terminal illness leading up to his death, primarily in the course of the final year of our time together (that is, from August of 2018 through the end of August 2019).

2. To organize those themes and events into a storyline.

3. To write a story and present it, here, as a work of “evocative” autoethnography (Bochner et al., 2016), constituting it as the whole of the data sample for this study.

4. To fashion and present an interpretive analysis of the story in the form of a psychoanalytic self-analysis.

Theoretical & Operational Definitions of Major Concepts

In the next chapter, I review the phenomenon of anticipatory mourning as it applies to this work, especially regarding the semantic evolution of the clinical focus on anticipatory mourning rather than (mere) grief. In the section below, I offer a short introduction to this, along with a simple yet relevant handful of other core concepts that have helped organize and guide my thinking about and constructing of the autoethnographic narrative of Chapter IV and the self-analysis of Chapter V. In other words, the concepts I define below are summarized in greater detail in the following literature review, coupled with a more extensive discussion of anticipatory mourning; furthermore, these concepts constitute the components of psychoanalysis that I use to probe my experience of this phenomenon in Chapters IV and V, which are chiefly influenced by the works of Freud and the British School of Object Relations. The major concepts in question are (a) “madness,” (b) both introjective and anaclitic depression, and (c) mania.

Anticipatory mourning in a nutshell.

Therese A. Rando (1986, 2000) develops an inclusive and comprehensive definition of anticipatory mourning, which I explain in greater detail in the pages that follow, and which guides my analysis throughout this work. Nevertheless, my straightforward definition of the phenomenon is as follows: Anticipatory mourning, simply defined, describes the mental and emotional experience of facing an eventual death, almost always due to terminal illness, be it one’s own death or that of someone close to one. Most of the current resources available that pertain to this phenomenon are

especially written for mental health professionals, families, clergy, or those otherwise in the helping professions, to accompany any one of the following three objectives:

1. To normalize confrontation with an impending loss.

2. To offer support and provide helpful clinical quips to those caring for the terminally-ill and dying again, often clinicians, mental health workers, and palliative caregivers.

3. To ease the transition from life to death for those who are terminally-ill and dying.

A pattern of madness.

Neville Symington died on December 3, 2019, just a few months after my father. Shortly before Dad died, I became interested in Symington’s life and work while listening to a podcast that featured him. Yet, I hadn’t discovered his final and perhaps most comprehensive work A Pattern of Madness (Symington, 2018) until I began working to better understand both the intensification of the ambivalences in my relationship with Dad and the lack of grief I felt in the pre- (and post-) death mourning process. “Madness,” Symington defines, “consists of a pattern of interlocking elements that distort perception, damage the self, and prevent emotional freedom” (p. 79). It is generated by the autistic disavowal of the “spontaneous gestures” (Winnicott, 1960, p. 145) of one’s emotional intuitions. It is akin to manic denial, paranoid-schizoid splitting, and the projective enterprise of emptying oneself of one’s negative feelings (Fromm, 2000).

In this work, I label myself “mad,” because I believe it captures well the frenzies of the internal operations of my psyche those which occurred during my final months

with Dad. As shown in the narrative, patterns of madness greatly limited my capacity to connect with my dying father in meaningful, potentially healing ways. This “madness” is indicated in any of the multifarious moments that I journeyed with him, yet declined to accept the deeper, non-cognitive realities of his mental, emotional, and physical suffering. As Dad declined, I understood the reality of what was occurring, and I accepted it, theoretically, more or less; yet, the primary mental and emotional experience, during that period of anticipatory mourning, appeared to yield regressive amplifications around the disturbing ambivalences that had always constituted my relationship with him. These were regressive contents against which I inadvertently applied, in “madness,” a rather committed set of manic defenses.

Mourning unto depression, mourning unto mania.

Sydney Blatt (2005) produced a comprehensive work, detailing the phenomena of two forms of depression i.e., a melancholic depression called “introjective” and an attachment-based form called “anaclitic.” Both types are indicated in my experience of mourning Dad, primarily the former (i.e., the “introjective” type). As I show hereafter, introjective depressive defenses, originally made rudimentary in even preoedipal configurations with my father, intensified factors that led to employing the complementary manic defenses against it, which blocked my acceptance of the realities of my father’s decline. The introjective type of depression is often referred to as a “selfcritical” type, that is “typified by punitive, harsh self-criticism; self-loathing; blame; guilt; … and intense involvement in activities” that are “designed to compensate for feelings of inferiority, worthlessness, and guilt” (p. 32).

The concept of introjective depression follows from Freud’s discussions of the processes entailed in object loss, both defensive and formative, from his seminal papers Ego and the Id (Freud, 1923) and Mourning and Melancholia (Freud, 1917). As I show, I did not begin mourning the losses of my father in August of 2018, nor in the summer of 2016, when I first learned of his terminal diagnosis. Dad has always (and rather consistently) been made an object of melancholia for me one which I have endeavored to properly mourn since the earliest years of my life.

Of the manic sort. On May 31, 2013, a little over a month after I received my first license to practice psychotherapy, my dad gifted me the book Psychoanalytic Diagnosis by Nancy McWilliams (2011). On the front cover page, he wrote: “Devan Hite, I thought you might like to have this especially from your dad. You will be a star in the profession You have made me very proud, as always, Love, Dad.”

Since then, I have found McWilliams’ contribution to the discourse on psychoanalytic assessment and treatment to be consistently and inordinately helpful, serving as a kind of bible I can consult in moments of clinical impasse, murky transferences and countertransferences, and, of course, this self-analysis. Furthermore, I have found her summary of hypomanic/cyclothymic personalities useful as I navigate the body of psychoanalytic literature to find a language that helps capture the essence of what was largely instituted in my history with Dad and what was elevated or heightened during the period of anticipatory mourning in question

McWilliams writes that “people with hypomanic personalities have a fundamentally depressive organization, counteracted by the defense of denial” (p. 256). She continues, “Hypomania is not a state that simply contrasts with depression; point for

point, it is a mirror image of it” (p. 257). Akhtar (1992) lists qualities and characteristics of hypomanic personalities from a psychoanalytic point of view, and a number of these are indicated i.e., I adopt them as an attempt to deal with Dad’s impending death. They include a neurotic-level, overt, false-self type of cheerfulness, a high/intense sociality, idealization of others, an “addiction” to work, flirtatiousness, articulateness, and covert guilt about aggression toward others, something that is especially poignant in moments with my father. (The expression of a licensed or “ruthless” form of aggression toward him was always unthinkable.) Furthermore, in moments that matter (i.e., otherwise appropriate moments), I show deficits in my capacity to empathize with or show love to my father. I lack a systematic approach in cognitive style and, at moments, I show an unfortunate corruptibility (p. 193). All of these attributes are indicated in the extended narrative of my experience with anticipatory mourning.

An important disclaimer.

McWilliams offers a useful proviso that also characterizes this experience, noting that “many individuals with characterological hypomania … have more mild versions than the personality disorder that Akhtar is describing,” in that, for one, they are “able to love and to behave with integrity” (p. 257).

The story shows that this is ultimately the case for me. It shows in me a pervasive use of hypomanic or cyclothymic operations that fit this diagnostic grouping, but not to the extent that a proper assessment might conclude, that I, the main character of the narrative, developed or feature a personality disorder as a result of undergoing this forceful experience with anticipatory mourning. For that matter, the same conclusion applies to the question of whether I meet DSM-V criteria for any of the various mood

disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). These will not be indicated in the story, necessarily. However, what shows straightaway in the narrative are the multifarious ways in which my depressive and manic defenses, constituted in large part in my historical relationship with Dad, become amplified as I face the realities of his impending death with the ambivalences of our relationship fully activated.

Conclusion.

That being said, perhaps the most prominent indication of this characterology in the narrative that follows is the rage I feel throughout that is meant to cover, deny, or block the sadness or grief that was also indicated in my encounter with mourning the forthcoming death of my father. McWilliams writes, “When negative affect appears in people with manic and hypomanic psychologies, it tends to manifest itself … as anger, sometimes in the form of episodes of sudden, uncontrolled rage” (p. 257). As I show, it is this aspect of my relationship with Dad for which I begin seeking a resolution as the story commences. We both use this defense, and our mutual employment of it has proven remarkably destructive for both of us, historically.

Gabbard (2014) defines mania, as well, of which I also make use in the pages that follow. He argues, citing Melanie Klein, that “the fundamental psychotherapeutic task,” when confronted with mania, “may be to facilitate the work of mourning” (p. 235). He says, “the threat of aggressive, persecutory feelings leads to the need for manic defenses to deny them” (p. 235). Thus, a work of mourning, I ultimately argue considered as either pre- or postdeath, anticipatory or otherwise is not merely a work of accessing, processing, and accepting the grief attending it, but also the active work to integrate splitoff aggression and fears of persecution that are necessarily inherent in it. Gabbard writes

that these defenses against grief, etc., work to issue one a temporary relief from pain, which I often welcomed, even when the emotional pain in question was “right” or reasonable to have, given the context of it, “but no chance,” he continues, “of ultimately resolving their depressive anxieties” (p. 235)

The motivation to confront these tendencies has become one of the principal factors for pursuing this effort and for working to produce a self-analysis of my experience with anticipatory mourning. It is borne from the motivation to better understand these tendencies and to take steps to “work through” (Klein, 1935) them properly. That being said, what are other, significant reasons that I have endeavored this study?

Foregrounding

Adams et al. (2015) argue that an autoethnography is itself a work of foregrounding. They introduce the fundamental nature of this concept by arguing unequivocally that autoethnographies, “as a method, mode of representation, and way of life,” require scientists and investigators “to foreground research and representational concerns throughout every step of the research and representational process” (p. 19). Thus, the following work on its own is a work that is focused on foregrounding my experience of the phenomenon in question.

That being stated, I want to make explicit what are likely the underlying reasons that I chose this topic and why I have pursued studying it. It has become, simply put, a core belief of mine that by working to make sense of my father’s existence, I can, perhaps, make better sense of my own The stimulation of this enterprise, underscored by this central belief, represents the most conspicuous way in which I traversed my personal

experience in the last year of Dad’s life. In other words, as I set out to better understand my father in the months before he died, the exercise served to help change the quality of the internal investment that I had (and have) with him (Hoffman, 1979).

The claws of the crab.4

The consequences of the seminal aphorism from Freud’s (1917) work Mourning and Melancholia cannot be overstated as I proceed: Thus, the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object. In this way an object-loss was transformed into an egoloss and the conflict between the ego and the loved person into a cleavage between the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification. (p. 249, emphasis mine)

I believe, that is, that nothing in my life has produced more emotional and mental conflict and turmoil than the internalized, psychodynamic “cleavage between” Dad-introjects and my sense of self. This is the result of both action and inaction, direct participation in each other’s lives and the desolate lack of it. Both circumstances proved to be remarkably ambivalent. I wrote the following in my journal just before Dad’s health took another pivotal decline: 4 S. Mukherjee (2010) wrote, “It was in the time of Hippocrates, around 400 BC, that a word for cancer first appeared in the medical literature: karkinos, from the Greek word for ‘crab.’ The tumor, with its clutch of swollen blood vessels around it, reminded Hippocrates of a crab dug in the sand with its legs spread in a circle. The image was peculiar (few cancers truly resemble crabs), but also vivid. Later writers, both doctors and patients, added embellishments. For some, the hardened, matted surface of the tumor was reminiscent of the tough carapace of a crab’s body. Others felt a crab moving under the flesh of the disease spread stealthily throughout the body. For yet others, the sudden stab of pain produced by the disease was like being caught in the grip of a crab’s pincers” (p. 47).

January 13, 2019. Sunday afternoon. I don’t know my father. And, as a result, I feel that I am perpetually mourning a loss that I don’t want to mourn anymore. There’s a lot that I could say about how I, for a very long time, especially when I started to meditate more often, how when I would close my eyes and begin to do it, I would find that Sadness, capital S, seemed to always be lurking just under consciousness, just always right there outside the door. And I’ve wanted to understand it and eliminate it. I don’t think that he knew quite how much, but Dad has always been represented in terms of a potent, enduring, introjective dynamic of my inner world, the residue of which likely will remain for the rest of my life in some form or another. Historically, it has been remarkably melancholic. The nature of its existence is brawny and phantasmagoric enough for me to consider it preoedipally or preverbally constituted. When radioactive, it omits a type of intrapsychic fervor that is destabilizing unto “madness. ” It is the impetus for unpleasant and obtrusive cyclothymic mood swings that effect my relationships, my work, and the quality of my life. Of greatest value for this dissertation project (i.e., as one for a doctoral program in clinical social work) are concerns about how this madness affects my capacity to deliver effective treatments to the patients in my care. Blocking the implicit invitational cues of patients, that is, to settle into dark, negative feelings and moods so that we might further comprehend them, put words to them, find meaning in their existences, can at times be rather limited. Manic defenses that devalue such enterprises spring into action like a loyal pet warding off weighty cocktails of emotion encountered as if unwanted, opportunistic relatives. During that final year of Dad’s life, the ambivalent nature of our histories together was

intensified, as I show, and I failed to rise to the challenge that Dad’s dying moments inevitably offered me.

Shortly after Dad was diagnosed with his terminal illness, I became interested in studying our family’s history. Later, I would come to understand that this ambition was perhaps the most direct expression of the predeath mourning process I was undergoing, whereupon, rather than decathecting from Dad-introjects, which has been shown to be impossible, I was, as Irwin Hoffman (1979) reframes, working to “change the quality of the investment” that I had with my father i.e., working to change the introjective “Dad” cathexis rather than to decathect from it (p. 259). This distinction is crucial in the discourse of this topic of study, and I have worked to give it fair and honest attention in the following chapter. Regardless, it is right to note here that this desire again, an act of anticipatory mourning propelled me into the study of it without knowing I was doing it.

Paul Kalanithi wrote a short memoir about his experience of terminal illness, which he titled When Breath Becomes Air (Kalanithi, 2016). It is a work of anticipatory mourning, I believe, even though he never assigns it this term. Nevertheless, Kalanithi contemplates the meaning of his life as a neurosurgeon before and after his diagnosis of stage four lung cancer. He writes: As furiously as I had tried to resist it, I realized that cancer had changed the calculus. For the last several months, I had striven with every ounce to restore my life to its precancer trajectory, trying to deny cancer any purchase on my life. As desperately as I now wanted to feel triumphant, instead I felt the claws of the crab holding me back. The curse of cancer

created a strange and strained existence, challenging me to be neither blind to, nor bound by, death’s approach. Even when the cancer was in retreat, it cast long shadows. (p. 164-65)

He continues: But if I did not know what I wanted, I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides, or Osler: the physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence. (p. 166)

It seems that death, especially the acts of facing the immediacy of death, forced my dad and me to attempt this. Whether we accomplished it or not, ultimately, is an important question, but I do not believe we were able to this very well. Examining that year contemplating what I felt, spoke, and did has helped me to begin, however, to work through the mysteries of my father’s personality better, and therefore, my own.

I have struggled to understand the role my father played in setting a foundation for my life before this ambition became a formal study, and, perhaps, before my father became terminally ill. That being said, the energy involved in this certainly increased during the period of time that concerns this study, to such an extent that it is clear to me that another core, motivating factor that underscored my need for conducting it is, plain and simple, the wish to be able to handle the losses of my life better, both great and small, as most of my life has dealt in struggling to accept and cope with loss on its own

terms. Furthermore, I believe that this type of work i.e., the work of properly owning one’s losses is foundational to human experience. It itself gives life meaning.

Hypothesis & Research Questions

I hope to have established by now that this work investigates the way that the ambivalences that constituted the relationship with my father were amplified during the final year of his life. I have argued that the following study reveals and investigates the manic defenses I employed against the negative intensifications of these ambivalences, along with the depressive/melancholic operations that appeared when these defenses were unsuccessful. I have asserted that it is a theoretical and clinical problem that the research regarding anticipatory mourning has failed to examine such dynamics, especially between adult children and their dying parents. This is likely due to the fact that studies on grief and mourning primarily focus on the sort that occurs between otherwise healthy relationships, leaving out what is in all probability the more-common-than-we-realize circumstance of mourning troubled ones, both before and after death. This is a point I have shown to have been introduced by Freud and Deutsch some hundred years ago when considering the lack of grief in postdeath mourning; yet, the studies of this sort have yet to be applied to its (more or less) complementary, that is, anticipatory mourning, process

Therefore, this dissertation is built upon the core hypothesis that it is not necessary that conventional grief be indicated in my experience undergoing anticipatory mourning for it to be labelled as such; but rather, the opposite is the case. That is, the absence of grief indicates an even elevated version of it a toiling with or a “madness” of mourning that is underscored by the internal dynamic consequences of this troubled relationship between my now dead father and me.

Therefore, this work addresses the following, central research questions:

1. How did my experience of anticipatory mourning affect me (personally) and the ambivalent relationship that I had with my father before he died?

2. What are some of the significant and noteworthy ways in which my life was disrupted and/or disordered by anticipatory mourning?

3. What impact might the reflexive conversations between my father and me have had on my experience of working through the ambivalences in our relationship, and, by extension, the lack of conventional grief as I journeyed through a unique encounter with anticipatory mourning?

4. How might my self-analysis of anticipatory mourning inform theory about the phenomenon, and how might this be useful to others, especially those in the helping professions?

The Epistemological Foundations of this Study

“It is essential to consider as a constant point of reference … the regular hiatus between what we fancy we know and what we really know, practical assent and simulated ignorance which allows us to live with ideas which, if we truly put them to the test, ought to upset our whole life” (Camus, 1955, p. 18).

General overview.

As a qualitative study, this dissertation project is located in the following, broader philosophical contexts. That is, it is a work that is “idiographic” in perspective; its language is “emic,” i.e., “unique to an individual, sociocultural context” (Ponterotto, 2005, p. 128). The study does not purport to offer generalizable predictions or outcomes.

Furthermore, inasmuch as the study holds the philosophical precept that argues “reality is constructed in the mind of the individual, rather than it being an external singular entity,” the project is a “constructivist-interpretivist” one (p. 129; Hansen, 2004).

Although this research observes principles of qualitative reflexivity i.e., there are moments when I report directly on my how my father responded to my thoughts about our experiences together and how they appeared to affect our relationship the study’s focus, as an autoethnographic one, is ultimately the interpretation I employ to describe my own experience in the embedded context of our lived experience traversing the strains of anticipatory mourning.

In the chapters that follow, I examine the “centrality of the interaction” between us (Ponterotto, 2005, p. 129; Schwandt, 2000), but my father is not the object of my investigation. Rather, it is my experience of losing him and how the events in this appear to invoke deeper relational themes between us as I experienced them personally as internal phenomena. Therefore, regarding this project, the reflexivity that is characteristic of constructivist projects concerns the “centrality of the interaction between [me] the investigator and [the phenomenon of anticipatory mourning] the object of investigation” (p. 129; Schwandt, 2000). The purpose has been to bring to the surface hidden depths of meaning through careful reflection.

Optimally, there are key moments in this work when these interpretations assist to spontaneously, and perhaps without even intending it, as Ponterotto (2005) argues, “disrupt and challenge the status quo,” advancing moments of “emancipation and transformation,” both for myself and those who might read it (p. 129; Adams et al., pp. 32-34). These are pivotal moments in the storyline when subjective yet “proactive values

are central to the task, purpose, and methods” of this research (p. 129). Thus, the work is also (secondarily) a “critical-ideological” one (p. 129). From the discussions I had with my father before his death, relevant themes to this paradigm concern issues of desire and sexuality, father-son roles and expectations, the iatrogenic effects of religious experience/the dominant political platforms of my upbringing, and ultimately, broadlyestablished ways of dealing with grief, loss, and mourning.

Although Ponterotto uses the terms “constructivism” and “interpretivism” synonymously to describe the epistemological foundation of qualitative inquiry, he does not push further to make the useful distinctions of interpretivist philosophies reviewed by Schwandt (p. 129; Schwandt, 2000). Schwandt’s (2000) overview breaks down interpretivist philosophies into four subclassifications (p. 191). These are “four ways of defining (theorizing) the notion of interpretive understanding (i.e., Verstehen)” (p. 191). The first three, Schwandt argues, “constitute the interpretive tradition,” while the fourth is philosophical hermeneutics, which is rightly set apart (p. 191). This work observes principles of philosophical hermeneutics, but how?

The “refining fires of interpretation.”

Porter and Robinson (2011) argue that Hans-Georg Gadamer’s name has become synonymous with “philosophical hermeneutics” (p. 74). This continental philosophy contends, in a nutshell, that “we are always taking something as something” (Gadamer, 1970, p. 87). It accepts on the onset that we cannot free ourselves from the influences of our history cannot set these aside (e.g., as in “bracketing” or, of course, epoché) to achieve some objective, interpretive truth (Schwandt, 2000, p. 194).

In their excellent and very useful summary of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, Porter et al. write, summarizing Gadamer:

Interpretation … is dependent upon our willingness (intention), the text (which we allow to interrogate us), and the structure of the experience itself (beyond our intention), in which we encounter the birth of new meaning and insight if we are willing to risk our preconceptions and expectations in the refining fires of interpretation. (pp. 87-88)

The authors continue: “Truth emerges only when our individual horizons and the horizons of the other (e.g., text, person, work of art) fuse, bringing different worlds together in surprising new ways” (p. 88). Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics provides an exceptional set of principles to apply for this study. For the remainder of this section, I want to briefly outline what they are and how.

Philosophical hermeneutics is both a critique of modernist epistemologies and a prescriptive solution to their tendency to alienate the researcher from experiences that would otherwise grant them access to more thorough and inclusive forms of truth. It is a critique against methodologically colonizing phenomena under examination via restrictive, “artificial boundaries” that formalize personal distance and “neutral objectivity” (Porter et al., p. 78). Porter et al. write: Gadamer wants to describe the concrete and universal nature of the hermeneutical problem that may only emerge when we are freed from the methodological and procedural assumptions that require us to control how we arrived at understanding, e.g., through experimentation, measurement, and theoretical principles. (p. 78)

Instead, understanding requires the researcher to surrender in much the same way that psychoanalysis often recommends a patient surrender to free-associative observation in session. To arrive at understanding is almost akin to encountering the unconscious, which is never static and always resistant to observational inflexibility and attempts to control. It is blocked by “any inquiry or investigation” that believes itself to be “without prejudice or bias” to its own “conditioned ways of understanding” (Porter et al., p. 85; Gadamer, 1960/2002).

Truth and understanding, for Gadamer, is also an event, but a tricky one. Each time we encounter the samsaric aspects of the hermeneutic circle, our dynamic and changing, conditioned and embedded locations inevitably influence how that encounter transpires. Rather than attempting to transcend these locations, as the objectivists are inured to do, the researcher should work to open themselves to what Gadamer calls a “fusion of horizons” (Gadamer, 1960). This fusion is neither an objective nor subjective enterprise. It is, rather, an “interplay of possibilities” that involves “real risk-taking” in dialectical and interpretive moments. It achieves a form of universality that “binds together language, tradition, and experience” (Porter et al., p. 86). Furthermore, this type of exchange may occur between a researcher and any form of “other,” e.g., another person, a text, or a work of art. All three are relevant to the inquiry in question. Porter et al. summarize that the fusion of horizons, as an alternative and more useful type of hermeneutical event, is “something that happens without our making or doing” (p. 86). They write, “We enter into the experience voluntarily and participate in it according to its own structure and rules rather than merely our own wishful desires” (p. 86).

How, then, do these principles apply to my inquiry? In the previous section, I stated that, ultimately, this study examines the interaction, as a reflexive dialectic, between me and the object of investigation, or, in this case, the phenomenon of anticipatory mourning. If I am to apply Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to this study properly, then responses to my research questions, which concern the object of my inquiry, must actively consider what it is that I bring to those responses. I do this by remaining conscious of and making a serious attempt to observe the importance of opening myself to a fusion of horizons with others, texts, and the work of art that is the autoethnographic narrative of the fourth chapter.

In the third chapter, I explain in greater detail how I do this, step-by-step. I describe the difference between formal and informal types of data collection and presentation, and I justify the position that the autoethnographic narrative of Chapter IV serves as the only formal data sample for this study. I also explain my reasoning and logic for making full use of Chapter V to produce a self-analysis, including the steps I took to execute it. With this in mind, the text of the narrative, as a work of art, is ripe for the type of investigation that works to remain open to the dynamic fusion the refiner’s fire of philosophical hermeneutics.

Outline of the Dissertation

In this chapter, I have introduced this study. In Chapter II, I focus the literature review on works that are most directly relevant and useful to better comprehend both (a) the phenomenon of anticipatory mourning, and (b) the psychoanalytic ideas I used to conduct the self-analysis. In Chapter III, I explain in further detail the way I have applied the autoethnographic qualitative method to conduct this study, as well as the theoretical

justification for it. In Chapter IV, I present a narrative that is my best effort to capture and present, in story format, the experience that I had of the rather formidable and torrential anticipatory “mourning in madness.” Then, in Chapter V, I apply the literature reviewed in Chapter II to the story of Chapter IV, providing an interpretive self-analysis of the story, of my experience, using a psychoanalytic lens. Finally, in the closing Chapter, I conclude my remarks and summarize what I believe I have accomplished.

Chapter II

Literature Review

Coddiwompling: A Prelude

When Dad told me that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma, I can’t tell you that I remember what he said or how I felt when I heard it. I know it happened in June of 2016, and I know that I said and did everything that I was supposed to do and say: “Oh, my god!” “That’s terrible!” “What are we going to do about it?” “How can I help?” I behaved appropriately, completed my duties, and performed the tasks that were asked of me I don’t remember questioning whether or not I should. I was a “good” son, working to help my father achieve, ultimately, an “appropriate” death (Rando, 2000).

And yet…

This is a work about death and loss, but it is not going to reveal the standard narrative tropes around these themes because they don’t exist here. Since I began this project, I have taken in a good-sized plethora of books and papers on the topic, watched many films; I’ve contemplated the subject enough to know that my story may easily betray them. Stories about the dying process about anticipatory mourning normally feature main characters in terrible, formidable bouts of grief, sorrow, anger, sadness, hopelessness, and so on. They suffer, they scream, they bargain, they curse, they strive, they oscillate, and they love with amplified ardency, because they know that the death of

their loved one is inevitable and they abhor this. These are heart-breaking stories, and the many of them that come to mind have touched me deeply.5

Dad died on a Saturday afternoon at the end of August of 2019, just over three years from the day he received his terminal diagnosis. I was hustling my way back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he and my younger sister, Heather, were living (and dying). Waiting to board my flight, I was eating a chicken sandwich at the Chili’s just inside one of O’Hare’s bustling terminals. Heather left me a voicemail. I learned from it that Dad had died, and I felt relief. I felt guilt and sadness, too; but, I mainly felt relief. This relief my relief surprised me, because it was not the rueful sort (not merely, at any rate) that might reflect the kind of somber gratitude that one might feel when learning that someone one loves will no longer be suffering. Perhaps, it is more accurate to say that I felt release. The release I remember best is a release from the pressures of my father’s existence.

After his death, I continued to faithfully observe the primary duties Dad had given me to oversee preparations for his funeral and burial, and to close out his estate. And I do remember what I felt during this time: feelings of love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude for family and close friends who labored to support my father in the final days of his life and who came to our aid to help and encourage us in the process of following through with the standard, postdeath ceremonies that ritualized the end of Dad’s life.

5 For instance, the films Our Friend (Pruss et al., 2019), A Monster Calls (Atienza et al., 2016), Shadowlands (Attenborough et al., 1993), and My Life (Lowry et al., 1993) come to mind. Even the film Supernova (Goligher et al., 2020) is there, which is not about anticipatory mourning, in itself, but the death of a loved one’s mind from dementia. The book The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard (2018) also comes up, along with memoirs dealing with grief and bereavement after the death of a loved one, including A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis (1989) and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005). I even recall Robert Stolorow’s (2005) formidable battle in Grief Chronicles

Yet, silently, through it all, I wished that I had loved my father enough to care more about his death beyond these features of it. I didn’t cry, you see. Most of the time, throughout the final year of his life especially, I felt angry I didn’t seem to care enough, though I behaved as if I did. I behaved like a good son: I honored him, sang to him, respected him. I helped clean him up and put him back in bed when he fell out of it. I engaged him in his psychotic fantasies the weeks before he died (because, what else are you going to do?). At his funeral and graveside, I esteemed his life and dedicated myself to learning from it. These were the behaviors he taught me to live up to, admire, and emulate, and they were the behaviors that put me into touch with the parts of his personality that I love. They were the behaviors I suppose I wanted him to see.

As I embark on the process of striving to understand my experience, I am “coddiwompling.” This is a British slang term to which a patient of mine recently introduced me. It is meant to describe the process of one travelling purposely toward a hitherto, unknown destination. Since I began this project, I have been engaged in the labor of seeking to better understand myself, and I don’t believe it will (or should) ever discontinue. Yet, as much as I have labored to find the right words, ideas, concepts, themes, or even arguments to describe what occurred throughout that year to find meaning in the thoughts, feelings, and events of it none appear to fit according to a very hefty set of hermeneutical standards that I have set for myself to adequately ensure the translatability of them. I think this ineffability is inherent in the nature of any type of work that involves the struggle to articulate one’s affair with mourning, before or after the loss of it has occurred. Nevertheless, what follows is, in a way, an invitation to join me in the effort of working it out.

Introduction to this Chapter

The review that follows is designed to operationalize the terms, concepts, and conditions that I will employ to provide an analysis of the narrative of Chapter IV Again, the goal is to present the concepts here and then apply them, in Chapter V, to relevant moments from the narrative of Chapter IV. In what follows, I begin by explaining how I conducted the review, generally. I then provide a theoretical overview of the discourse on anticipatory mourning, focusing on reasons why the term is used and on the essence of the phenomenon. After this, I devote a small handful of sections to summarizing psychoanalytic concepts regarding death anxiety and the manic-depressive defenses that characterize the complicated experience I had of grief and loss, as pertaining to this study. Finally, in the penultimate section, I review other, relevant autoethnographies, authored by sons who have lost their fathers.

How I Conducted this Literature Review

I gathered works from a handful of prototypical sources. They are (a) papers from online databases (e.g., PEP web), (b) books/anthologies from my own library, and (c) scanned chapters from books and/or papers from the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Chicago Public Library. I made these documents PDF “readable” and uploaded them into the qualitative research tool Atlas.ti. This platform helped me organize and process my thinking.

I also searched for anthologies that provided introductory chapters summarizing relevant literature for this study to date. These have functioned nicely as helpful milestones to keep a pulse on the development of the discourse. I concentrated my search

on works that have been published within the last twenty years, but many seminal texts prior to this period of time were also identified and included. These involve works by authors who have written copiously on the topics in question or those who have critiqued them. They have been valuable in the process of teasing out core themes and trends in the discourse that help formulate my own thoughts, opinions, hypotheses, and conclusions.

A Theoretical Overview of Anticipatory Mourning

As I proceed, I want to stress the remarkable impact that the work of Therese A. Rando has had on the discourse of anticipatory grief and mourning. In a way, she has become an arbitrator, holding final word regarding the most important concepts in the most recent conversation around the topic This has helped to focus the discussion in question, but it has also shaped it to become a rather insular (perhaps, incestuous?) one. That being said, Rando’s contribution is unmatched in the history of the conversation that stipulates it is studying the phenomenon of anticipatory grief or mourning. Rando (1986, 2000) edited two anthologies that, respectively, sum it up to date. Perhaps most noteworthy are the comprehensive and thoroughgoing literature reviews that she delivers at the beginning of each anthology. I don’t believe anyone (including myself) could surpass them in terms of their value The great majority of what’s reviewed below belongs largely to the second and most up-to-date set of essays from her book Clinical Dimensions of Anticipatory Mourning: Theory and Practice in Working with the Dying, Their Loved Ones, and Their Caregivers (Rando, 2000). That being said, other overviews have been helpful, as well, including one provided by Charles A. Coor (2007) from the anthology Living with Grief: Before and After Death (pp. 5-20). Before launching into my own specific review of the literature, however, I want to make a

theoretical and clinical distinction between anticipatory grief and anticipatory mourning, showing how (and that) the latter term is preferred.

Erich Lindemann coins the phrase “anticipatory grief.” The study of anticipatory grief began in 1944 when the psychoanalyst and German-American psychiatrist Erich Lindemann coined the term in his classic work on acute grief (reprinted as Lindemann, 1994). He does not develop the concept much, but he observes the way that grief responses, typical to postdeath grief, were similar in persons who were “under the threat of death” (p. 200).6 He devotes a small section to introducing this concept at the end of his paper, noting that one can be so preoccupied with fantasies about adjustment issues after the death of a loved one that one undergoes all the phases of grief before that death transpires in a way that is in accord with how those phases were understood at the time i.e., before Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1969) wrote her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying Anticipatory “grief” or “mourning”? By the year 2000, researchers and clinicians abandoned the phrase “anticipatory grief,” because of ongoing semantic or recurring problems with the definition. At the onset, Rando admits that both phrases have been used, historically, synonymously. This trend is something that I flagged in my dissertation proposal, where I noted that researchers were inclined to define the same phenomenon by different names, confusing the general study of it. It is not uncommon to see authors use alternative phrases to describe anticipatory mourning. For example, 6 Lindemann (1994/1944) refers to anticipatory grief as a condition of “genuine grief reactions in patients who had not experienced a bereavement but who had experienced separation … [which is] not due to death but is under the threat of death” (p. 147).

common interchangeable phrases include “anticipatory grief” and “anticipatory bereavement,” or even “death anxiety” (which, as early as 1893, Freud introduced as Todesangst, or “death-fear”) or “ambiguous loss.”

Charles and Donna Corr (2000) wrote a useful paper titled Anticipatory Mourning and Coping with Dying: Similarities, Differences, and Suggested Guidelines for Helpers.

It is included in Rando’s second anthology as Chapter 7. There, they assert that one “must note the use of the term anticipatory mourning to encompass more than mere grief” (p. 227). Rando (2000) breaks it down even further. She writes, “I defined grief as the reactions to the perception of loss,” and then, “mourning which incorporates grief as its beginning processes as going further to include actions undertaken to cope with, adapt suitably to, and accommodate that loss and its ramifications” (p. 4). She notes that “a number of early writers identified grief as only one component of several in the anticipatory mourning experience,” citing Futterman, Hoffman, and Sabshin (1972) and Lebow (1976). Rando then admits: With these resources to bolster my already deep conviction of the theoretical and clinical importance of distinguishing between grief and mourning, it became impossible for me to retain the term anticipatory grief, even though changing the terminology might be ‘bucking the tide’ of conventional usage. (p. 4) “Anticipatory mourning,” thus, becomes the term of choice and rightly, it would seem, under the logic that grief reactions merely stimulate or inaugurate the work of mourning. Grief is a component of a larger, more comprehensive experience around the business of

adapting to loss. To put a finer point on it, the work of mourning encompasses the processes involved in adapting to the grief that has stimulated them.

Rando, likewise, installs the following formula to designate appropriate uses of the phrase “anticipatory grief,” particularly when she summarizes key points within an embedded conversation. I should note, as well, that I have worked to observe this formula as I review or discuss this literature throughout this study. She writes: The term anticipatory grief is employed in this work only (a) when it refers specifically to reactive responses to a loss without denoting any type of actions undertaken to cope with or accommodate to that loss or (b) on its first appearance, when the term is historically accurate because it describes the usage of an author or authors whose work is under discussion. (p. 5)

An anticipatory mourning without grief? Grief, then, appears to be a part of anticipatory mourning, but is it a necessary component? It would appear to be so, given Rando’s assertion that grief is the impetus for, and therefore prior to, any type of mourning process. Therefore, I have wondered what this might indicate about the experience I underwent. In other words, is the absence of grief an indication that I did not undergo a process of anticipatory mourning? And if so, exactly what, then, did I experience?

To aggravate the tension in this question, I should note that in 1986, Rando warned of “the erroneous practice of conceptually confusing forewarning of loss with anticipatory grief” (p. 6-7). She writes, “It is clinically clear, and has been made as apparent empirically, that individuals may be well aware of the impending loss but not

grieve in anticipation [of it]” (p. 7). “Anticipatory grief,” she then asserts, “cannot be assumed to be present merely because a warning or terminal illness diagnosis has been given or a sufficient length of time has elapsed from the onset of illness until actual death” (p. 8).

This claim follows from a section of her 1986 review that Rando engages around the question of why there exists contradictory research about the phenomenon, over time, that is writhe with discrepancies. I took up some of these issues in my proposal, as well, noting how they confuse the ability for one to understand not just what anticipatory mourning is, but, perhaps most significantly, what one should expect to occur in the heat of it. As the researcher confuses “forewarning of loss with anticipatory grief,” in other words, they complicate the project of constructing a global, unified understanding of the phenomenon in question (Rando, 1986, p. 7). Therefore, the absence of grief not only obscures my understanding of what I experienced in my final year with Dad, but it also threatens the integrity of the research of this work.

Rando does not restate the assertion above in her second comprehensive introduction, but she does retain a close version of the larger topic of debate whence the assertion above has come i.e., regarding perhaps the most noteworthy misconception about anticipatory mourning 7 Simply put, it is the assumption that anticipatory grief/mourning is “merely conventional, that is, postdeath, grief begun earlier” (Rando, 1986, p. 8).

7 Stephen R. Connor (2000) does, however, take up the issue in his paper on Denial and the Limits of Anticipatory Mourning, which is included in Rando’s second anthology. Rather than complicate the assumption on the table, however, Connor appeals to the standard set by Rando. His paper, in other words, maintains the arbitrary limits of this narrow window of diagnostic inclusion

In order to answer the rather urgent question on the table regarding what might be indicated in the abject absence of grief in mourning (a question that is, to be clear, central to this thesis, and to which an answer is necessary, even critical, as I proceed with this chapter and project as a whole), I want to review what the literature has stated about this controversial point, i.e., again, that anticipatory grief is not mere postdeath grief before death. I do this, ultimately, because if we cannot use postdeath grief to understand the process of mourning, then how can we understand the type of it that is supposed to occur before death i.e., the type that catalyzes the work of anticipatory mourning?

The language around this theoretical controversy changes at the turn of the millennium. In 1986, all misconceptions about the phenomenon of anticipatory grief were driven by the core assumption outlined just above (i.e., that anticipatory grief is just postdeath grief begun earlier); yet, by the year 2000, this misconception is subsumed. In other words, it becomes one in a set of other common misconceptions, characterized by the following, in Rando’s words:

I contend that most of the erroneous conclusions about anticipatory mourning are based on three underlying misconceptions,…: (a) the overfocus on the ultimate loss of death (given that death is the major loss and that “anticipatory” suggests that one is mourning solely for anticipated as opposed to past and current losses as well); (b) the misinterpretation that “mourning” implies, at least to some, a necessity for a complete decathexis or letting go of the dying person (as opposed to a letting go of one’s hopes for and with that person in the future, along with relevant elements in the assumptive world); and (c) the fallacious belief that since

both predeath and postdeath mourning involve mourning, predeath

mourning is necessarily the same in character and substance as postdeath mourning. (Rando, 2000, p. 7)

So far, we know that grief stimulates a mourning process, and we know that one does not necessarily suffer anticipatory mourning just because they or someone close to them has received a terminal diagnosis. We are aware of the primary misconceptions regarding the phenomenon, which centralize around common errors in misconstruing qualities of postdeath grief with what might occur before it. Thus, we know what anticipatory mourning is not, but not enough about what it actually is (and, by extension, how it is relevant for this study).

I argue that even though anticipatory mourning and postdeath mourning do not yield, necessarily, the same manifestation of emotional and cognitive behavior (or perhaps even symptomatology), it does not follow that they must, therefore, necessarily hold different ones, either. As is the case in any differential diagnosis, if you will, the components of one condition may be shared with the components of another, including the presence (or lack thereof) of grief, and retain their respective integrities, logically isolated as separate phenomena. Rando even argues, “Just because anticipatory mourning is not exactly like postdeath mourning which it never could be since the death has not yet transpired and different psychosocial and physical realities and reactions prevail does not mean it is not mourning” (p. 11-12).

I believe that, historically, the discussion has become so consumed with proving or disproving the whole of Lindemann’s original assertion that anticipatory grief is a form of predeath bereavement to the extent that it is now guilty of theoretically throwing

the baby out with the bathwater, as it were, causing the discourse to lose touch with the ways that the grief of anticipatory mourning may actually continue to resemble the grief processes of bereavement, including what has been rightly coined “complicated” grieving. In short, the debate appears to have precluded deeper exploration of the absence or muting of grief under both occasions (i.e., pre- and postdeath mourning).

In 1990, Mardi J. Horowitz wrote a paper titled A Model of Mourning: Change in Schemas of Self and Other, where he established a sort of taxonomy of “normal responses” and “pathological intensifications,” linked to each phase in the dying process, namely, “dying,” “death and outcry,” “warding off (denial),” “re-experience (intrusion),” “working through,” and “completion” (Horowitz, 1990, p. 302). Horowitz further characterizes the pathological intensifications of the dying process, to be shown in the subject as “avoidant,” “overwhelmed,” “dazed,” “confused,” “self-punitive,” and “inappropriately hostile” (p. 302; see also Volkan, 1984).8

Each of these, more or less, characterizes the experience I underwent, as well as a number of other qualities Horowitz stipulates might occur in pathological intensifications after the death of a person significant to one. In other words, my year of anticipatory mourning, as I reveal, also included “maladaptive avoidances of confronting the implications of death,” including “counterphobic frenzy,” feeling “dead or unreal,” being

8 Parkes and Weiss (1983), in their book Recovery from Bereavement, respond to the trending question at the time about preconditions that make one vulnerable to a pathological form of anticipatory mourning, which has been argued to influence factors in the development of complicated grief in bereavement. They speculate that those preconditions entail less ego integrity, cohesiveness, and resiliency. They also argue that previous, unmourned losses make one vulnerable to pathological forms of anticipatory mourning, as well, especially if those losses occurred in childhood. Volkan (1984) appears to agree with them. He writes of a patient who had “suffered the sudden loss of someone close to her” in childhood, which predisposed her to what he considers to be pathological forms of anticipatory grief in her adult life in terms of a component to this phenomenon understood throughout the literature as “fantasied” anticipatory grief (Lindemann, 1944/1994, p. 200; Volkan, 1984, p. 327).

“flooded with negative images and emotions,” “self-impairing compulsive reenactments,” “night terrors,” distress from “intrusion of anger, anxiety, despair, shame or guilt,” and “physiological exhaustion from hyperarousal” (p. 302).

Thus, it seems I underwent a kind of complicated anticipatory mourning a sort that does not include direct experience of grief (indeed, is characterized by the abject absence of it), and tends to amplify, for the mourner in question, the split-off properties of the introjects of the one dying. This is, at any rate, again, what I ultimately reveal transpired in this, my own, case.

An “uncomplicated, ” (straightforward) form of anticipatory mourning. It seems right to assert or conclude that the conventional, theoretical discourse under review is really one of uncomplicated anticipatory mourning, given its tendency to avoid exploring the ramifications of the sort I have endeavored to describe. Rando’s (2000) definition below of what I’m playfully naming “uncomplicated” anticipatory mourning is, perhaps admissibly, broad enough to include the considerations I have raised, and rightly so, it seems; but, the larger discourse on the topic fails to apply the following definition to a messier sort of predeath mourning or better, a type of anticipatory mourning which occurs in a state of “madness”:

Anticipatory mourning is the phenomenon encompassing seven generic operations (grief and mourning, coping, interaction, psychosocial reorganization, planning, balancing conflicting demands, and facilitating an appropriate death) that, within a context of adaptational demands caused by experiences of loss and trauma, is stimulated in response to the awareness of life-threatening or terminal illness in oneself or a significant

other and the recognition of associated losses in the past, present, and future. (p. 4)

Furthermore, the “seven generic operations,” mentioned in Rando’s definition, merely constitute one category of six core or foundational (and global) “dimensions” (pp. 51-101). These appear to establish a full, psychological battery for assessing a subject’s experience of anticipatory mourning. The remaining five dimensions are

1. the perspectives of those experiencing the phenomenon (i.e., the dying one, the loved one of the dying one, a “concerned other,” or the caretaker of the dying one),

2. the three time-foci involved in it (i.e., of losses to be mourned in the past, present, and future),

3. psychological, social, physiological factors (i.e., from each perspective of 1 above),

4. major sources of adaptational demands (i.e., loss and trauma), and

5. contextual levels (i.e., intrapsychic, interpersonal processing, and systemic processing).

So far, I have introduced the basic, theoretical concepts from the body of literature that seeks to define and describe the phenomena in question, while showing the differences between the general use of the terms “anticipatory grief” and “anticipatory mourning.” I have described how, typically, the work of “conventional” anticipatory mourning is stimulated by a “conventional” anticipatory grieving response, and I described the theoretical contrast between this and a “complicated” type of both. So, what might this “complicated” anticipatory mourning look like? To answer this question, I

should first highlight what I consider to be the core operations that influenced it in the case of this study.

Anticipatory Melancholia: On Todesangst, Decathexis, and Change of Investment

Existential philosophy accepts, prima facia, not only the inevitability of our impending deaths, but, first-premise, that our awareness of it is likely the core ontological factor that separates the person from the beast. What follows in this section is not a review of those philosophies, per se, but it regards three themes whence existentialism and psychoanalysis meet that are elemental in my self-analysis i.e., three concepts to review that set up a description that I will employ to denote a variant of predeath mourning.

Death-Fear.

There is a plethora of works available that develop the concept of Todesangst, a term used by Freud and translated as either “death anxiety” or “fear of death” (i.e., both terms are employed synonymously). In 1893, it appears Freud began considering the “fear of death” momentarily in his case work on hysteria. He also mentions it in correspondence with Fliess in that same year and in his dream book. In the latter, Freud (1900) introduced the idea that “fear of death has no meaning to a child” (p. 254), which becomes central to his argument and foundational in building the conversation around the psychodynamic properties of death and the controversies inherent in the discourse on death instinct. Later, in his paper on war, Freud (1915) expands upon this point: It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as

spectators. Hence the psycho-analytic school could venture on the assertion that at bottom no one believes in his own death, or, to put the same thing in another way, that in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.” (p. 289)

Here, Freud establishes a significant first premise or primary assumption about death anxiety upon which most future arguments regarding it rest. That is, given that the unconscious cannot conceptualize actual death, the notion of death in the human psyche is always manifest of deeper, intrapsychic operations related to the negotiation of sexual drive and instinct. For Freud, that is, Todesangst is generally considered the displaced, manifest content for a number of latent oedipal fears, especially the fear of castration. Yet, beyond this fear, death anxiety may also appear as a derivative of other primary, psychodynamic operations. On this concept, Faber (1977) spoke it well. Death is something that “always means something, is intended as something, is energically confronted (power) as representation of something” (p. 356). It is, he continues, “at the deepest level” a variation of “separation, or abandonment, or annihilation, or regressive symbiotic reunion with a ‘forbidden’ source of nourishment and succor, or the recapturing of the security of the womb” (p. 356-357). Thus, arguing object-relationally, Faber writes: “Our attitude toward death, our fear of death, our unconscious preoccupation with death, our ambivalent desire for death, is reflective of our early experience with the mother, with the tensions and gratifications of the early time” (p. 357). Death anxiety, in this case, is therefore merely the symptom rather than the unconscious root operation. Decathexis.

In Lindemann’s paper on acute grief from 1944, which, again, coined the term “anticipatory grief,” he considers the effects of war on the women at home. That is, one may be “so concerned with her adjustment after the potential death of a father or son that she goes through all the phases of grief depression, heightened preoccupation with the departed, a review of all the forms of death which might befall him, and anticipation of the modes of readjustment which might be necessitated by it” (p. 200). He names one such occasion whereupon a veteran has returned from the war in Europe to discover that his wife no longer loves him, and she requests a divorce. Of this, Lindemann writes, “In such situations apparently the grief work had been done so effectively that the patient has emancipated herself and the readjustment must now be directed toward new interaction” (p. 200). He exhorts that such outcomes can be avoided via prophylactic measures.

As I’ve mentioned, this stimulates a rather heated debate around the issue of decathexis from the object, which Therese Rando resolves by 1986. She ultimately argues that Freud’s conviction from Mourning and Melancholia i.e., that mourning requires a decathexis from the lost object, followed by a recathexis to a new, vibrant one should not be considered a normative quality of the anticipatory, predeath process. Rather, as central to that process, decathexis occurs, in a nutshell, via mourning all that could have been with the dying one rather than the dying one themselves. Decathexis, therefore, throughout the debate concerning the phenomenon in question, is concerned mainly with the nature of attachment to or disconnection from the dying loved one; yet, the debate around this operation recommends little to nothing about the nature or quality of the cathexis in question.

The quality of investment.

Irwin Hoffman (1979) wrote a stirring paper the year I was born, which critiques psychoanalytic conceptions of death anxiety and adaptation to mortality. I recommend it. Regarding these dynamics, I have uncovered two, notable premises that have greatly influenced the way I have shaped the self-analysis for this study. The first is his contribution to the ongoing critique of the precept above i.e., he critiques the idea that anticipatory mourning entails a decathexis via withdrawal of investment in the object. Regarding mourning, in general, Hoffman writes, “The work of mourning might best be conceptualized as including a change in the quality of investment in both the lost object and in potentially new objects rather than as merely a matter of withdrawal and redirection of investment.” He then states, “This modification of the quality of investment in objects has to do with a new integration of the relation between value and temporal limitation” (p. 259)

This passage has influenced my understanding of how I navigated my own expression of anticipating the death of my dad more than anything else I have read. The motivation, that is, to work to change the quality of the investment I had in my relationship with my father is precisely what launched my journey into that final year of his life. It ultimately becomes, for me, a work of mourning that is the driving force behind both pre- and postdeath enterprises

So, what does it mean to do this? How does one change the quality of the investment that one has with another person? To answer this question, we must first understand the properties of this psychoanalytic idea; we must determine what exactly a cathexis is.

Auchincloss and Samberg (2012) define a cathexis as a “quantum of psychic energy invested in the mental representation of a thought, feeling, wish, memory, fantasy, or person” (p. 31). They add, “Cathexis has also been used to mean the relative intensity of interest, attention, or emotional investment in a given mental content or activity” (p. 31). The authors also outline types of cathexes that Freud and other psychoanalysts have coined: The amount of psychic energy in cathexes can be intensified (hypercathexis), diminished (hypocathexis), withdrawn (decathexis), invested with libidinal and/or aggressive energies in object representations (narcissistic cathexis). Preconscious mental processes can be invested with intensified energies and attain consciousness through attention cathexis or can mobilize opposition resulting in repression and/or compromise formations (countercathexis or anticathexis). Psychic energies are easily and widely displaceable under pressure to attain discharge (free cathexis). Conversely, they may be more closely attached to another person, an idea, affect, memory, fantasy, or psychic structure, thereby limiting or inhibiting the pressure for immediate discharge (bound cathexis). (p. 31)

The authors also make it clear that Freud began using the term in a more nebulous way, but as he developed his drive theory, “the energy involved in cathexis was conceptualized as originating in libidinal and, later, aggressive drives” (p. 31).

For these concepts to succeed, it seems that Freud’s theory of the economic energy of the mind, along with his drive theory, must also remain theoretically tenable. The authors report:

The term [cathexis] continues to be used casually to refer to the extent of emotional investment in an idea, feeling, or person, without implying that energy is involved. Indeed, despite the extensive critique of the specifics of Freud’s energy theory, the psychoanalytic view of the mind includes awareness that all our experiences are accompanied by feelings of relative intensity, which is, to some extent, transferable. (p. 31, emphasis added)

Other sources resist the tidy presentation afforded by Auchincloss et al. For instance, Salman Akhtar (2009) and Edward Erwin (2016) focus a larger portion of their summaries of this concept on Freud’s nebulous, protean, and (intentionally) generic use of the German word Besetzung, which is near impossible to appropriately translate into English. For example, Erwin argues that Freud did not prefer the word cathexis to Besetzung, opting to employ the latter even after Strachey introduced the former in 1922 (Erwin, 2016, p. 70). Nevertheless, Erwin specifies, “In common and everyday German usage, Besetzung is often used to designate something analogous to a military maneuver, such as occupying a post, or ‘taking over’ or ‘holding’ a position against attack” (p. 71). He goes on to show that “for decades, Freud’s Besetzung was conventionally and correctly translated in this way among others. In English, ‘occupation’ resonates handily with ‘preoccupation’” (p. 71) 9 Ultimately, Erwin argues, “there is no consensus

9 This translation helps show the connection Strachey made between the German and the word he invented. Erwin notes that he used the classical Greek word catechein to create the word cathexis, but this is unlikely, given that catechein is rarely, if ever, used in ancient Greece. Liddell and Scott (1996) show that catechein is the Ionian version of catheko (lit. καθήκειν) which means to “come or go down, especially to fight” (p. 852). It appears to be used as if to communicate that one might (generically) reach toward something (my translation). “Cathexis,” therefore, appears to become a rather creative, amalgamative use of the Greek catheko/cathekein and the German Besetzung to describe a psychoneurological energy that is reaching toward an internalized object, imbuing it with emotional meaning.

among psychoanalysts about what ‘cathexis’ means beyond the ancient and ambiguous, but at least candid, analogy of ‘mental energy’” (p. 71).

For the purposes of this study, I am using the term “cathexis” to denote the internal investment of emotional energy in the introjective object of my dad, as an activity or mental event, in the manner that it has been constituted over time in the objectrelational patterns of interaction between us. Furthermore, I accept (or assume) that the emotional energy of a “cathexis” is underscored or galvanized by both aggressive and sexual impulses, to which we are naturally subjected as a species. This rings true for me in understanding the nature of depression via loss. If loss, that is, incurs an internal withdrawal of a cathexis to the internal representations of the lost object, perhaps it is the removal of a libidinal/erotic, unconscious preoccupation with it (given the narcissistic injury of the loss in question), thus, leaving what would only remain (i.e., the aggressive content of the cathexis) operative. An onslaught of such energies on the internalized object becomes an attack on the self, thus catalyzing the depressive, melancholic, even suicidal experiences of the mourner. At any rate, I mean to use the concept of an “investment” or “cathexis,” for this study, as if it occurs in multipartite form, existing almost as a network of both feelings and instincts

When I contemplate the properties of a “cathexis,” I imagine energy gathering around or connecting to a point in the psyche as if a finger that has landed on the glass surface of a pink and blue plasma globe. The lightening within it “cathects” with the fingers on the surface, symbolizing the now animated investments that the mind makes in its internalized, intimate relationships, thus constituting the fabric of an individual’s personality that has been in the bosom of their own respective, relational milieus This

image was conjured when I began studying self-psychology, and it helped me to visualize, for a visual learner, what Kohut’s (1971) transmuting internalizations might entail, grounding the libidinal cathexes of what would become selfobject functions

Whether Freud meant to categorize these concepts through “quantitative metaphors” (Ornston, 1985, p. 394) or simply leave them to the colloquial imagination is a question of great historical value. Yet, as I proceed to analyze my own experience of what it means to mourn via working to change the quality of investment with my father in the last months, days, weeks, and hours of his life, a practical substrate of something to hold on to that describes what it is exactly that I worked to change seems evidently useful.

So, now that I have defined (as best as I can) the notion of a cathexis in terms of an “investment” of psychic energies into the internal representations of our most intimate relationships, how is it, theoretically, that one changes it, especially in the process of anticipatory mourning?

Hoffman does not seem to provide a satisfactory answer to this question, but I do not consider this a fault in his paper. I am not sure that there is a recognized, established response to it Studies that work to describe the properties and general experiences of anticipatory grief or mourning seem to imply that this change in investment results from the optimal navigation through them. Hoffman’s study is included. He explains and demonstrates with detail what happens when such a shift is occurring i.e., that optimal change in these investments materializes as one toils with and confronts the inherent paradoxes of what it means to be losing someone, scoring a balance between polar moods and emotions.

Hoffman describes the experiences of the 21 families in his research sample navigating three “adaptational dilemmas” (p. 257). These are “agonizing,” contradictory, and ambiguous internal conflicts, whereby each part of a polarity demands of one to hold them simultaneously he writes, “to keep them both in mind” (p. 257). This initiative requires, for example, that those anticipating the death of a loved one hold in dynamic tension their hopes for treatment with the certainty of a fatal prognosis. This is the first dilemma. The second requires that one maintain the exigencies of typical-to-life routines with the very real encounter with one’s grief. The third necessitates that one hold faith in oneself and/or the world with an “inevitably profound skepticism, doubt, and anger” (p. 257).

Hoffman’s study traces the intrapsychic developments of parents with terminallyill children. He informs that he was impressed with the overall ability of these parents to hold the inherent tensions in these paradoxes or dilemmas throughout the dying process. Their positionality on the poles of any of the three mentioned above was determined by “the condition of the child and the stage of illness” (p. 257). Yet, the intensity of any given part of the dying process did not appear to cause one aspect of the paradox to extinguish (he writes, “obliterate”) the other for all but three of the families in his study (p. 257). In other words, of the families who appeared able to hold these adaptational demands, as described, Hoffman reports that he and his participants frequently found a “relatively conscious struggle to meet the implications of the child’s fatal illness head on” (p. 257). Furthermore, he argues that this tendency occurred in such a way as to indicate a lack in the types of intrapsychic conflicts one might assume would dynamically occur in such a group namely denial and seeking obsessive control. Hoffman also reports that

the elements involved in the drama for families navigating the third paradox tended to stimulate the struggle for them to find meaning.

Hoffman’s study introduces a handful of noteworthy observations regarding the experience of anticipatory mourning or grieving in those who will survive the death of a significant relationship. He notes that the families of his study shifted focus from mourning the quantity of time with their dying children toward increasing the quality of that time, which included “absolution of self, of others, or of life itself … a general granting of forgiveness” (p. 258). He writes of conscious struggles that families experience with guilt and bitterness, noting especially that these can be recognized not as defensive maneuvers, but part of the integrative process entailed in the chaos that precedes creation and order (p. 259). He writes: “The parents’ sense of growth was reflected in a changed temporal orientation, in a greater empathic identification with and tolerance for the limitations of others, and in an enhanced sense of resiliency and capacity to endure suffering” (p. 260).

As I contemplated this paper, I struggled a bit with the question of whether I should include it in the foregrounding section of the previous chapter, given that Hoffman provides a language that so artfully clarifies why I embarked on the work of this study and what keeps me attending to it. It is, in essence, to avoid making one of the most serious mistakes of my father’s life, which was to resist the work of mourning his losses. I admire what the parents of Hoffman’s study were able to bring into their own experiences of encountering this premature foreclosure on the lives of their children. Ironically, as my father’s son, I wish to grow into these examples that I might be better prepared for the inevitable losses of my own, whatever they may be.

That being said, I would have to contrive this narrative in order for it to show how the descriptions in Hoffman’s study might work or be applied to this one. Again, he writes that all but three of them were able to navigate their experiences of anticipatory mourning in a way that balanced conflicting demands (Rando, 2000) optimally My account, however, if considered in the context of Hoffman’s observations, would (likely) have been included among the group of three that did not manage the pressures of these demands in an ideal manner.

Therefore, the autoethnographic story of this study, in my view, is a tragedy. It is meant to demonstrate how difficult it is to mourn ambivalent relationships, even before death and object loss have occurred. Dad and I simply didn’t possess the essential, relational it-factor that Hoffman’s study reveals between parents and their children I argue that this is due to the combination of Dad’s personality and the core defenses I had developed to protect myself from the pernicious aspects of it, then coming to the fore in pernicious ways throughout that year, if only in the internal operations of my psyche. It had become necessary to filter them in everyday interactions with Dad, so much that by the time we arrived in the final year of his life, these operations were a matter of instinct. Anticipatory mourning became, again, very complicated indeed.

At this point, we know that the story and self-analysis to follow it will contemplate a type of predeath mourning that I have dubbed “complicated,” but what happens in the cathectic process when what I am calling “complicated” anticipatory mourning occurs? Effectively, this is revealed in the story as the principal way in which it “theorizes” (Adams et al., 2015) about a “mourning in madness.” Nevertheless, to specify, I reveal that the answer to the question mainly regards a combination of my own

struggle to adapt to the realities of my and my father’s mortality, in a kind of complementary dance with manic defenses against depressive anxiety. Both originate in large part from a distressed and problematic history with a distressing and problematizing, internalized object. What follows, now, is a review of the literature that I believe best describes the latter of the two operations.

A “Madness” in Mourning

Melanie Klein introduced the concept of depressive anxiety in 1935, which she applies to the clinical phenomenon of mourning in her second, seminal paper on the topic in 1940. Hinshelwood and Fortuna (2018) provide an account of her discovery of manicdepressive states following the death of her son in 1933 from a climbing accident, which changed Klein’s life and the discourse Freud and Abraham initiated around the work of grieving, mourning, and of melancholia. Hinshelwood et al. state, “Writing her paper, she must have put a lot of herself emotionally into it, and indeed one might have said that the professional work she did was part of her personal work of grieving” (p. 67). A few years later, Klein produced one of the most important papers, not merely for psychoanalysis, but general psychiatry, developing clinical awareness of “manic-depression,” and describing the conditions that move one to engage its defenses. This largely informs the conversation around what is re-labelled, of course, “bipolar disorder” (American Psychiatric Association, 1980).

In her work on the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states, Klein (1935) introduces the idea that defenses against depressive anxiety become what she ultimately terms the “manic defenses” (p. 278). They stream from one’s encounters with loss and the internal splits that may imply them. In this section, I show how this occurs, and I link

these operations to, again, what I am loosely referring to as “complicated” anticipatory mourning. What follows herein is a review of relevant terms and concepts that come from a set of primary and secondary sources, namely, Klein (1935, 1940), Summers (1994), Likierman (2001), Spillius et al. (2011), Hinshelwood and Fortuna (2018), and Abram and Hinshelwood (2018).

The “pain” of depressive anxiety.

From the literature written by Klein and her commentators on the phenomenon of the depressive position, a set of core, developmental concepts emerge. First, although the infant enters the position in question around six months of age, the dilemmas introduced therein will be revisited throughout the life cycle, especially when the work around adapting to various manifestations of object loss make it necessary. To understand what this means, however, we’ll have to start at the beginning.

Klein discovered that, in the first six months of life, our primary concern is to ward off a sense of destructive potential that we perceive originating from “part-objects” (Klein, 1935, p. 272) in our environment that appear to us to target (and threaten) our existence. In other words, we are flooded by fantasies of potential deprivation and annihilation from without. Klein termed this the “paranoid” position, which eventually became recast as the “paranoid-schizoid” position (Summers, 1994, p. 84).

Klein noted that as we pass through those first six months of life, our part-objects begin to become more whole to us, and we cross a threshold that presents a new dilemma for us. The destructive potential now appears to be not so much targeting us from without, but originating from within. Our primary concern then becomes the multifarious

ways that innate forms of our hate and destructive potential will destroy the objects we love.

In the paranoid position, we felt there to be a dual set of distinct part-objects: the first is an ideal one that we love and the second is a persecuting one that we hate. Our infantile minds cannot yet comprehend that they are the same object. We split them, you see, to protect the “good” of it from the “bad” of it. The paranoia of this position is about keeping the projected contents of the bad of the part-object, intolerable and hell-bent on destroying the best of our existence, it would seem, to remain “out there,” in the environment. As such, we can make phantasmagoric attempts to ward it off.

As our capacity for object constancy grows stronger, and as we begin to feel the two parts of the object come together into a whole that features both aspects, we now become more aware of the potential to damage or lose it. This stimulates feelings of guilt and the need for repair as we pine after what we believe we have damaged or lost. When frustrated by the fantasy that we are unable to do this, coupled with our natural incapacity to hold the powerful emotions of our newly-acquired perceptions, our minds reinvigorate a defense de jure from the previous position i.e., it assures us that we have (or can have) omnipotent control over the frustrating object This defense helps us manage the intensity of these operations by convincing us that we are (or would be) the reason that the damage or loss has occurred, and that good behavior will prevent more of it from taking place.

The pain that surrounds these internal dramas, almost entirely rooted in the infantchild’s fantasies around existential matters, is properly termed, by Klein, the “depressive anxiety” of the “depressive position.” Regarding the latter, she writes:

There are thus two sets of fears, feelings and defences [sic], which, however varied in themselves and however intimately linked together, can, in my view, for purposes of theoretical clearness, be isolated from each other The first set of feelings and phantasies [sic] are the persecutory ones, characterized by fears related to the destruction of the ego by internal persecutors. The defences [sic] against these fears are predominantly the destruction of the persecutors by violent or secretive and cunning methods. … The second set of feelings … of sorrow and concern for the loved objects, the fears of losing them and the longing to regain them, a simple word derived from everyday language namely the ‘pining’ for the loved object. In short persecution (by ‘bad’ objects) and the characteristic defences [sic] against it, on the one hand, and pining for the (‘good’) object, on the other, constitute the depressive position. (Klein, 1940, p. 348)

When Dad began to decline into serious mental, emotional, and physical health, I show how it amplified the internal properties of “bad-Dad” introjects, by which I had felt “persecuted” since I can remember Dad’s decline also stimulated a regression into the operations and defenses of the depressive position, including the catalyzation of manic defenses against my own depressive anxiety. Whether a matter of regression or amplification, I unwittingly took actions to either block fuller awareness of the experience I was having (i.e., I simply didn’t have the capacity to deal with it better), or I (unconsciously) attempted to destroy the “bad object” from within. Either way, the experience initiated terrible cycles of depressive and manic moods. It made loving Dad

nearly impossible, as I reveal. It foreclosed on my ability to grow more deeply into the realities involved in Dad’s passage from life to death.

Spillius et al. (2011) advise that Klein’s use of the word “pining” has “come to be used less in the literature than the terms ‘guilt’ or ‘depressive anxiety’” (p. 312), noting that it is not clear if the two terms are meant to be synonymous. I find it unfortunate that we have lost a generalized focus on Klein’s use of the term “pining” to describe the pain of depressive anxiety, because this concept is rather important for this study important and theoretically rudimentary. It is as if the mind would say, “I have lost you because I have destroyed you, and I want you back so desperately,” presumably, so that “I might no longer feel such guilt about it.” In a poem from the narrative that follows titled “the father You could not be,” I worked to convey the essence of a long, difficult, and painful history

my history, that is of grieving and mourning the perceived losses of my father. This process began for me at the age of three and continued unwavering until well into adulthood.

I should also note, here, that I originally contemplated titling this dissertation “Early Mournings,” as a play on the idea that my work of mourning Dad did not begin with his terminal illness, but early in my life. Through proximal or emotional losses that occurred during the course of the first three decades, that is, “pining” after my “lost father” consumed the whole of my psychosocial ambitions. Displacements of this drama took place invariably, almost without providing a respite between moments of them. Meanwhile, my actual father remained ambivalent to me, and my focus veered almost entirely toward the “bad Dad” aspects of the internal split that I had inadvertently created for or with him.

Near the end of my twenties, the bulk of this tragicomedy was primarily (and finally) put to rest, but a version of it was reanimated as Dad got progressively sicker. Throughout childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, idealizations of men who resembled the qualities of my father that I loved were a singular focus of mine. Furthermore, I felt guilty for having and encouraging them, especially as I grew more aware of my same-sex, sexual orientation. As I demonstrate herein, the association of these concepts (i.e., the pain of depressive anxiety, guilt, and what it means to “pine for” a lost object) is basic to this project.10

So, how does the literature connect these operations to the processes entailed in mourning, again, before or after death (assuming they share characteristics)? To account for this, I need to review concepts that Klein developed around introjection, mania, and the depressive plight to repair in greater depth. First, I want to review how she writes about the potential benefits of mourning properly.

An “introjective” sort of mourning.

In 1917 with his work on Mourning and Melancholia, Freud employed the idea that introjective maneuvers are characteristic of melancholia, the pathological response to grieving our losses. He shows how, in melancholia, the ego takes in the lost, “reproached” object (Spillius et al., 2011, p. 374), which, thus, brings about the inordinate displeasures that are characteristic of depression. Introjection signifies, in other words, a refusal to mourn the lost object by taking it into the psyche so as to preserve it

10 In 1948, Klein admits that she “cannot at present give a definite answer” to the question of whether guilt is an element of depressive anxiety. I argue that it is, in fact, especially if it retains the idea of ‘pining’ for the loved object, as stated in the extended quote above from 1940 (see Klein, 1948, p. 36).

from total loss, rather than decathecting from it and recathecting with another (i.e., rather than mourning it).

For Freud, the operations of melancholia are not the same as those of mourning. This link between introjection and mourning was made several years later by Karl Abraham (Abraham, 1924). Spillius et al. argue that it “was well established when Klein began her work” (p. 375).

For Klein, objects, part or otherwise, experienced as good and/or bad, are introjected (and projected) regularly during the course of one’s movement through her developmental positions. The introjective identification with gratifying objects helps the developing infant to protect other beloved, internalized objects against persecution and death, given that they provide “an internal sense of goodness, self-confidence and mental stability” (Spillius et al., p. 375; see also Hinshelwood, 1991).

By 1940, Klein argues that mourning, a process that is fundamental to human development, “provides the occasion to carry on the life task of working-through the conflicts of the depressive position” (Spillius et al., p. 375). Mourning revives its dramas (and inherent dilemmas), which should lead to optimal outcomes for one’s growth. For Freud, the painful labor of mourning forces one to contend with the ego-depleting enterprise of decathecting from the lost object, and redirecting the energy of it toward new ones. But Klein views that work as one that will reinvigorate the endopsychic, egoexperience of the lost object, furthering the optimal path of individuating from the object, and cultivating a deeper love and appreciation for it. She writes, essentially, of what it means to change the quality of the cathectic investment with a loved one:

Thus, while grief is experienced to the full and despair is at its height, the love for the object wells up and the mourner feels more strongly that life inside and outside will go on after all, and that the lost loved object can be preserved within. At this stage in mourning suffering can become productive. We know that painful experiences of all kinds sometimes stimulate sublimations, or even bring out quite new gifts in some people…

. Others become more productive in a different way more capable of appreciating people and things, more tolerant in their relation to others they become wiser.

The work of mourning, it would seem, holds a promise for growth. Furthermore, it appears that the operations of mourning are also more broadly applicable than one might originally consider them to be. She continues: Such enrichment is in my view gained through processes similar to those steps in mourning which we have just investigated. That is to say, any pain caused by unhappy experiences, whatever their nature, has something in common with mourning. It reactivates the infantile depressive position; the encountering and overcoming of adversity of any kind entails mental work similar to mourning. (Klein, 1940, p. 360, emphasis added)

Melanie Klein’s description, here, matches almost entirely those of what occurred for all but three families in Irwin Hoffman’s research dealing with death anxiety and adaptation to mortality. Klein’s comment and the testimonies of these families, in other words, demonstrate the fruitful outcomes of mourning gone right, and they include

features of the process that Freud termed “melancholia” i.e., introjective identification with lost objects that indicate, not the refusal to mourn, but the work of it.

So, we know what mourning can look like, but does Klein provide a description of a type of pathological or problematic mourning a mourning of a “complicated” sort?

Manic defenses in the work of mourning.

Shortly after the passage quoted just above, Klein states that “the phases in the work of mourning when manic defenses relax and a renewal of life sets in, with a deepening in internal relationships, are comparable to the steps which in early development lead to greater independence from external as well as internal objects” (p. 361). For Klein, therefore, the trajectory for human development is, in large part, toward this outcome whereby the mind, like Dumbo and his feather (Disney, 1941), grows to no longer need the manic defenses in question to face the realities of its potential.

Yet, it seems it cannot do this without actual experiences with actual people that become the introjects of the gratifying, “good” breast. By extension, I ultimately argue, one’s experience of anticipatory mourning will inevitably yield a more extreme or potent variation of these defenses in “complicated” forms of it if the relationship with the dying loved one, internally represented, weighs more on the “bad” side of the ambivalence than otherwise. That is to say, given that manic defenses and the mourning process are inexorably reciprocal, when the potential for (ultimate) loss occurs, the mind can only strive to pick up where it has left off in the developmental trajectory for which it is designed to accomplish, even if this means it will regress into more primordial or infantile locations. Therefore, it is critical to appreciate the nature of manic responses to grief and

loss as one journeys through a mourning process, which Klein has shown to be far more ubiquitous than we are aware.

Spillius et al. note that “the mechanisms involved in mania” were so important to Klein that, “for a period in the late 1930s,” she “referred to the manic position” to describe them (p. 399; see Klein, 1935, p. 163). Freud argued that mania is a way to escape the melancholic state. McWilliams showed that manic defenses are against depressive moods. Klein argues that manic defenses operate to soothe, if only temporarily, the depressive anxieties that result from the mourner’s perception that their losses are rooted in their hateful and destructive potentials and behaviors. Without enough good-object content downloaded, as it were, into the psyche so as to counterbalance the emotional force of these destruction-based phantasies, manic defenses appear to be necessary. To better understand how Klein’s contribution matters regarding the question of grief and mourning, we must first comprehend the essence of these defenses, namely, how omnipotent control and denial of dependency activate devaluing and grandiose states of mind.

Klein (1935) argues that the defense of omnipotent control “first and foremost characterizes mania,” along with “the mechanism of denial” (p. 277). She argues that these defenses ultimately work to shield one from the “torturing and perilous” (p. 277) pains of dependency i.e., dependency on the functions of the internalized object now lost (or, in the case of this study, about-to-be-lost). The object that is loved and needed is also the very one that is hated, reviving both persecutory and depressive anxieties. The manic mind, therefore, in order to deal with this, devalues the lost object. Klein uses the term “disparagement.” Rather than feel dependency, the manic, grandiose psyche works

to deny the importance of it, as if the mind would assert something like, “I don’t need you, you frustrating object, anyway!” She writes:

‘Surely,’ argues the ego, ‘it is not a matter of such great importance if this particular object is destroyed. There are so many others to be incorporated.’ This disparagement of the object’s importance and the contempt of it is … a specific characteristic of mania and enables the ego to effect that partial detachment which we observe side by side with its hunger for objects. (Klein, 1935, p. 278)

The manic mind may also seek to control the internalized object, and this it seems generates the grandiose state of mind that is prototypic of mania. Not only is the mind denying its need for the (about-to-be) lost one, but it also ventures to shut down the pain of losing it via launching into a disconnected and somewhat false state of its own selfreliance (and importance). In this sense, it is not so much denying the loss (as in the “never-never” of melancholia, whereby the mind operates as if to say, I never loved and therefore never lost see J. Butler, 1995, p. 171), but downplaying the value of the lost object itself.

Conclusion. Up to this point, I hope to have supplied a theoretical overview of anticipatory mourning, which includes a justification for how it is theoretically applicable to this study. I have done this by recounting the difference between standard or conventional forms of grief that stimulate mourning processes, both before and after the death of a loved one, and a more “complicated” version of them which characterizes this analysis. I have endeavored to review literature that deals with death anxiety, decathexis, and ultimately, what it means for predeath mourning to represent a process of working to

change the quality of the investment that is entailed in the subjective psyche of the mourner in question. Furthermore, I have worked to demonstrate what the literature conveys regarding what it actually means to attempt the latter i.e., the change of investment, which I have connected to the core principles of the works of Melanie Klein (primarily). In doing so, I have attempted to outline what the literature reveals about optimal mourning processes and those that are inherently problematic. This anticipates the autoethnographic narrative and analysis of it in the chapters that follow. I now want to conclude this chapter by reviewing a set of relevant autoethnographies that share a similar theme as my own namely, that of sons writing about their fathers.

Relevant Autoethnographies

“Fathers and sons. What is it between us? That is an ancient question and it may never be resolved” (Goodall, 2012, p. 207).

The works that follow have been written by sons of fathers who have died. They are works of mourning. The authors of them write their respective narratives so as to better understand the quality and character of their relationship with their fathers. None of the following autoethnographies reviewed connect their work with anticipatory mourning, however, and bearing in mind the nature of this work, which will endeavor to make this connection directly, the following literature does not entirely match.

I have pulled the autoethnographies for this section of my review from three sources. The first is a special issue that features a collection of 14 provocative papers on writing father-son relationships that was published in a special edition of the journal Qualitative Inquiry in 2012 (Vol. 18, No. 2). The second, I found vis-à-vis selected chapters of an autoethnographic anthology titled On (Writing) Families edited by

Jonathan Wyatt and Tony Adams (Wyatt & Adams, 2014). The third is a set of papers written by Jonathan Wyatt (2005, 2008, 2010) that trace his story of the immediate and unexpected loss of his father.

Wyatt and Adams (2012) introduce the collection of works that appear in the journal named above, and they identify three themes that connect them. Before they present those themes, however, they acknowledge, as I would as well, that the ethnographies in question cannot be easily grouped into tidy themes, provided the “unique textures and contours of each essay” (p. 119). These works, that is, throughout and beyond those that appear in this journal, feature their own creative writing styles that build upon their own recognized assumptions and guiding philosophies. Some are more free-associative and poetic; others read like an essay. Most are somewhere in between. Some want to argue a position via storytelling; others want to give the reader an experience i.e., to use autoethnographic storytelling as theory itself (Bochner et al., 2016). In short, there is no better way to appreciate these works than to read and take them in.

In their introduction, Wyatt et al. outline three correlative themes. First, they contemplate the complexity of father-son relationships, even after death. They write, “The relationships here are never presented as easy but rather ones that are complicated and painful, and that matter” (p. 119). In a way, this observation echoes Freud’s argument, mentioned in the previous chapter, that a son’s loss of his father is a singular event in that son’s life. Second, they indirectly note the influence of Deleuzian philosophy, which advances the proposal that phenomena are created in the act of writing

about them.11 This is, perhaps, one of the core explanations for why there really cannot exist a standardized way of writing or interpreting such works without doing violence to them. What belongs to the authors of them will not correspond necessarily to what the reader will gather from them. The truths of these stories are both written and read into the text as the activities of writing and reading them transpire in vivo. Wyatt et al. write:

We notice how stories write sons, fathers, and son-father relationships into being. There is a sense in these pieces of the act of writing. Stories constitute relationships, as new framings, apologies, confusions, and uncertainties about what we want(ed) from fathers emerge through the process of writing. (p. 119)

Third, the authors note that the stories of this anthology tend to demonstrate the rocky dynamics involved in sons and fathers negotiating emotional and relational proximity a “clunky intimacy” (p. 119), they write, “with sons approaching fathers but fathers pushing sons away and fathers reaching out to sons but sons seeking distance” (p. 119; Pelias, 2012). Broadly, the stories tackle topics such as addiction, shifting subjectivities, longings for dead fathers, ownership and appropriation of bodies, the “museum” of father artifacts, and ways that both fathers and sons can fail to connect.

The authors also mention three thematic gaps in the anthology, two of which are relevant for this review. First, they recognize that there is much that could be and has been included within autoethnographic discourse around other parent-child relationships (e.g., daughter-father ones) that are equally relevant, but not included in this anthology.

11 Deleuze (1995) writes, critiquing a post-Hegelian framework: “What history grasps in an event is the way it’s actualized in particular circumstances; the event’s becoming is beyond the scope of history” (p. 170).

Second, they acknowledge that this anthology does not consist of autoethnographic writing that deals with “sons who do not know their fathers” or those “who do not want to perceive any connection to their fathers” (p. 120). In such a case, autoethnographies that deal with the psychoanalytic concept of “father hunger” (Herzog, 2013) might be appropriate.

There is much that can be said about each individual autoethnography in question indeed, a great deal of analysis may be gleaned from even the briefest one. Yet, discussing these themes in greater detail will likely have an unwarranted, preemptive influence on the interpretive analysis of this dissertation, at least at this point in the process, given that I can be tempted, especially when resisting more coherent interpretations of difficult contents of my own, to apply or to look for and identify the same themes at the expense of or in lieu of those which are nuanced from my own experience. Juggling these tensions will likely be necessary. Nevertheless, I want to briefly mention a handful of additional, general themes that emerge from these works to which I already relate. These are those that Wyatt and Adams do not identify in their introduction.

Some of the autoethnographies speak to their experience of anticipating the death of their fathers without, as I have mentioned, linking their experience with anticipatory mourning. Patti (2012), for instance, recalls a discussion with his father at 13 years of age, noting his experience of sleeplessness and midnight fear one that he continues to grapple with in adulthood (p. 156). It is a powerful and moving display of wrestling with mortality and losing a beloved relationship.

Pelias (2012) writes about “archive fever,” which he draws from Derrida’s famous book (i.e., Derrida, 1995). As part of his ongoing work with his own bereavement, he explains his “driving desire to preserve, to fight against forgetfulness, to list traces” of his father (p. 144). He continues:

I proceed by gathering fragments what is left and taken, what is here and there, what is slow and fast, and what is stored and tossed. I write against time, against memory’s betrayal, against death. I work for an archival accumulation, for a documentation that insists upon a presence, for a living memorial. I move forward expecting my attempt will be a failure. I continue, nevertheless, driven to satisfy my desire for the impossible. (p. 144)

Denzin’s (2012) autoethnography deals in part with this, as well, as he somberly describes his experience of sifting through a box full of letters that he discovered after the death of his father (pp. 191-192). In working to make sense of his father’s life, Goodall (2012) writes about artifacts, stories, secrets, and memories contained in “a word and image museum” that is a place “for connecting stories and fragments of stories with real people and events to make whole, or nearly whole, a coherent account of the complex and contradictory man” i.e., his father (p. 203). Goodall uses this narrative to try to fill in gaps of information about which his father was consistently secretive, namely, seemingly insignificant details that would otherwise help this father’s son better understand who he was.

Poulos’s (2012) autoethnography is useful because it deals directly with “writing a relationship,” in observance with the Deleuzian theme noted above. Poulos is dedicated

to a free-associative style that explores communication problems in his relationship with his father in attempt to “re-write the terms” of that relationship (p. 197). It is both a moving and frustrating display of two people talking past each other defensively in a way that is almost absurd if it wasn’t so human. The adult ethnographer, then, can put words to the confusing emotional hauntings of a beleaguered and confused child, who remains affected by the “conflict spiral” that characterized that relationship (p. 200; see also Wilmot & Hocker, 2001, p. 52). I find Poulos’s autoethnography inspiring, as I can relate to the problem he reveals and the need for the project to help work it out.

I read, in both Gale (2012) and Alexander, Moreira, and kumar (sic.) (2012), issues of working to realize greater autonomy for themselves in their respective autoethnographies. For the latter, this entails “resistance to the authority of the father” as one that has communicated a powerful and dominating “worldview of the male child” in conflict with what it means to “become one’s own man” (p. 122). Each offer segments of stories that help demonstrate the contours of their respective struggles with this enterprise. Inspired by Deleuze and Foucault, Gale uses his autoethnographic account as an in-vivo attempt to free himself from what he terms a “delirious existence,” manufactured, in large part, by cultural impingements prescribing normativities that are inherent in symbolic “father-son” dynamics (p. 150). He asks about the desire to “get free of one self, of the one self that does the holding on that creates and then establishes the holding back, the holding from, the very hold on life that binds it and strangles connection with the potentialities and fluidities of delirious existence” (p. 150).

Again, these themes are those to which I already relate. I was astonished, that is, at how easily I found it was to discover myself in the stories of these ethnographers, even

considering similarities and differences in their general circumstances and embeddedness. These are themes to which this autoethnography will likely deal, at least in part; the areas that diverge will represent what I hope will be a unique contribution to the established discourse.

Chapter III

Research Methodology

Introduction

The purpose of this autoethnographic study is to create an interpretive analysis of my experience of anticipating my father’s death using (primarily) psychoanalytic theory. Throughout this work, I have endeavored to answer the following research questions:

1. How did my experience of anticipatory mourning affect me (personally) and the ambivalent relationship that I had with my father before he died?

2. What are some of the significant and noteworthy ways in which my life was disrupted and/or disordered by anticipatory mourning?

3. What impact might the reflexive conversations between my father and me have had on my experience of working through the ambivalences in our relationship, and, by extension, the lack of conventional grief as I journeyed through a unique encounter with anticipatory mourning?

4. How might my self-analysis of anticipatory mourning inform theory about the phenomenon, and how might this be useful to others, especially those in the helping professions?

To write this chapter, I have consulted and greatly relied upon the seventh chapter of Bloomberg and Volpe (2016). I am depending on this text to compose this chapter, making liberal use of it by including several passages for clarification. In other words, I

cite the text abundantly to communicate as plainly as possible what I understand should be indicated in each of the following sections.

I have observed guidelines for each section as they appear in the Bloomberg et al. text, but I have rearranged the order of the sections below to observe a logical flow that will avoid offering multiple explanations of the same tedious information. I explain,

1. how I collected data (and what constitutes it);

2. how I created a storyline from the informal data sample of this study and the resources needed to do this;

3. the steps I took to create the interpretive analysis of Chapter V, outlining theoretical concepts from authoritative texts in both qualitative inquiry and psychoanalysis; and

4. what it means to conduct this study on ethical grounds. I also

5. briefly address how I worked to ensure the trustworthiness of this study in terms of credibility, dependability, and transferability; and

6. how I addressed the potential weaknesses of this study as they are indicated in both externally and internally imposed limitations, respectively.

Suffice it to say, what follows is (rightly) the most technical discussion of this work.

Why use a qualitative approach?

Wertz et al. (2011) argue that quantitative methods are limited because they can only measure the magnitude of any given phenomenon under examination. They write, “even when many measurements are made with the finest instruments and rationally

analyzed with the most sophisticated statistical procedures, they do not themselves provide qualitative knowledge of what is being measured” (p. 2). That is, qualitative approaches to research reveal, they argue, the “what” and “how” of a phenomenon, that is, the “research about what a subject matter is in all its real-world, complexity” (p. 2).

Leech and Onwuegbuzie (2007) agree and offer four rationales for employing a qualitative method to assist and improve quantitative studies. They are, namely: “participant enrichment,” whereby qualitative studies help optimize a research sample (p. 560); “instrument fidelity,” whereby researchers use qualitative methods to test and retest instruments to maximize their efficiency (p. 561); “treatment integrity,” which focuses on maximizing the efficacy in the assessment of interventions, treatments, or programs used in quantitative studies (p. 561); and finally “significance enhancement,” which assists quantitative researchers to best interpret their data (p. 561). Thus, not only can qualitative studies explain or elucidate the “what” and “how” of what’s being formally studied, but they can complement the fundamental goals and outcomes of quantitative research in ways it itself otherwise could not.

Why an autoethnography?

Allen-Collinson (2016) indicates that autoethnographies serve to examine the self “in relation to others, to culture, to politics, and the engagement of selves in relation to future possibilities for research” (p. 282). Bochner and Ellis (2016) specify the limitations of “older, more conventional methods,” even qualitative ones, which they felt proved “unsatisfactory or inadequate” to address human problems (p. 44). Autoethnographies, they argue, bring “heightened attention to human suffering, injustice, trauma,

subjectivity, feeling, and loss” (p. 45). They provide “a theatre for investigating some of the most serious questions of existence” (p. 51).

No other research method allows me to attempt to penetrate the core of the issues of anticipatory mourning more than this one, given that I have gone through it myself. Any other type of qualitative method, in other words, would fail to facilitate the fullest exploration of this phenomenon, given that no other method would allow me to represent my experience in the same way, with the same precision and focus; to exclude that data, if I even could, would sell the study short and prove synthetic.

My Research Sample & the Field to Which It Belongs

Use of “formal” and “informal” data.

For ease of communication, I want to make a preliminary distinction between “formal” and “informal” types of data so as to clarify the difference between the data that I have analyzed for this dissertation (i.e., “formal” data) and the data that I have used to construct an autoethnographic narrative (i.e., “informal” data). To be clear, the only “formal” data that constitutes my research sample to be analyzed for this study is my experience as it is represented in the story, the narrative, the autoethnography that constitutes Chapter IV. This distinction is important because no other type of data sample other than what I am labelling “formal data” is presented in Chapter IV for the analysis of Chapter V.

Participants.

I am also the only participant in this study. As a proper autoethnography, I have composed a work of art a story that conveys essential elements of my experience of

the last year of my father’s life (i.e., August 2018 – 2019), and the interpretive analysis to follow investigates the dynamics of that experience.

I have clarified that my underlying motivation for this project is to understand my father better in terms of his choices, behaviors, and the memories of his life and our life together. Yet, this often yields language that seems to convey that the study is about my father, rather than a self-analysis of anticipatory mourning.

In the introduction to Chapter V, I state unequivocally that the interpretive, selfanalysis that follows is largely focused on what it means to me that I felt such a compelling drive to know and understand my father in the ways I have outlined prior to his death, and to articulate that meaning via a psychoanalytic lens. My father is not the focus of this study, but he represents a prominent role in my self-analysis

Nevertheless, I have been sensitive to how my dad might feel about what I have written. He was aware that I wanted to collect information from him for an intended purpose. At the time, that intention was to construct a compendium of memories, stories, family history facts and artifacts, and so on, that I could organize and share with family, both immediate and beyond. Later, this intention of mine was stated explicitly. As Dad’s health took serious plummets, he began to keep a journal of his own, and I believe he was inspired to do this because he wanted to help me in this enterprise. As far as I am aware, Dad never kept a journal before this. Yet, as a result of his dedication to this measure (and my efforts to collect his stories), my family and I now have a copious resource upon which we may draw after his death.

At one point, Dad gave me permission to write about (and publish) the issues we were exploring together. I accepted this and wrote a paper that I presented at the 2019

ICQI conference in Urbana-Champaign an event that is narrated in the story ahead.

“Feel free to say what you’d like, Devan,” Dad said during our last Thanksgiving together, “but, if you’re quoting me, I want you to say, ‘conversations with my dad yielded this information from his perspective. These were his feelings and thoughts, as best as he can remember them.’”

Dad is not a formal participant in this study, but he is one of the main characters of the story. Given this, it is important to me that I honor his wishes regarding the way I represent what he has spoken. He provides details of information that I use to better understand both him and myself, and, without that information, the present study would not have been possible.

Fieldwork.

What constitutes the “field” of this study? Adams, Jones, and Ellis (2015) maintain that, “like ethnographers, autoethnographers study culture at ‘ground level, in the thick of things’ through the empirical (observation- and experience-based) method of fieldwork” (p. 50). Furthermore, and notably, the autoethnographer must “locate and gain access” to a “field,” just as any ethnographer; but, this “field” may be “discursive and relational, constituted or dominated by language and interaction rather than physical space” (p. 50). Thus, participants in an autoethnographic study may enter more traditional, ethnographic contexts or locations e.g., “an entire culture or social group in its natural setting” (Bloomberg et al., p. 47; Van Maanen, 1988, 1995, 2006); or, they may enter those that Adams et al. have indicated to be “discursive and relational.” I conducted the fieldwork for this dissertation in the latter.

A brief explanation of uses of “informal” data for this study.

I employed a multifarious array of “informal” data to prepare a storyline for use to create the narrative of Chapter IV In what follows, here, I want to define what they are and offer a rationale for them

The major, pivotal events of that last year of my father’s life those of which I was directly a part, and those which affected us establish the backbone of the autoethnographic narrative. The details of these events helped me organize the story with a coherent plotline. It has been vital to me that I feel I have been able to characterize the experiences of the characters in the story as accurately and authentically as possible, especially my own, of course, and especially with regard to its major themes. I have done this in terms of the facts involved (i.e., people, settings, events that transpired, etc.), but not as easily by way of general themes and impressions, given the hermeneutical limitations that I mentioned in the first chapter.

Regarding these elements (i.e., constructing a narrative with themes and impressions of situations, events, and people), I have been far less concerned with getting facts straight as I have with ensuring that I am representing my experience as authentically as possible, endeavoring to speak truthfully of myself, even when this has been difficult to do. This was often the case when the story reveals me in an unflattering light or the vulnerabilities that trigger my everyday anxieties. “Saturating” (Creswell, 2013, p. 89) my “informal” data pool helped me to feel confident that I was working toward honesty, openness, and candor; it helped me to push through difficult moments. Ultimately, I have worked under the assumption that a good and useful story can often be one that is thoroughly contemplated.

What types of informal data did I take to generate the story? When I started the proposal process for this project, I had a record of over a thousand pages representing journal entries and transcribed voice recordings I had made over the course of that year with Dad. This record offers almost daily thoughts and feelings that ponder the nuances of the interpersonal goings-on that had and were occurring between him and me, mostly during this period before he died.

Dad and I also participated in a number of significant conversations that I used to probe questions about his life and our family history. Some of these conversations transpired as if out of a chapter from Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (2017), where Dad imparted wisdom and life lessons in an idyllic atmosphere of mutual respect, love, and curiosity. Sometimes, I felt like I was playing the role of my father’s biographer, earnestly gathering facts about his life and following up with questions to fill gaps in my understanding of them. I would ask him deep, probing questions to which he often appeared only too delighted to provide responses.

Within the pages of this record, constituting the “informal” data of this project, it is clear that I am working to appreciate more fully and honestly who my father is and the meaning of my history with him as his son. This ambition is mirrored in a reflection that Carolyn Ellis (1996) offers in an autoethnography of her own, dealing with a window of time that she spent caring for her mother prior to her mother’s death. She writes: I think my focus on her life and our relationship; my desire to understand myself, her, and us; and the attention I lavished on her in the process contributed to the strong love that continued to develop between us before she died. (Adams et al., p. 59; see also Ellis, 1996)

These notes and reflections on conversations and events with Dad began with the aspiration to create a record for myself, my family, and posterity one that could survive his death and serve as a resource for us.

I mentioned that I also made use of a digital voice recorder whenever this proved to be expedient. This occurred most often when I was commuting or otherwise on the go. Thoughts and feelings would emerge, or I would catch myself in curious but familiar moods, or I would have thoughts/impressions that seemed to come to mind in a way that I didn’t want to forget. I used an Olympus VN-541PC digital recorder to chronicle these private, free-associative thinking exercises. The digital information was uploaded onto my computer, and I used it to review, transcribe, and sometimes interpret my thoughts vis-à-vis reflective journal writing (i.e., as free-writing). Finally, I took these texts, freewrites, journal entries, reflections, and voice recordings again, all sources of informal data and crafted the autoethnographic narrative.

Before moving on, I should also note, parenthetically, a theme that connects many works dedicated to studying the theoretical and clinical consequences of mourning (and anticipatory mourning). Researchers agree that the process includes steps toward further individuation from the lost or about-to-be-lost object. Sometimes, researchers speak of this in terms of mourning via object decathexis, as I covered in the previous chapter. Other times, they refer to furthering the developmental trajectory of differentiation from an object relations point of view, whereby the figure in mourning is picking up where they left off on a developmental arrest that is not a decathexis from the introjects that remain of the lost object, but a reconfiguration or integration of them with other parts of the self, making a new, holistic composite of it. In short, individuation processes are

central to mourning, whether those processes are understood via a drive model or as an object relational one, whereby the latter is most concerned with establishing a firmer sense of healthy internal and external separation between the mourner and the object of their loss. Regardless, I found that use of the voice recorder, during significant moments that I did not have someone to talk to, often allowed me to work to free associate in a way that encouraged these developmental processes.

On Methods of Data Collection

None of the informal type of data was “collected” for this study because it already existed at the time I began it. Chapter IV of this dissertation is the autoethnographic account of my experience of anticipatory mourning, and it represents the only and “formal” data for this study. Thus, I “collected” this data by writing the story and utilizing the research tool Atlas.ti afterward to identify the central, psychodynamic themes that emerged in the process of writing it.

Research Design: Creating an Autoethnographic Story as Formal Data

Given that the autoethnographic story is the only data sample for this study, I want to outline briefly how I made use of my journals to put together a meaningful storyline or plot. This was an exceptionally difficult task to undertake, because hundreds of what appeared initially to be disparate themes emerged as I contemplated the events of that year.

Before writing the story, I labored to keep each of the themes that emerged in mind as I explored the literature reviewed in the previous chapter. The truth is this study could justifiably apply multiple psychodynamic concepts to interpret my reactions to

mourning the losses of that year. In other words, I identified several psychoanalytic themes that appeared applicable to the themes of the story, including hysteric, masochistic, narcissistic, schizoid, and even obsessional ones. I mention this here because I have come to regard any veritable study of mourning as, honestly, an existential study of human suffering. The work of mourning forces one to face questions about one’s own existence in a way that can never be properly articulated, but is likely known, in some way or another, by all of us from our own encounters with our own, idiosyncratic losses that include our own preferred defenses that we erect to avoid recollection or direct experience of them. Given this, working to find a unique theme was challenging, mainly because decisions had to be made regarding what I found in my experience that is most relevant to the history of the discourse on the topics in question, namely, mourning, object loss, and applications of these in terms of pre-death, clinically-relevant phenomena.

Designing and crafting the autoethnography from informal data in three phases. The organization of the data is synonymous with pulling themes together and constructing a meaningful story. Carolyn Ellis writes of her own experience:

Once I have introspected as deeply as I can to create a sense of an event both as it happened then and as I re-experience it now, after time and reflection I begin another level of the editing process. Here, I attempt to create the best story of the experience I can, turning ‘this happened’ and then ‘this happened’ into a meaningful and coherent narrative. (Adams et al., p. 66)

In order to do this, I worked through three, general phases, although, I recognize that this process unfolded in a rather non-linear manner. The first was to analyze informal fieldwork data, all indicated and outlined in the section above. I examined the numerous sources described above vis-à-vis the software Atlas.ti, and I did this in a manner similar to my use of this platform to conduct the literature review. To put it more technically (and appropriately for the use of my research method), I listened carefully for the emergence of meaningful “epiphanies.” This, therefore, commences the second phase.

Autoethnographic epiphanies are defined as “transformative moments and realizations that significantly shape or alter the (perceived) course of our lives” (Adams et al., p. 47). Epiphanies “prompt us to pause and reflect,” the authors maintain. They “encourage us to explore aspects of ourselves and others that, before the incident, we might not have had the occasion or courage to explore” (p. 47). The authors go on to give examples of epiphanies, many of them about personal narratives of death and loss.

I considered other moments, as well. Adams et al. cite Bolen (2014), who organizes his autoethnography, not around epiphanies, but “mundane ‘aesthetic moments,’” which, likewise for him, “constitute his relationship with his father” (Adams et al., p. 48). These are “everyday experiences that may not be epiphanical and, as such, may be ‘overlooked because they lack transformative power,’” but are, nevertheless, meaningful and valuable (p. 48; see Bolen, 2014, p. 142).

Throughout the process of identifying epiphanic and aesthetic moments, I often felt overwhelmed and intellectually exhausted. In other words, the strains and pressures analyzed that are determined, in this study, to be rooted in ambivalent Dad-introjects were also fully active in the process of designing the story. The work of mourning Dad

inevitably continued beyond that year and into the days, weeks, and months that I combed through the pages of my journals and other recordings as I worked to shape whatever themes emerged from this enterprise into a veritable narrative. Organizing a narrative sequence constituted the third phase in designing the story. That is, I formed what seemed to be significant epiphanic and aesthetic moments into a narrative sequence according to the manner in which they materialized into a clear and intentional dramatic arc.

Regarding this organization, Bochner et al. write that autoethnographic stories usually show the developmental arc of a liminal hero’s journey from one type of existence to another after navigating through transformative incidents with key features. They write: Stories revolve around an epiphany or dramatic event. The event takes place somewhere, sometime in scenes that provide context and give setting, framing, and texturing to the story. The point or goal of the story is to come to terms with, explain, or understand the event(s): Why did this happen to me? How can I understand what these experiences mean? What lessons have I learned? How have I been changed? (p. 91)

To sum, a careful, thoughtful, and reflective consideration of these questions helped me identify core themes, and around these themes I constructed the plot of a narrative that features an intentional, dramatic arc showing a journey from “then to now” (Bochner et al., p. 91).

Other resources.

Additionally, to improve the quality of my writing, I consulted other resources as I labored to design a story from the informal data at my disposal. I completed an online course in writing memoirs by Joyce Maynard, who recently wrote her book The Best of Us (Maynard, 2018), which tells of her experience meeting and losing her husband Jim, who died of pancreatic cancer. I also consulted the book Creating Character Arcs (Weiland, 2016) by K. M. Weiland. Both helped provide structures to use to think through what is generally required to create an effective story.

Unusual Compositional Elements of the Story

In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I want to account for a short handful of compositional elements in the autoethnographic narrative of Chapter IV. They concern my choice to use (a) the present, active voice, (b) italics that reveal thinking processes, and (c) original poetry These components of the story represent efforts on my part to honor the creative choices that I feel reflect best the functions of my inner experiences, particularly as (and when) they occurred. The interpretive, self-analysis, I have argued, is a meta-analysis of the phenomenon in question, but it can’t help, in a meta-meta-analytic manner, but also be a work of postdeath mourning, even though I am not providing a theoretical analysis of it as such. This dissertation is, after all, written in a eulogistic manner, after the death of my father occurred. Therefore, in order to ensure a cleaner presentation of formal data, I have made an effort to craft the story with distinctions.

Use of the present, active voice.

During the proposal phase of this project, I read a number of memoirs to help me get a better sense of the writing style. Some of them, I account for in the story. They are This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff (Wolff, 2019), Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming (Cumming, 2014), My Father Before Me by Chris Forhan (Forhan, 2016), Boy Erased by Garrard Conley (Conley, 2016), Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (Vance, 2016), and Beautiful Boy by David Sheff (Sheff, 2018).

David Sheff wrote this stirring memoir of his experience toiling to help his son overcome an addiction to methamphetamine. It’s since been made into a film by the same name starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet (Gardner, Kleiner, & Pitt, 2018). Sheff began his career in journalism, and I found his compositional style ideal for my own narrative, particularly his use of the present, indicative, active voice. He conveys the details of his narrative as if a journalist, taking the reader into the heart of it as if it were occurring as it is being read. I decided to adopt this style, because I believe it bolsters the momentum of the storytelling process. The reader gains access to the account in a more “experience-near” manner (Hollway, 2009).

Use of italics to show thinking processes.

Neville Symington (2018), in the book that inspired the title of this work, writes, “A thought is an inner creation. And, as has been said, creative acts structure our perception, our memory, and our judgement” (p. 24). Throughout his work, Symington juxtaposes creativity as a hallmark of sanity, against its mirror, complementary opposite of “madness.” Creative decision making, therefore, as represented in thinking processes, indicates, especially in this story, my attempt, unwittingly, to work through the madness

of the mourning process I was undergoing. But, the question is: which me? Are the thoughts and feelings expressed in the story supposed to be those of a “character me” or an “author me”? The answer is both, but I make an effort to separate out the two.

In the previous section, I indicated that I decided to write the story using the present, active voice in order to better capture the thoughts and feelings I had in the moment they were taking place. That being said, the thoughts and feelings I express, however much I struggled to get inside the multifaceted aspects of my past experience, are, nevertheless, formulated according to how I am having them in the present as I write it, several years after the events happened in the story. I wanted to devise a cleaner way to separate out past emotional and thinking processes of the moments in the story (i.e., of “character me” in the past) with the thoughts and feelings of the author reflecting on the past in the present.

Therefore, the thoughts or contemplations, the feelings or moods, and the like, are set apart in italics when I am thinking, contemplating, or having them in the story. Many of these passages that appear in italics come from my journals or the audio recordings of that year. When this is not the case, they indicate thoughts and feelings that never made it to paper during that time, but which I recall having in moments that they appear in the story.

Use of poetry.

I indicated in a footnote in chapter one that the poetry of this work is original, unless I specify it otherwise. What I have not indicated yet is that I originally contemplated producing an autoethnographic work exclusively of original poetry, rather than a memoiresque narrative. My decision to do otherwise was almost an arbitrary one,

as I found that, at times, my thoughts and feelings appeared so nebulous and incomprehensible to me that poetry seemed the only viable medium for communicating them. This is especially true with the poem I feature in the narrative titled “the father You could not be.” I composed the poem after viewing the Pixar film Onward (Rae, 2020), about a boy so desperate to know his father that he goes in search of magic stones to bring him back to life, if only for a few minutes. The film broke my heart and inspired me, simultaneously, and I felt the urgent need to capture my feelings of pining for Dad, especially throughout the first three decades of my life, knowing that I do not share the same enthusiasm as the boy (and his brother) in the film, but wishing that I did. The poem was originally titled “Wishing You.”

Poetry sometimes becomes a vehicle just a step or two away from music an entirely non-verbal form of expression that helps me articulate my thoughts and feelings when it seems I am unable to do so with prose. Even though poetry is a form of writing, I find (and, for this study, very much found) its abstraction, as a method of communication, helpful in unlocking what could not (or cannot) be said. In the narrative, I set my poetry apart from the rest of the text by creating separate, primary headers for each of them. I hope this helps to isolate them from the storyline, held in context and time, as it unfolds.

The Process of Analysis & Interpretation

“Meanwhile, I’m also holding on, not letting go, thinking, processing, trying to understand. I feel on the verge of blowing it all up. … Writing has never seemed more difficult. It has never seemed more dangerous. Writing does. It changes how things are, how I see the world. I am doubting the narrative of writing as healing and therapeutic, of

writing as finding a way through the difficulties, of writing as making something good. I fear writing as tearing a line through stability” (Wyatt and Gale, 2016, p. 302).

In this section, I explain the theoretical concepts I used to complete a final analysis of the autoethnographic narrative. I also set forth the steps that I used to carry out this analysis after the story was composed. I do this to promote transparency and clarity regarding the design of this study.

“Narrative analysis” vs. “narrative-under-analysis.”

Bochner et al. make a useful distinction between what they call “narrative analysis” and “narrative-under-analysis,” whereby the latter attempts to “reduce the story to content” vis-à-vis analyzing it, “hoping to find larger categories, themes, or patterns” (p. 186; see also Bochner & Riggs, 2014, pp. 209-210). Stories, as narratives-underanalysis, are treated as “information to be categorized” (p. 186).

Narrative analysis, by contrast, is a term used to describe what it means to “think with a story” rather than about it; in this case, “the research product is a story … that the researcher composes to represent the events, characters, and issues that have been studied” (p. 185). The story, that is, theorizes as a story. The authors concede that narrative analysis and narrative-under-analysis may be blended in an effective and proper autoethnographic work, and this is what I endeavored to do (p. 186). But, what does it mean precisely to compose a story that theorizes?

Story as theory.

Charles Taylor has declared: “What I have become … can only be given in a story” (Taylor, 1989, p. 48, emphasis mine). Bochner and Ellis (2016) argue that the

“distinction between theories and stories is untenable” (p. 116). “A good story,” they agree, “theorizes” (p. 116). It “itself is theoretical” (p. 186). What does this mean and how is it relevant to the analysis and synthesis of data for this study?

An autoethnographer who intends to write a story as a “narrative analysis” will accept from the onset that the story on its own is enough. That is, it will speak for itself theoretically. The ethnographer writes the story as the act of theorizing about its content. To “think with” a story is to read a story as theory. Bochner et al. write, “Thinking with a story means to experience it as affecting your life and to find in that experience a truth about your life” (p. 186).

In a private discussion with the authors, Art Bochner and Carolyn Ellis, I challenged this concept Carolyn responded by reminding me that a traditional theoretical examination of ethnographic phenomena should not be privileged above stories as theories merely because the textual form is different. Furthermore, she reasoned, traditional analyses are far more restrictive in what they can communicate about any given phenomenon than stories that are read, and stand alone, as theories. This conversation was especially useful for me, challenging an academic point of view that I have long held to be true and unequivocal (A. Bochner and C. Ellis, personal communication, May 17, 2019).

I have touched upon how a story can serve as something to be analyzed for a study of this sort, as well as something that theorizes, as is. I have also introduced the methods I will use to produce an analysis of the story, keeping both concepts in mind. Yet, this communicates little about the procedure itself and the type of analysis I have produced. Thus, in the section that follows, I develop two major points. First, I connect

the principles of “story as theory,” as described above, with the philosophies that guide them, as they are described by the framers of the autoethnographic method. Second, I explain how I identified and coded major themes, after drafting the story, which I used to synthesize my thoughts for the analysis of Chapter V

The process of making an interpretation.

“We theorize by telling stories that put meanings in motion where they can be used, discussed, debated, and prolonged” (Bochner et al., 2016, p. 117). “Citations or no citations, stories explain, analyze, and theorize,” typically, whether or not they intend to, on their own (p. 131).

In the previous section, I explained the difference between narrative analysis and narrative-under-analysis, focusing the comparison on what it means to say a work of literature a story is itself theoretical or is theorizing. So, how is a story speaking for itself theoretically, as in the concept of the narrative analysis, connected to the epistemological framework of this project?

Autoethnographic theorists, who have worked to shape and understand the method over time, agree that both the writer and reader of a story that theorizes brings something of themselves into being in the process of performing their respective roles. This bringing something into being often recalls philosophers like Foucault, who freely critiques notions of a static subjectivity, or Deleuze (1995), who argues that philosophical “concepts” can exist only in an embedded coherence with others. Both philosophers have been cited by autoethnographic researchers to justify the approach.

The argument regarding this is clear: not only can there not exist a static meaning outside the web of epistemological coherence, but the reflexive dialectic between ever-

becoming subjects who will write or read these narratives, are also, themselves, everbecoming vis-à-vis a dynamic process that relies upon what Deleuze terms a logic of sense. Art Bochner writes:

In narrative analysis, the research product is a story a case, a biography, a life history, autobiography, or autoethnography that the researcher composes to represent the events, character, and issues that have been studied. Here we are concerned with what the story does, how it works, what relationships it shapes or animates, or how it pulls people together or breaks them apart. We take the standpoint of the storyteller who wants a listener to ‘get into’ the story. … We are concerned with communication: Do our stories evoke readers’ responses? Do they open up the possibility of dialogue, collaboration, and relationship? Do they help us get along with each other? Change institutions? Promote social justice? Help us think through values and moral dilemmas? (Bochner et al., p. 185)

A story as a theory generates these types of questions for both those who write and read it, and the answers to any of these questions, or those akin to it, constitute theories. The story generates dynamic, embedded, and reflexive processes that participate in bringing those who encounter them into greater being, in-vivo and moment-tomoment. These constructivist ideas are at the core of what it means to assemble a narrative analysis.12 The narratives aspire to an aesthetic that will move their readers,

12 I am using the word “assemble,” here, intentionally, as “assemblages” are one of the core concepts to Deleuze’s philosophy, which is, again, so influential to the authors and originators of the autoethnographic method. Gale (2012) writes of these assemblages as moments where a momentary and transient consolidation of subjectivity occurs in relationship with another object, be it a person or a work of art. For Gale, this is something he identifies as a temporary process of “becoming father-becoming son” (p. 150).

usually to social action via critique of the “outgrowths of … culture” (Gergen, 2015, p. 79-80). Stories, therefore, write and read both experience and theory into being in a fluctuating, re-entrant, dynamic social and subjective system that is never fully created, on both micro and macro levels, serving to evolve and become subjectivities for those who both write and read the stories in question. Nothing more is gleaned from the truth value of these studies, according to their epistemological foundations. In my view, the best applied examples of these constructionist concepts are featured in Wyatt and Gale (2016), and Gale (2012), which I reviewed in the previous chapter.13

How have I located themes, coded them, and synthesized them to deliver the interpretive, psychodynamic analysis of Chapter V? After editing and rewriting the story into what Adams et al. refer to as “a meaningful and coherent narrative,” I studied the story and labored to identify what it is that I believe is “going on” in it (i.e., “in the field, in my recollection, in the story as I am telling it”), especially in terms of how the narrative describes or indicates identities, relationships, occasions or events, locations or contexts in detail.” During this stage, I worked to continue to observe a deep engagement with the wider processes, topics, and perspectives that emerged and that illuminated aspects of my experience, especially those that I hadn’t heretofore known or identified I then investigated how my experience questioned, added to, or illuminated aspects of these processes, topics/themes, and perspectives. Adams et al. identify this process as incomplete unless the focus throughout is “being with” oneself mindfully investigating experience in the “here and now.” The authors quote Lynn Miller, who

13 Note: I use the terms “constructivist” and “constructionist” distinctively on purpose. This distinction is made by John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan (2015), whereby the former refers to the subjective realities that are constructed within individuals, and the latter in terms of realities that are co-constructed by individuals embedded in communities.

argues that doing autoethnography requires us to “focus less on where we’re going and more on where we are” (Miller, 2012, p. 184).

The primary form of autoethnographic representation that this project adopted to tell and interpret the story in question is what Adams et al. identify as “expressionist” or “evocative” (p. 87-88). They write: “Expressionist autoethnographies focus on expressing a researcher’s internal feelings and emotions, presenting personal … experience from a thoroughly subjective perspective” (p. 87). These “seek to engage readers emotionally and explore the meanings of a storyteller’s identities, challenges, joys, and epiphanies” (p. 87). They are “texts that take us into a narrator’s perspectives on the research process, the storied experience, and the researcher’s interactions and relationships with others, as well as how the story and the storyteller are situated in, produced, and changed by cultural beliefs and practices” (p. 87).

Expressionist autoethnographies may also appear confessional (i.e., they focus on “the researcher’s particular experiences of the field world” and/or the ways in which the researcher changes as a result of this work), collaborative (i.e., “collaborative witnessing,” which involves a special focus on developing and sustaining deep and committed relationships with research partners), emotionally rendered (i.e., whereby the “emotional lives and journeys of the researcher and participants form the crux and mood of the narrative”), and devotional (i.e., the text pays tribute to others, identities, caregiving.” They “chart the subjective, loving, and charged relationships among selves and others”) (p. 88).

The story in question is a work of evocative (or “expressionist”) autoethnography, according to these terms. Bochner et al. also provide the necessary guidance for

identifying themes throughout the story. Following this, I began my analysis for Chapter V, once the narrative was completed. I used the platform Atlas.ti once again to code passages in the story that reflected or indicated the components identified above i.e., identities, challenges, joys, and epiphanies; perspectives on the research process; researcher’s interactions/relationships with others; ways I was affected by situations, beliefs, and practices; etc., as well as the six dimensions of anticipatory mourning outlined by Rando and reviewed in the previous chapter.

These became the guiding posts for identifying overarching themes, which I then saturated with relevant secondary or subordinate themes. This helped me deconstruct and further investigate the multiple contours of the larger, primary ones. Once this stage of analysis was completed to task, I worked to interpret the meaning of these themes within a psychoanalytic conceptual framework. In other words, the primary and secondary themes/codes generated in the first stage of analysis therefore indicated the “what” of the story’s analysis, and the psychoanalytic concepts I have employed (again, as reviewed in the previous chapter) to help explain the “how” or “why” of them.

Summary of participants, fieldwork, and analysis of data.

I have stated that, in this work, I am the main character of the story and the only formal “participant” in the study; the autoethnographic narrative of my experience, especially of anticipating my father’s death, was the focus for analysis. I have also made the distinction between what constitutes “formal” and “informal” data for this study, and I have defined each respectively. I have stated that I examined the informal data that was generated from journals, free-associative voice recordings, and conversations with my father during the final years of his life, and used it to design a story that ultimately

represents both a theory and a data sample. Furthermore, I have explained that I employed a blend of narrative analysis and narrative-under-analysis to produce an interpretive self-analysis; this venture, again, comprises the content of what I have written for Chapter V

Doing Autoethnography Ethically

Bloomberg et al. write that researchers are “morally bound to conduct … research in a manner that minimizes potential harm to those involved in the study” (p. 161). As I have stated, for this project, that I am the only participant. However, my formal data sample includes other characters who are not participants, but with whom I interacted during the period of time under investigation. These characters include my siblings, friends, members of my extended family, doctors, nurses, and caretakers. The most notable character in the story, of course, beside myself, is my deceased father.

Even though I do not represent the experiences of these individuals for analysis, given that the focus and interpretive self-analysis of the study concentrates on my personal experience, I want to briefly entertain the question of how to ethically represent my interactions with them. I am doing this to recognize and observe the ethical controversies involved in this unique type of research method (see Bochner et al., pp. 137-161), and conversations that have transpired and decisions that were made around the important question of whom it is, exactly, that should be considered a “participant” in this study.

Bochner et al. explain that the question of whether it is ethically necessary for researchers to acquire the consent of those who will be represented in an autoethnography is at the heart of ethical dilemmas in doing an autoethnographic study (p. 147). They ask:

“How do we think about including or implicating family members in our autoethnographies? Should we consider them the same way we consider participants?”

(p. 147) The authors offer no clear agreement. Rather, they impart a handful of principles which they exhort researchers to contemplate and follow when appropriate. Below is my quick summary of those I find most compelling. The researcher should:

1. Be rigorously truthful and honest about their conclusions, careful not to draw them in favor of themselves merely because they can (p. 147).

2. Allow the people implicated in the research to read what the researcher has written, inviting those involved to offer reflexive feedback (p. 148).

3. Interrogate their own role and motives, imagining how others will respond to what has been written and thinking about how those others would write about the situations that implicate them if they were to do so for themselves (p. 150).

To sum, Bochner et al. encourage, above all, the observance of what they term to be a “relational ethics of care” (pp. 153-55). This generally refers to “how people connect to each other in their various roles and relationships from moment to moment” (p. 154; Bergum and Dossetor, 2005, pp. 3-4). Specifically, a relational ethics goes beyond mere justice (Held, 1995, p. 3); it not only “cares about” but “cares for” the welfare of others under study (Noddings, 2002, p. 3). Bochner et al. write that it relies not merely on “objective standards,” but on “engagement” and “building trust rather than conclusions” in one’s study (p. 154).

So, how does one achieve this? The authors prescribe that the researcher interrogate themselves, which entails involving others. In other words, interrogation of

self is practiced in unison with the interrogation of the self in a context or a relationship. In this case, the relationship in question is any one the researcher establishes in the field of their autoethnographic study.

In the course of doing this work, I have come to accept that my engagement in any sort of self-analytic work cannot be authentically realized if I am not applying these ethics, given that they are in harmony with the principles of the method and approach I adopted for this study. In other words, reflexive interrogation of self is necessary for both achieving a thoroughgoing self-analysis and in observing a responsible, relational ethics. Furthermore, as it is the case with clinical work that without a reliable alliance between patient and therapist there may be no treatment, so also are the principles of a working, therapeutic alliance (Hausner, 2000) i.e., building trust, compassionately (empathically) listening, etc. applicable to observing a relational ethics in autoethnographic work. Applying these principles of approaching the experiences of others in my study with the same care as I manage my clinical work promotes or helps to ensure the proper and effective observance of these ethical standards. I view that observance as both ethically sound and methodologically useful in the goal of doing a scrupulous self-analysis. The two are, again, inextricably linked, and I have labored to uphold them in the course of conducting this study.

The following is a shortlist of practical measures that I adopted to improve the study toward a stronger observance of a relational ethics of care:

1. Below, when I am discussing the issue of credibility for this study, I speak about the importance of checking factual information with relevant members of my family. Even though members of my family (et al.) are not considered

formal participants in this study, I worked with them as was realistic, to investigate any concerns they had regarding what I am writing, specifically about my experience of them and/or of our father (when appropriate and applicable).

2. In the course of doing this, no concerns about what I have written were raised. In fact, the opposite was the case. My siblings, in other words, were activated in valuable ways as they read selected passages that implicate them, and this drew us together via a handful of subsequent conversations that furthered the challenging work of postdeath mourning for each of us in our own way. In short, these conversations brought us closer together and helped us use each other in appropriate ways for support as we felt the emotional and mental effects of our father on our lives.

Regarding the Issue of the Study’s Trustworthiness

Bloomberg et al. argue that “criteria for evaluating qualitative research” involves a focus on “how well the researcher has provided evidence that her or his descriptions and analysis represent the reality of the situations and persons studied” (p. 162). A trustworthy study, they argue, depends specifically on the credibility, dependability, and transferability of the study. In what follows, I will clarify how I have accounted for these factors.

Credibility.

The criteria of credibility, Bloomberg et al. argue, “refers to whether the participants’ perceptions match up with the researcher’s portrayal of them” (p. 162). If I

follow this criterion, my response would be to consider how my perceptions of what’s happened, as it’s configured in the narrative, match with my perceptions given that I am the only formal participant; but, this is absurd and begs the question. The issue of credibility for this study is different than it would normally be for a qualitative inquiry, given that it typically pertains to data obtained from participants, usually interviewed in a formal way, of which there are none for this study. Thus, how, if at all, does credibility matter?

I composed an autoethnographic work of nonfiction, which exists as the primary source of data for this investigation. Given this, I believe the question of credibility applies in two ways. That is that I observed the issue as it pertains to (a) the self-analysis and (b) the events as they are portrayed in the narrative. Regarding the first, I applied the idea that the credibility of this analysis pertains to whether I have made logical connections between the theory and the details of the narrative. In essence, I worked to understand and represent the psychoanalytic works that constitute the interpretive lens for this study in a way that is relevant and that applies to the events in the story. I worked to ensure this as I made as clear connections as I could between the two, and by citing sources accurately.

Regarding the second, I endeavored to present the events in the story accurately, as they happened. I constructed the dialogues between other characters and me as best I could, according to memory. This especially implicated moments in the story where Dad and I were engaged in weighty and compelling conversation. This would have been, essentially, an almost insurmountable tasks had I not, along the way of that year, took the

time to reflect upon my experiences vis-à-vis journals and audio recordings of my thoughts, impressions, and feelings.

Never had I been so fastidious with this than when Dad began to decline, to such an extent that the amount of informal data I produced throughout that year overwhelmed my ability to fully process it later. In short, I feel I have only scratched the veritable surface of what happened, especially when I was confronted with peaks in mental and emotional duress as Dad got worse, began to suffer more outwardly, and as I felt powerless and helpless to the task of relieving or resolving it. My notes my freeassociative records of spontaneous thoughts and feelings, my journals, my private moments where I cursed wildly into my recorder with added exasperation, fury, or disappointment these curtailed the deleterious consequences of flight from the abject terrors that are characteristic of navigating the process of death and loss, namely, for me, the consequent inability to recall them sufficiently later. I have come to learn, in other words, that this defense, when active, made it impossible for me to rest into the realities of situations and circumstances that needed to be faced and with which I have needed to deal more directly. My record of the process overruled the book-burning consequences of manic defenses against the earliest forms of grief that were aggravated in the events of the story that follows.

Dependability. All the formal data for this study is available to whomever reads this dissertation, given that it is, again, the narrative of Chapter IV. The text of the story represents the only source of data under analysis, and I have made use of its content vigorously to produce that analysis. If the issue of a study’s dependability “refers to whether one can track the processes and procedures used to collect and interpret the

data,” as Bloomberg et al. frame it, then it stands to reason that the question of the dependability of this study rests on whether the analysis follows directly from the story, which it does, according to how successful I have been at observing the three principles of credibility outlined above throughout the process of exploring, analyzing, and writing the autoethnographic account (p. 163).

Transferability.

As stated in the previous chapter, I do not expect the analysis of this study to be generalizable. However, with Bloomberg et al., I believe that “it is likely that the lessons learned” herein “might be useful to others” (p. 164). The authors define transferability, therefore, as an issue of “how well the study has made it possible for readers to decide whether similar processes will be at work in their own settings and communities by understanding in depth how they occur at the research site” (p. 164). Translation: this study is transferable if those who are navigating the dynamics of anticipatory mourning can locate their experience of it in parallel concepts, themes, events, and processes of their own, especially as they emerge from a relationship and in discourse with their dying loved one.

“Transferability,” Bloomberg et al. write, “refers to the fit or match between the research context and other contexts as judged by the reader” (p. 164). Following the authors’ logic, to seek optimal transferability, I have worked to produce a richness or thickness of description to give the narrative “an element of shared or vicarious experience” (p. 164; Geertz, 1973). This effort invites readers to participate in and pull from the narrative dialectically.

Limitations & Delimitations of the Study

Limitations.

What problems have influenced my interpretive analysis of the story, and to what extent do they seem to matter? Broadly speaking, autoethnography as a research method has been critiqued to be narcissistic and self-indulgent (Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2016; Anderson & Glass-Coffin, 2016; Coffey, 1999; Sparkes, 2000). Critics argue that the method lacks rigor (Sparkes, 2000; Denzin, 2014); that it is too solipsistic a form of Socratic “navel-gazing” (Allen-Collinson, 2016). Denzin (2014) writes: “Autoethnography has been criticized for being nonanalytic … irreverent, sentimental, and romantic …. too artful …. not being scientific, for having no theory, no concepts, no hypotheses” (pp. 69-70). He continues, “It has been dismissed for not being sufficiently … theoretical … or analytical.” “Critics contend,” he informs, “that a single case only tells one story,” and that “narrative inquiry is not scientific inquiry” (p. 70). And a partridge in a pear tree.

This laundry list of criticisms raises questions about how they apply to the work I have accomplished. For instance, does it weaken my study that I limited my fieldwork to the discursive and relational? Is it true that it is narcissistic and self-absorbed another biased case of navel-gazing given that I am the only formal participant in it? “Some contend,” Denzin writes, that autoethnographies reflect “the work of a writer who sits in front of a computer, never leaving a book-lined office to confront the real world” (p. 70). Am I guilty of this?

To some extent, I think I am. Yet, many of these critiques appear to be motivated by a course that seeks to submit all “scientific” endeavors to the demands of traditional,

positivistic epistemologies, which privileges them. The merits of positivism are clear to me, especially as its precepts are applied to a political and social climate (that seems ubiquitous at present), which would claim that nothing else matters in the criteria of determining what is or isn’t true about a phenomenon other than one’s feelings or impressions about it. I refer directly to sources like QAnon and other pestilential conspiracy-theory generators, alive and well in this post-Trumpian era of rising, fascist propaganda. However, many of these critiques of autoethnographic methods appear to be exaggerated arguments against qualitative methods in general and their postmodern, philosophical influences; they seem to be attempts to bully all studies into the positivist paradigm. Positivism is one option among many, but it is not the one for this study. One cannot hold a qualitative, autoethnographic study accountable for not adhering to principles of what it has no intention of being. What, then, are the guidelines for autoethnographic legitimacy? Poulos (2016) states it plainly: “Autoethnography is not really my story. When it works, it is the story of us all. It is the story of the people who inhabit my life world, it is the story of us, the story of the communicative praxis (or avoidance thereof) and the memory-and-story urgings of these significant life characters” (p. 476). Colyar (2016) argues, along with Ellis (2004), that the validity of an autoethnographic text rests, in large part, on its reflexivity.14 First and foremost, this is about the way in which “the story,” Colyar states, “is never ‘about’ the writer, even as it is [their] story” (p. 378).

14 This concept is very important to Carolyn Ellis. She writes that, initially, she directed her students to describe their work as “reflexive ethnography” to others, rather than as “autoethnography.” She did this “to help communicate the essence of the method to those who were unfamiliar with it, showing the centrality of reflexivity for autoethnographic studies” (Bochner et al., p. 142, emphasis mine).

A reflexive narrative, of which this work is, is situated in an embedded context (e.g., of gender, age, ableness, social class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality), and its validity is determined by the writer’s ability to connect their experience to a cultural context that is larger than themselves. Their work should also ask challenging questions of those contexts and ultimately critique them. To sum, an autoethnographic story “is important precisely because it is a story about how [the writer’s or researcher’s] story lives in the larger world” (Pathak, 2016; Chang, 2008; Visweswaran, 1994).

How does the autoethnographer work to ensure reflexivity? Pathak (2016) uses herself as an example to exhort the writer to complicate and critique their versions of their stories. She presses for “radical openness” (p. 604). This helps the writer/researcher “think about how the moments that were so salient … may or may not have held any meaning for others in the story” (p. 604). She continues, “in examining the possibility that some points in my story are mere reflections of my own narcissism, I am pushed to continually contextualize each moment to solidify its value in the tale” (p. 604). Ultimately, the observance of these principles should encourage one away from what Stewart (2016) refers to as “imagined states of mind,” that is, “navel-gazing, narcissism,” and most importantly “a will to dominate others through the force of words” (p. 660).

Notably, Stewart identifies the most common points of interdisciplinary critique of this method to signify what will transpire if the researchers who employ it are failing to do an effective, appropriate, and valid study.

Thus, in order to observe or resolve the problems pertaining to the limitations of the interpretive analysis of the story, as I’ve outlined them herein, I accomplished the following:

1. Worked deliberately and consciously to ensure the credibility, dependability, and legitimate transferability of this study, in the ways stipulated in the previous section.

2. Accepted a creative posture that observes Pathak’s exhortation to “radical openness.”15

3. Endeavored, along the way, to account for ways that I might be using the story to dominate others through the force of words.

This third issue became most relevant as I found it increasingly necessary to make choices about how to represent my father. That is to say, during the editing and analyzing process, rather than redacting, omitting, or rephrasing passages of text that originally featured impassioned bouts of frustration, anger, or rage directed toward him (or, for that matter, any other clinically-significant, analyzable emotional or mental content from the story), I regarded such moments in the story as “symptoms,” for lack of a better word, for the analysis of it. Indeed, these became the doorways that invited exploration.

Delimitations. What are “obvious issues” that are “related to the research problems” of this study that I have chosen not to address (Bloomberg et al., p. 165)? For this section, I briefly respond to this question as it pertains to the following: (a) methods of investigation, (b) the period of time that my study covers, (c) the location of the study, (d) the sample selected, and (e) relevant alternative theoretical frameworks that I could have adopted (p. 165).

In previous sections, I explained generally why one might choose to use a qualitative and autoethnographic method, but why did I choose to use them for this

15 I am reminded of the role of ‘creativity’ in Symington’s “madness” and Bollas’ and Bion’s work.

study? In other words, what benefits did I gain from using this approach? Furthermore, why study my experience of the time before his death? Why not a focus on the processes that are transpiring since my father’s death, especially considering the large body of literature dealing with bereavement?

If bereavement (or any other topic that is so broadly attended to) were the focus for my study, it would be more complicated and difficult to justify, unless I were able to identify some aspect of it that I felt had not previously been explored enough. So far, I have argued that what remains to be studied about anticipatory mourning is the way in which the condition might stimulate the amplification of the ambivalences that already exist between the mourner and their dying or terminally-ill counterpart. This is what this study purports to have done.

Theoretical connections might also be made about this phenomenon vis-à-vis a creative amalgamation of concepts that are imparted from other, related topics to create one; but I believe qualitative methods are necessary to explore this topic more because the topic needs a greater diversity of rich and thick descriptions. This is likely to generate further questions and, perhaps, further studies in a phrase, to generate “heuristic significance” (Bloomberg et al., p. 27). Therefore, when considering the delimitations of this study in terms of the methods of investigation and the time period that this study covers, especially considering the type of contribution it could make or, more specifically, the goal of making it relevant to others outside myself and my own development I adopted the autoethnographic technique because I consider it to be rightly intuitive and appropriate for such an enterprise.

I have stated that I conducted the fieldwork for this study in a relational and discursive setting, rather than at a physical, bounded site. What are my reasons for preferring the former over the latter? The process for producing an autoethnographic selfanalysis is more readily catalyzed vis-à-vis an examination of the relational dynamics between my father and I as they manifested throughout the final year of his life. These dynamics occurred in more than a single, bounded site, and nothing remarkable connects any of these potential sites thematically (e.g., Dad’s house, the Lancaster Cancer Center, etc.).

Both autoethnographers and psychoanalysts theorize something similar regarding the arousing effects of relational experiences; both also support the concept that a close look at these effects help realize their respective, core methodological goals. Furthermore, to a large extent, in keeping with the idea that we study what we don’t understand, given that we have “perceived a problem, some unsatisfactory situation, condition, or phenomenon that we want to confront” (Bloomberg et al., p. 87), nothing has challenged my self-knowledge more than my relationship with my father, in a historical sense, and nothing has helped me to uncover the contours and influences of that relationship more than in key moments with him before he died. Thus, the relational and discursive elements of my relationship with my father are far more considerable for the purposes of this study than the events that transpired at any given site. Ellis writes, “These losses influenced me to focus in my studies on the lived experience of grief and loss in the context of relationships” (Bochner et al., p. 29). Such is absolutely the case herein.

Why do I consider myself the only formal participant in the study? Furthermore, what reasons can I state to explain why the only formal data for this study is the autoethnographic narrative, rather than the myriad of informal types of data that I have outlined above? Given that this study is designed to explore the experience of anticipatory mourning, and that this exploration was accomplished as a self-analysis, and given that a qualitative researcher’s job is to represent data findings “from the perspective of the research participants,” so argues Bloomberg et al. (p. 41), it follows that there is no other relevant information to consider in terms of the study’s “findings” except that which is generated from a close, formal analysis of my experience alone, as a single participant. In other words, the study, as a self-analysis, required merely a self myself to fulfill this role i.e., that of a “participant” as that role has been properly defined.

There is a fine line that discriminates types of data in an autoethnography. In another personal conversation with Carolyn Ellis that transpired at the ICQI conference of 2019, Carolyn spoke of the controversial nature in her choice to make herself the sole participant in an autoethnographic study of her own that explored her experience of serving as her mother’s caretaker prior to her mother’s death (Ellis, 1996). She has also written about this, mainly in the context of responding to the ethical concerns I have already mentioned and to which I have already responded (Bochner et al., 2016). I note this to demonstrate that I am aware of the multifarious approaches to doing an autoethnography, and to affirm the approach I chose i.e., to produce an analysis of my experience, and to do so as the sole participant for this study, given the logic above.

Finally, I have stated that I have pulled from psychoanalytic works to frame the self-analysis of this study. What are my reasons for this? In other words, why did I choose psychoanalytic theory to analyze formal data rather than other relevant interpretive frameworks, such as social constructivism, critical theory, queer theory, or even disability theory (Creswell, 2013)?

The answer to this question is theoretical preference and convenience, as any of the interpretive frameworks above would work, in my view, to produce a thorough and contributive analysis regarding what it means to anticipate the death of a loved one. Furthermore, this study does not exclude information that is relevant to surveyors that might employ these interpretive frameworks, especially those that are moved to critique social structures. The self-analysis that follows undoubtedly deals with my history as a queer person growing up in a religious and conservative household, enforced, in many ways, by both my father and symbols of him. Furthermore, I believe this story provides a relevant sample for other interpretive frameworks, but I have employed a psychoanalytic one, again, given my preferences. Psychoanalysis created the method of self-analysis, and I have considered it the most apropos.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have explained why I have employed the qualitative approach, generally, and the autoethnographic method, specifically, to execute this study. I have explained the differences between “formal” and “informal” data, as well as how I used each to design the story of the following chapter. I have explained why I have chosen to make myself the only participant in the study, providing theoretical justification for this. I have explicated the details of this study’s “fieldwork,” showing that it has been

conducted in a discursive and relational field and providing theoretical justification for why it is preferred.

I have also specified the methods I used to collect data, stating that the autoethnography is itself the only sample of it that I am using for this project. I have explained how I have used the story that follows to provide a psychoanalytic, interpretive, self-analysis, focusing on the theoretical application and justification for use of both a “narrative analysis” and a “narrative-under-analysis” for doing so. I have dealt with the question of what it means to do an autoethnography ethically and how this applies to this study, specifically. I have discussed the issue of the study’s trustworthiness in terms of its credibility, dependability, and transferability, while offering explanations for the limitations and delimitations of this work, generally.

Now, in the chapter that follows, I present the autoethnographic narrative that seeks to convey a description of my experience of anticipatory mourning as it pertains to the last year of my dad’s life.

The Autoethnography

16

A Fatherland Museum

In a field of dreams.

In the fall trailing my tenth birthday, Dad took us to see Field of Dreams (Gordon & Gordon, 1989). With an uncharacteristic sense of purpose, he loaded my siblings and me into our only family car at the time and trekked us several miles across White Mountain Boulevard, from our rural house in Pinetop-Lakeside, Arizona, to see the film at the only theater in town at the time. I could see that it mattered a great deal to Dad that we watch this movie with him, and this impressed me.

Growing up with my dad, it was unusual to see him land in (and see through) this type of aspirational mood. Truth is, I really only saw him assert himself when he was angry. I think I knew very little of him at all at the time, except what made him angry and to avoid any part that I might play in tripping that wire. My impression is that he had watched the movie before and felt an earnest motivation to take his children to see it, presumably so that we could better understand something about him and about his family. (I even think he said as much to me at the time.) 16 See Appendix A for photographs and pictures of artifacts described throughout

To date, this movie remains one of my dad’s very favorites, sharing a small shelf in his house with other obscure films like it, such as The Natural (Johnson, 1984), with Robert Redford, and The Rookie (Ciardi, Gray, & Johnson, 2002) released by Disney.

To one familiar with these, perhaps the theme that connects them is clear. Each is a classic, Americana, baseball-themed film that features a main character who is haunted by some personal issue or tragedy that is connected to the beloved, all-American sport. There is no question to me that Field of Dreams remains faithfully and steadfastly at the top of Dad’s list, because the theme of this film, connecting the leading character to baseball, is embedded in a troubled relationship between a son and his dead father.

Today, it’s a hot, rainy Saturday of Labor Day weekend 2018, just under a year before the day of Dad’s death. I am at my office in downtown Chicago, located in the Loop on the corner of Michigan and Madison. Field of Dreams plays unobtrusively in the background on my computer while I sort through a collection of old, historic photographs of the Hite family. I think to myself: Next week, I am going to be with Dad for a few days. How many opportunities will I have to speak with him about our family’s history?

To learn about his life before he’s gone?

Dad lent me these photos to use to stimulate questions for a visit that Joel and I had arranged with my great aunt Doris (Hite) Benner just a year ago. This visit proved to be very fortuitous.

I have said that Doris is my “great aunt,” but I should note that the technicality of this title has always seemed too austere and distant to adequately communicate the nature of my relationship with her. She is and has always been the only connection that I have to the culture of my grandfather, her brother, Earle Jr. Much of that culture seems, to me, to

have been lost after he married my grandmother, Naomi Conger, and settled in Lancaster, where my dad and his two older siblings currently reside. The symbols of it are abundant in any classic, Frank Capra film featuring a cast of blue-collar characters with kindly neighbors and white picket fences.

Dad grew up in Lancaster for the greater part of his childhood, adolescence, and even early adulthood. It is, in fact, where the greater part of our story will take place.

This bustling, old, colonial city of about sixty-thousand residents is located on the eastern side of the state, about ninety minutes southwest of Philadelphia. Every Thanksgiving, Joel and I drive the twelve-hour trek from Chicago to lodge, eat, shop, nap, and watch movies with my dad and his family from Tuesday night through Saturday before driving back. The ritual is one that we’ve come to count on every year; it reflects a rather pleasant and seamless compromise between us, allowing Joel and me to spend the Christmas holiday with his family here in Chicago.

As one enters western Pennsylvania travelling east by highway, one may happen upon a small, paper-mill town of great significance to my father and his family named Roaring Spring. It is nestled patiently in the blue hills of the Allegheny mountains about two hours east of Pittsburgh. Here, the Hite family planted its roots when my great-plus grandfather, Josiah, labored with a small band of clergymen to establish the township just a decade or two following his infantry service in the Civil War. To go Biblical, Josiah then begat Alvin, who begat Earle Sr., who begat Earle Jr., who begat my father, who, in turn, begat me. Most of the Hite family has left Roaring Spring, but Doris and Barry, her only progeny, remain there.

Now, last Thanksgiving (i.e., of 2017), Joel agreed to leave a few days early with me so that we could break our journey to Lancaster in Roaring Spring. We set out with the goal to dialogue with Doris around the memories of her life and what she recalls about those in our family who are now long deceased.

When we arrived, I spotted straight away the effort Doris had made to prepare for our stopover, which delighted me. She had unearthed several boxes full of old family photographs and heirlooms, and set them about in detailed and ordered display for me on her dining room table. They became the primary instruments, along with the collection of old photographs I had brought with me, to stimulate topics of conversation between us that provided a rich introduction to aspects of my dad’s heritage.

I took notes; I snapped hundreds of smartly-cropped digital pictures of each artifact with my phone; I recorded as much of our conversations as I could. After about eight hours of them over the span of two days, I left our visit high on a platform of impressions, ideas, and follow-up questions for her and for my dad.

Looking at the photos I took now, on this lazy, Saturday morning I realize that these artifacts have become a “fatherland museum” (Goodall, 2012). It is a patchwork of random images, each communicating an ocean of potential narratives in which I now find myself overcome with interest Each generates a cocktail of emotional impressions that come in and out of existence without the fanfare they seem to deserve. Each in their own rite, they are no less significant to me than news bytes from the most imposing newsreel:

Josiah’s fading, handwritten diary which tracks his odyssey throughout the swamplands of his infantry service (see Appendix A, Fig. 1) A card announcing the

wedding of my dad’s grandparents, indicating it took place on Saturday, September 19, 1914. A receipt for a payment of sixty dollars that my great-grandfather had made toward the mortgage on his pharmacy in Roaring Spring. It’s dated June 1, 1918 (Appendix A, Fig. 2)

I wonder what it was like for Josiah to suffer through his tenure in the war. Yet, the somberness of this reflection soon dissipates and is replaced by another that is, the delight I discover as I notice the creative authenticity in his handwriting and innocent grammar errors. I feel lucky that his diary exists, as if that fact bespeaks another about the quality of my family line.

Many of these artifacts involve my grandfather, Earle Jr. and his father, whom everyone affectionately referred to as “Pop” or “Pop Hite.” Most of his adult life was spent serving the folks of Roaring Spring as the town’s pharmacist. It is clear to me, as I scroll through them once more, that both men were somewhat gregarious and beloved by their communities.

Old decaying pictures of or about Pop and his wife, Marie, are abundant (Appendix A, Fig. 3). They are artifacts that deliver a smart peek into my greatgrandparents’ lives from the early to late eras of them. There are announcements of weddings and anniversaries, pictures of them at the beach in old-time bathing suits that cover most of their bodies; there are certificates of marriage and death, smartly-labelled bottles of the ingredients Pop would have used to make any of his infamous concoctions. I wish I could go back in time. I wish I could watch them operate. They look so youthful and full of life. Are they enjoying them? Do their smiles show who they are? What they

carry? What they suffer and dare tell no one? Are they happy? Lonely? Sad? Grateful? Queer? Marie looks decidedly more depressed as the years move on, and I wonder why.

I recall that Doris also reported to me that the Altoona Mirror, a local publication, ran a special tribute for Pop, dubbing him “Mr. Roaring Spring.” An apprentice (of sorts) of Pop’s, named Larry G. McKee, it seems, had bonded with my grandfather and wrote a short biography of his history as the town’s beloved pharmacist. Larry used the newspaper’s appellation as a title for his work, even going so far as to submit it to Reader’s Digest, but they never published it. Among the artifacts I am, now, surveying is a copy of Larry’s biography, coil-bound, double-spaced, and wrapped in a bold, red paper protector. It shows as “Mr. Roaring Spring” by Larry G. McKee. Someday, I should take an afternoon to locate the article that the Mirror ran of Pop. I wonder what I’d learn about him from reading it.

I notice that my grandfather, Earle Hite, Jr., looks an awful lot like my brothers, especially Ryan (my older brother, the eldest of our sibship) in his early twenties. I notice grandpa’s dark, youthful hair, bushy eyebrows, and his long face and nose (Appendix A, Fig. 4). I want to reach out and embrace him. He seems warm and accepting to me like the kind of person that I might work to seduce into a treasured friendship. The more I contemplate the picture, the more surreal my connection to it becomes. I wish I had known him

Included is another picture of him, but with my dad’s mother, Naomi Conger (Appendix A, Fig. 5). It appears to be their wedding picture or one taken shortly thereafter. I find it difficult to imagine my grandmother as anything but old, grey, and nearly dead her wrinkled, soft hands and perfect fingernails, always neatly trimmed

her nearly-bald head in curls of grey, tightly constrained to her freckled scalp. But now, I see them both so full of youth, even far younger than I am now. At my age, they had four, going on five, children. Grandpa only had about ten years left of life ever going, going until finally gone.

I then notice an old birthday-slash-congratulations card that my grandfather gave to Doris (Appendix A, Fig. 6). He has written to her:

This doesn’t say enough, Sis, but the animals are cute!! You know how I really feel you did a swell job at Altoona and I’m proud of you. Best of luck in your first job. You can do it!!

All my love, Sis Earley-Burly

Grandpa has even drawn an arrow to the animals that are “cute,” as if the reader wouldn’t know to what he’s referring. How delightfully peculiar, I think I then recall Doris conveying to me the special bond that the two had between them, and I think of my younger (and only) sister, Heather.

Perhaps, most significant to me this morning are photos of artifacts that I took that feature my grandfather’s confident, playful, and unapologetic personality. For example, grandpa drew up a faux tabloid called The Hite Disturber, which Doris reported he had sent to family abroad to announce the births of each of his children

First, grandpa has supplied each “issue” of the Disturber with all the common citational features assigned to a periodical i.e., a volume number, publication date, and location. He has carefully typed all necessary information that family would want to know about the newborn child in question, including hair and eye color, weight, and so

on. I am delighted by sections grandpa dedicates to the weather forecast and updates from previous issues.

To announce my dad’ s birth, showing as “Vol. 3, No. 3,” dated “August 14, 1951,” and placed in “Williamsport, Pa,” grandpa headlines in his own, enthusiastic handwriting: “Hites Say, ‘Oh, Boy!!’” He writes, “This is just to let our friends, scattered from California to South Dakota and from Tokyo to Texas, again know of our good luck” (Appendix A, Fig. 7). Another headline reads: “Count Stands at Two Boys, One Girl,” followed by: “Dr. R. R. Garison assisted Doc Stork in making a perfect landing at 1:02 Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 14, when he visited Mr. and Mrs. Earle M. Hite, Jr.” Grandpa’s “corrections” to previous issues detail, “Since the last edition sister Sherma Jane, 2 ½, has red hair; brother Michael, 6, has brown eyes ” He then notes with frankness: “They changed,” and I chuckle with delight. Witnessing grandpa’s unapologetic, outgoing personality on paper also stirs some anxious discomfort for me. He’s being awfully bold, I think to myself, making himself so vulnerable to other people’s judgments and attacks. I shift about in my chair. Still, I admire it, my thoughts go. I admire his courage to be himself. His enthusiasm for this announcement is what is it?

There is also a great deal of attention given to baseball among these artifacts (Appendix A, Fig. 8). For instance, there are two letters addressed to Pop from men who have taken especial interest in his potential to play professionally. I am impressed, in fact, by the manner in which the authors of each, in their own way, endeavor to convince him to pursue a baseball career. Both are dated in the spring of 1913, where Pop would be just twenty-two years old.

“Pop.” The name “Pop,” like for papa or pop-pop, grandpapa. Pop, like popping corn. To pop up. Pop one’s cherry. To pop in for a visit. A lolly-pop. Soda pop. ’ello poppit!

The first letter is written by a man named Baseball “Bill” Stayer of Pittsburgh, who provides detailed instructions about how to get noticed properly, find the right people with whom to speak, and so on, to promote his baseball career. Stayer closes the letter assuring Pop of his continued support. A month later, he received another letter, this time from James Hamilton, manager of the Pensacola Club of the “Cotton States” league. He offers Pop a salary of ninety dollars a month, the equivalent to about twentyfour hundred today, to play professional ball. His handwriting is dated and difficult to decipher, but from what I can make out of it, Hamilton is confident that he wants my great-grandfather to play for him.

I see a picture of my Pop in his prime at about the age he would have received these letters. He is spritely, tall and youthful, and fully decked in era-appropriate baseball attire, mingled with a group of young, spirited athletes with their lives ahead of them, now fertilizing daffodils. Pop’s face is blurry, but I can see in the shades of black and white some notable features of my family in it.

Why did he turn down the chance to play? Why did he decide to settle to become a pharmacist?

I realize that all three men Pop, my grandfather, and my dad were pursued to play baseball professionally. None of them made it, but instead, each chose to pursue a doctorate. Pop became a pharmacist; grandpa died just before completing a PhD from American University in English and Journalism; Dad became a clinical psychologist.

They appear to have been talented enough and passionate for the game. Why did they yield?

I then happen upon a picture of Dad at 18, just after graduating from high school (Appendix A, Fig. 9) I’ve seen this picture once or twice before, but this time, I’m rather spellbound as I carefully inspect it. He looks healthy. His skin is fresh and unwrinkled, with no breaks in the surface of it or bags under his eyes. Healthy skin is a mirror of a healthy body, I recall.

Dad looks happy to be alive. His smile reveals a mouthful of uncharacteristically straight teeth. The only feature of his face that I recognize is his nose, which is large and disproportionate to his perky cheeks and narrow upper jaw. I see Ryan (again) in his mouth, which appears playful, almost goofy or even cocky. Dad was a very attractive man, I realize. The thought comes with such a charge that I almost say it aloud.

I am drawn to the youthful sparkle in Dad’s dark, penetrating eyes the shadows and lighting in and throughout this region of his face, framed by his bushy eyebrows, small ears, sideburns, and a full head of hair. Dad’s eyes never sparkle, nor are they dark and penetrating. The color seems to have evolved since then, along with the wrinkles and bags now pendulating around his eyes

My god, I think. He looks like James Franco.

I recall how smitten I was by James Franco’s wily charm when I saw him for the first time in the original Spiderman (Ziskin and Bryce, 2002) film. Some of us find purpose in our religions, political worldviews, our cultures or our careers all of these, of course, provide content for the direction and meaning of my life. But, this the experience I recall having all considerations pale in comparison to it in terms of the

drive it has afforded my life. Sitting there in that drab, old, sticky-floor theater, enjoying a soda and some old, chewy popcorn, and I swear, I had never seen a man so attractive before in my life, and I recognize, even still, the hunger that I felt at the time the abject, aching desire to be part of him and his life.

My contemplation of Dad’s youthful photo is broken by a moment in Field of Dreams, still playing in the background. It has arrived at the scene, that is, where Ray is facing a critical juncture about whether to follow the mysterious voice he’s been hearing and build his field of dreams. Lying in bed with his wife, he begins to contemplate what it would mean for him to right old wrongs and play baseball once again. He laments that he never forgave his father for getting old. He wonders if his dad ever had dreams of his own, noting that, if he did, he never pursued them. I’m astonished at how much I relate to Ray, Costner’s character, especially as he remarks: “I’m scared to death I’m turning into my father” (Gordon & Gordon, 1989, 0:12:58).

Old wounds, new bottles. “Wounds need to be expanded into air, lifted up on ideas our ancestors knew, so that the wound ascends through the roof of our parents’ house and we suddenly see how it (seemingly so private) fits into a great and impersonal story” (Bly, 2004, pp. 46-47).

The sunroom of Dad’s house is a monument to his intuitive talent for making remarkable, creative use of otherwise idle space. Its makeover commemorates the final project in a protracted series of home improvements that have ultimately increased the value of his property while supplying a base in which his family might gather and reunite. When he finished it earlier this year, the sunroom was the last nook of the house to inherit an intentional purpose, joining an extensive line-up of transformed spaces that include the

basement, attic, kitchen, and bathroom of a house that was once very ordinary and outdated. When the sunroom was completed in July, he invited me to video chat with him one Sunday so that he could present it to me. I recall with delight Dad’s spotless and youthful enthusiasm that morning as he took me on a virtual tour of the space, emphasizing the features of it of which he was rather proud.

It’s a Saturday morning, September 8, 2018 roughly two days after Dad has returned from his biopsy at the hospital.

I am in his sunroom for the first time, and I am impressed by his knack for carpentry and design. The space is boldly unrecognizable, given what it was before a dilapidated, old, semi-enclosed deck that I almost (in fact) burned to the ground ten summers ago while foolishly attempting to use gasoline, rather than traditional lighter fluid, to ignite a pile of Kingsford charcoal briquettes in our modest, barbeque grill that was arbitrarily stationed there. With the help of a few, talented Mennonites, my dad fortified the base of the deck, enclosed its perimeter, and added a vaulted ceiling lined with heavy, stylish, white oak beams that add to its remarkable charm.

This morning, I sit at the head of the dining room table, which Dad has placed in the sunroom as a temporary measure. A stack of notes and old pictures adorn the surface of a makeshift workspace that I’ve created for myself, along with my thirteen-inch laptop and a Brother high-speed, color, duplex scanner. Multiple power cords for each of the devices are strewn in various directions, making use of the outlets located on each of the surrounding walls. As Dad enters the room to join me, I caution him not to trip over them.

He finds a spot in the lazy chair across from me, positioned between two colonialstyle windows that bring in a comforting slice of sunlight from the west. Something is amiss with his mood, however he’s angry about something, but I’m not sure it’s worth the risk to inquire about it. Normally I would, out of a compulsive need to help him improve his disagreeable mood, but I have learned that attempting to do so normally sabotages, rather than furthers, my plan. I decide, instead, to block receipt of his mood by opening and closing random browser tabs on my computer, as if I’m organizing them.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Dad begins with a grumble: “I guess you should tell me what you want to talk about, rather than me trying to figure it out.”

“No, I will,” I respond, somewhat defensively. “I have questions, but they are mostly questions about, you know, the meaning of things.”

“What kind of questions?” Dad asks. I think he hasn’t heard what I have said.

“Meaning questions questions about, you know, why you think certain things happened and stuff like that.”

“Well, Devan, you’re gonna have to be more specific; I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right.”

I can see that there is no use continuing until we’ve addressed what’s on Dad’s mind. I figure he’s fired up because his team lost or he’s just caught wind of something political on the news. I relent by inquiring, “Is everything okay?”

Dad’s face curls up in stylized fashion, showing an expression of exasperation that I’ve come to know rather well. This usually means that he is about to vent something

fierce, but dismissively in help-complaining-rejecting fashion. If I’m lucky, I realize, he’ll purge what’s bothering him, feel better, and we can get on with my self-imposed mission.

“Oh, it’s just, I’m in so much pain,” Dad reports. “And I can’t get comfortable, no matter what I do.”

“Well, how can I help?”

“You can’t. You can do nothing. There’s nothing that can be done; I just have to wait it out until it’s over.”

I begin to feel consumed a bit by some embarrassment and guilt, given that I had somehow forgotten that Dad was just released from the hospital not thirty-six hours ago.

“Go ahead and ask your questions,” he says.

“I’m sorry you’re in pain, Dad. Would you like me to … would it be better if we do this another time?”

“No, ask your questions,” he insists. Then, squirming about, he adds, “I just have this bloated, gas bubble that won’t that’s not that won’t resolve itself, and it’s uncomfortable. I just wish it would release!”

“Well, give it time,” I dismiss. “And let me know if you’d like to stop.”

“I will.”

“

At any time.”

Dad grows frustrated. “Devan, ask your questions!”

His reception of this opportunity perplexes me, given that he has expressed enthusiasm, in the past, for having these types of conversations with me conversations that allow him to tell me stories of his life, especially regarding memories with Pop and his dad Maybe Dad thinks that my questions are too controversial, I wonder.

“Most of what I want to talk about is coming from the conversation I had with Doris last year,” I assure him. “They’re questions about information she provided about grandpa and Pop, you know, that I wanted to confirm with you To get your thoughts or take on it.”

“Well, I can only tell you what I know from my perspective.”

I respond with confidence, “That’s exactly what I’m after.” And thank you. “So, I have some questions I want to ask you about your memories, your history, even our history together, and so on. You know?”

“Okay, well, just ask them.”

Dad lets out one of his standard, tickle-throat coughs that I suppose aren’t really coughs at all, but raspy, arid attempts to clear something from his throat that isn’t there. They usually signify that he is feeling anxious about something or he’s bored. But, they also tend to alert those in proximity of his presence. To give an example, Dad often arrived for church separately at any point throughout the standard, three-hour block. Sometimes, he would arrive late, and in such situations none of us would know he was present until we heard this very cough, which would resonate from the back of the congregation, prompting all of us to turn around simultaneously in one, curious swoop. I can easily imagine my little sister, Heather’s, sun-kissed brown locks twirl with the movement of her head to find Dad sitting alone in the back. If the rest of our modest congregation didn’t know the Hites were fully present, they did now.

I should note that my conversation with Doris yielded hundreds of details little pearls of great price that have enriched my inner experience of Dad’s family. So, why

I chose to take a risk and begin this conversation with a topic as controversial, given Dad’s mood, is beyond me, but here we are.

“D Doris is talking about grandpa,” I begin. “She says that he was scouted by the Dodgers. Is that right?”

“No,” Dad replies, almost annoyed.

“She was wrong?”

“Yes. He was scouted by the New York Giants.” I quickly scribble this down on a piece of paper next to me.

“And, he was a short, kind of skinny guy, right?”

“Yes. He was only one-hundred-and-forty pounds his senior year in high school. By the time they started scouting him, he was probably no more than one-hundred-andfifty and no taller than five-nine.”

“So, he must’ve felt intimidated.”

“No, he didn’t feel intimidated,” Dad asserts with force.

“Okay,” I assent.

“

My dad played second base and his job was to be a good fielder, which he was. Second basemen,” Dad instructs, perhaps forgetting that I played the very position for a season, “they are typically smaller guys, quicker guys guys that can make plays with their quickness and their feet, and they typically aren’t big, heavy, home-run hitters.”

The word “typical” is one of Dad’s favorite words. His use of it, now, grates on me, mainly because he often does so as part of running, pejorative epithets to amplify the emotion behind any of his common complaints. This word inevitably signifies the launching of a rant against “these typical feminists,” “these typical liberals,” “these

typical referees,” or the like, which Dad will often spew with venom. The word is up there with similar ones employed for the same purpose, such as “these clowns,” or the exclamation, “unbelievable!” when a game or something political isn’t going his way. I have developed a notable, general aversion for these expressions, as they strike a nerve that amplifies the conversational anxiety between us, even now as he employs one of them innocuously. From my experience, most of the time, it is not difficult to “disprove” most of my father’s overgeneralized, “typical” dichotomous assertions; yet, attempting to do this often becomes, at best, a quagmire of chaotic conflict. Recognizing this, I lighten my tone, while simultaneously plunging in to the point of my question.

“As Doris continues, she recalls that grandpa had a temper. She says that he would go to games and sit in the car watching from the sidelines, and he’d get upset over what was happening in the games. She’d say, ‘There he goes again!,’ you know. It sounds like it must’ve happened a lot.”

“That’s the stuff that she’d know,” Dad responds.

“I asked her ” “ and, I’ll confirm that he had a temper,” Dad interrupts.

“He did?”

Admittedly, I’m surprised that Dad is willing to concede this. His tone suggests to me that he’s willing to go to where I’m inviting us, but it also remains somewhat disgruntled and belligerent. He adds, “It was because of his competitiveness.”

“Grandpa was competitive?”

“So was I, for that matter.”

I begin to sift through my papers, as if looking for evidentiary support around this matter, as I say to him, “So, that’s, um, that’s what I want to talk about.”

“Well, I can verify that he had a temper,” Dad repeats, his tone, now, frank and precise. “In my dad’s competitiveness, he would get upset, because if he thought that an umpire had made a bad call, he would argue with him.” A moment passes, and then Dad adds, “And, I did the same thing.”

“What do you mean?” I know exactly what Dad means.

“Sports is all about the competition, Devan, and the drive to beat the other person. When you feel like the referee or the umpires didn’t give you a fair shake on a strike out or a slide into second base or something, everybody looks at the umpire and says they made a bad call. And if it happened frequently enough in the game, or if the bad call was more egregious, my dad would argue with the ref, the umps, or whomever and so would I. But, that’s just typical baseball.”

“So, what’s happening in the car, you know, with grandpa, do you think? In other words ” “Well ”

“

In other words,” I insist, “it’s all very different if you’re playing on the field and you’re screaming at the ref and he has the power to change his course of action based on your influence, right? This isn’t likely to happen if you’re in the car screaming at the radio.”

“Dad was in the car getting mad?”

“That’s what Doris said.”

I refer to my papers again, sporting the look and feel of an authority on the topic, perhaps, hoping to get the quote right if this might concede responsibility to Doris for drawing attention to this apparent trend.

“She said, ‘He had a temper,’” I continue, “‘he would go to the games and would sit in the car.’”

Dad appears to be catching on to the parallel I’m struggling to make. He says, “Yeah, that’s like me yelling at the television when I’m ”

“ Right!” I declare, relieved that he’s found the connection before I have to make it for him.

“I don’t recall Dad yelling at the radio in the car. Doris has her memories, of course, but I don’t remember that. I do remember him arguing with the refs on the field.

“So, he was on the field when he would do this?”

Indeed, grandpa was. As Dad responds to my question, I notice from my notes that I have quoted Doris incorrectly, likely assimilating my own story with hers. Grandpa wasn’t in the car screaming at the radio, that is; he was on the field, while Doris and her family remained in the car to watch the game, according to her report.

Dad continues with his explanation, but I catch very little of it. I am working to decide if I should correct my interpretive error.

I then catch up with him as he says, “I can also imagine him in the car, sitting in the car, I mean, and watching another game while Pop and Marie are in the stands with Doris. He might have been listening to the Pirates play and getting upset because they are kicking the ball around.”

“Did you see him do that?”

“Kick the ball around?”

“No, get upset.”

“Well, he used to yell at the he used to get upset, yes.”

“So, what’s the difference then? Do you get my logic?”

“Well, it’s transference, I guess.”

I imagine that Dad is searching for words that he suspects I will understand, and this is both flattering and uncomfortable. He says, “It’s a projection from a real life setting that’s happening to him.”

“I think so, too. But, why do you suppose he needed them?”

“Needed them?”

With a turn of his head in my direction, showing the one of his two ears still working relatively well for him, Dad begins to cast a new atmosphere in the space between us. His question sounds to me as though he’s becoming more interested in the motivation that underlies the rhythm of my interrogation, as if he’s willing to take it more seriously. Yet, before Dad can answer my question, Tracy enters the room.

Now, Tracy is Dad’s second wife, now ex-wife. I’ll admit that it’s difficult to describe their relationship, but the best way I can do this is to say that she is his live-in friend and companion, especially since Dad got sick. They aren’t a couple, really, but they aren’t roommates, either. Their relationship appears outwardly platonic, but displays of friendly, even erotic intimacy occur between them while at home together. They met in Cedar City, Utah, where I was living with Dad before I departed for two years to serve in the Washington, D.C. North Mission for the Mormon Church, back in 1999. They were married soon thereafter but divorced in 2003. Since this time, Tracy and Dad have lived

together, at first sporadically, but continually throughout the last decade. She, like him, has a long history of professional work in the human services i.e., Dad as a clinical psychologist and Tracy as a social worker.

Tracy asks my dad for the contact information of a member of the family, which he attempts to provide. She then excuses herself courteously. I wonder if she is proud glad? that Dad and I are tackling this topic.

Now, to be clear, the consequences of Dad adopting grandpa’s volatile behavior over the games always came at such a serious cost to our family, even after he divorced my mother (both times we’ll visit this later), and even, to some extent, to the present day. The amplified devotion he has, historically, delivered to these games consumed a great majority of the time he spent with us at home. I have only a handful of memories of Dad doing anything else. The brassy sounds of the games reverberated unapologetically through the halls of our petite, Hansel-and-Gretel, cottage-style house tucked in the woods of Lakeside, Arizona. These were the sounds of the commentators, the crowds, the whistles blowing, and the obnoxious and intrusive advertisements, exhorting all in sightand-sound’s reach to sustain the rituals of the American cult of manic consumerism. These games were an intrusion in almost every sense of the word, and they consumed a weighty majority of my dad’s our family’s evenings and weekends

I would wonder if Dad cared more about the games than being my father. But, asking Dad if this is true does not seem possible or wise. Besides, this is not something to which I imagine Dad would ever confess, or even something of which he’d be aware if it were true. Sitting with him, recalling the effects of his addictive commitment to baseball, makes it difficult for me to imagine that he’d be able to confirm

the truth that has felt so real and certain throughout my life that Dad did, in fact, care more about these games than he did his own family.

Then, at once, music that reminds me of two men expressing love for each other begins to play spontaneously in the background of my mind, which affords me an emotional boost. I take a breath and say, “Listen, Dad, the reason I’m asking these questions is because I’m trying to get a better sense of something that I have never understood. But, I’m not accusing you of anything, you know, if you feel that way.”

That’s not what you want to say, I realize. You want to say, “I’m asking these questions because I have never understood your emotional volatility.” It seems unthinkable to clarify in this way, however, because I reason it will trigger Dad’s categorical and dichotomous patterns of thinking, which could then trigger feelings of shame that he won’t hold well. We’re already in swampy waters, Dev; try not to take too many conversational risks.

Regardless, Dad appears to have caught on by now that the conversation about grandpa’s anger is an indirect way for me to address the effects of his anger on our relationship and on my life. He states, as if a fact, that I am unable to understand what sports has meant to him because I was never involved in them in the way that he was, both as an athlete and an observer. This is, of course, true, but to say as much feels like an act of defensive alienation on his part.

He then begins to frame a narrative that conveys his disdain for those whom he believed impinged upon or arbitrarily limited his chances at being discovered. “I gotta be the best I can be,” he recalls, speaking as if it were in the present, “because I gotta have somebody sign my name on the dotted line so that I can be a pro baseball player.”

For Dad, it seems the umpire’s unfair rulings have cost him those chances. His fury directed at them may be due to the emotional recollection of the horror that others have arbitrarily obliterated his most significant life opportunities and somehow, I feel I can relate to this, at least in part. Dad’s life is in jeopardy and mine isn’t not directly, at any rate. How awful, I think, it would be to look back on your life and feel that time has passed has actually passed you by without seizing it.

Aiming to disentangle the multifarious ways in which grandpa influenced my dad is driving much of what this conversation is about for me. I suspect that grandpa’s fury at the authorities was connected to his passion for journalistic truth, a characteristic or quality of grandpa’s personality that I became acquainted with in conversation with Doris and previous ones with Dad that indicated as much. If it didn’t happen the way the authorities were adjudicating, grandpa’s moral outrage was activated.

Yet, Dad’s justification is different: “Back in the old days, when I would be watching baseball and you guys would hear me get upset because something happened on the field, it is because I was a competitive player at one time. And it gets more intense to cheer for your team, because you don’t have the ability to take that emotion out on the field anymore, because you’re old now. So, you identify with a team and that emotion goes there.”

I am intrigued by this, as it appears Dad is offering an explanation that I find useful. He is indicating, in other words, that he didn’t know where to place his explosive affect, once he got older. When Dad felt the threat of being cheated by a bad ruling on the field, that is, he could sublimate his fury into the aggression of his performance. Since

17

then, without a field into which he might redirect such emotion, without a place for it, he empties himself of it (Fromm, 2000) with vicarious retaliation.

If I understand him correctly, I feel catharsis on Dad’s behalf as I imagine those earlier moments of him playing on the field. It seems that the redirecting Dad is conveying would have actually propelled his chances at getting noticed, rather than the reverse, given the formidability of what I have witnessed come from him as he channels this unrestrained aggression toward ghosts in the glass box. What am I missing?

“I learned it from him,” Dad responds with pride.

“How?”

“Well, when grandpa was a boy, he’d keep score of the Pirates games, and it actually brought business to Pop’s drugstore. Workers from the paper mill would stop in to check on the scores, and they’d buy a Coke or something while they were there.”

“Yes, I remember this,” I recall with genuine delight. “Doris told me about this.”

“Well, my dad kept doing that.”

“By himself?”

“Yes, even when I was a kid. He’d sit across from the radio and keep score of the Pirates games.”

“Like, actually writing the score down? For fun?”

“Yes. That’s not unheard of, Devan.”

At the time my father was a boy, after grandpa removed his family to the east side of the state, radio stations in Lancaster did not broadcast games from as far west as

17 Fromm writes: “Both terms, alienation as well as idolatry, mean that I deprive myself, I empty myself, I freeze, I get rid of a living experience” (p. 170).

Pittsburg. So, grandpa would tune in to the Phillies and wait for the announcers to give updates on the Pirates, my father faithfully at his side like a loving and loyal pet.

Dad continues, “He would get upset when the Pirates wouldn’t do well. He would yell at the television, yell at the radio: ‘You guys are major leaguers! How can you boot the ball like that?!’ that kind of thing. He’d say: ‘You’re getting paid all that money and you can’t field a ground ball?!’”

“Why do you think he got so upset?”

“Well, in my dad’s mind, he’d think if it were me out there, I woulda made the play. ”

In the final chapters of her life, before entering the nursing home and while living with my dad (i.e., under my dad’s care), grandma once remarked to me that grandpa’s temper upset her, connecting it to the way he’d behave when watching the Pirates play. “But, it wasn’t as strong as Mark’s,” she said, referring to my father with rueful, somewhat critical regard.

I continue to ask questions that are intended to better understand these behaviors, but my father grows annoyed by this. He doesn’t want to get “too psychoanalytic,” he says, and he asks me not to read too much into it. I can’t do this for him, however. As he explains or justifies his past behaviors, I begin to feel the percolations of both grief and rage, for which I want to find the right words. Or which I want to expel. Or resolve. Whichever mitigates the pain of this history of what feels like my father’s useless volatility.

With a mix of what appears to be frustration and guilt for having shut me down, Dad sums up his point: “Look, it’s the connection that we all have all of us sports

people it’s the connection that we all have of being sports players at some point, and then, at some point, our career is over. We’re not gonna go any further. We’ve come to the realization some point in our life: ‘I’m never gonna be a major league baseball player.’ Therefore, you keep playing baseball as long as you can in the lesser leagues and then you have your teams that you cheer for. I grew up in a family that always cheered for the Pirates. When we would go out to Roaring Spring, then we could pick up the Pirates games on the radio, and we would sit around in the nighttime and listen to the radio.”

Yes, I think to myself, laboring to hide expressive evidence of my thought process, but is grandpa overthrowing the warm environment you just depicted with outbursts of hysterical rage? It’s one thing for the family to gather around the radio with soda pop and popcorn, cheering on a team; but, it’s quite another to isolate oneself and scream bloody murder at the television as one’ s primary pastime.

The desire to understand why could supersede my fear of Dad’s decompensation into a toxic and moody cycle that often occurs between us, especially if I were to challenge him with this logic. It’s a cycle I know too well, and I am hypervigilant to not invigorate it. It normally begins with Dad’s emotional collapse over something I have said or done, and, in turn, incurs a desperate attempt on my part to save him from falling into a lengthy bout of depressive guilt and shame, almost worse to endure than the initial violence of his initial collapse. These are moments that characterize the downfall of any intimate moment we have been successful at garnering between us, creating a stymied deadlock of optimal outcomes. Challenges that are meant to be useful Dad appears to

experience as a threat, and there is no way out of the sudden paradox that one has entered into in such moments.

And yet, I pursue my line of questioning anyway, hoping, rather naïvely, for the best outcome I ask him: “Do you suppose that he felt out of control at that age?”

“No,” Dad responds, “It’s just the reaction.” Dad’s oversimplified use of the word “just” frustrates me. It’s frustration at Dad’s denial because I get it. I do it, as well. And I hate it in myself.

“Well, but you described something that sounds like an out-of-control reaction before you got to the example in Roaring Spring. I mean, I’m not suggesting that grandpa felt out of control all the time, though. Maybe, he felt helpless. When you say, ‘I lost my chance to play with the New York ’”

“ Yes,” he interjects, “I think that would be very, very um ”

Dad’s comportment shifts a bit, and he appears more contemplative and grounded. This seems to imply that my insight resonates for him, and that he is beginning to sense where I am going with this. I wait for a moment. Then, seeking to simplify my point, I add: “Listen, Doris goes right from the story about the New York Giants into grandpa’s temper and there is no obvious logical connection, right?”

“She’s fragmenting,” Dad proclaims

“Okay, sure,” I falsely concede, working to hold access to the idea, “but I think that she’s telling a very important story, too, about the connection between his experience of being recruited and ”

“ She’s trying to tell you that when Dad played, he had a temper.” For Dad, it’s plain and simple.

“Sure, I know that; but, try to hear what I’m saying. It’s deeper than that. The first piece to it is, of this narrative of hers, is that he didn’t get accepted, didn’t get drafted to the New York Giants. Then, she moves into the topic of his temper at the games. I’m suggesting that Doris is, without meaning to, she’s giving us a clue about why he got so upset at the games.”

“I’d be hard pressed to make that a serious connection,” Dad states, continuing to insist, again, that we not get too psychoanalytic.

Dad’s wording is biting, and this adds hurt to my frustration, given my profession and the value I place on the theories that drive it. His insistence recalls a bitter coldness I often feel when Dad and I are in discourse, when I’m struggling to cough up the courage to show him the breadth and depth of my capacity to think and argue creatively, while still applying a measure of sound, reasonable logic. I’ve worked hard to develop this skill, and no measure of effort appears to convince him it has been worth it.

“All of us who played sports felt that someday, when we were little, felt that we wanted to be a big-leaguer. All of us have that dream of being a big-leaguer and we’re just around the corner from somebody discovering us. Then, you know, we learn that this ain’t gonna happen. ‘I’m twenty-two years old. Nobody’s going to be signing me.’”

“So, you’re seeing my connection?”

“You catch a glimpse of how meaningful the game was to him and how disappointing it is when it doesn’t work out.”

“Right. That’s my point.”

The sources of his anger.

“That anger,” Dad continues, “it’s really kind of innate, almost. Some people are more volatile than others, but I would say his volatility was moderate. I don’t ever remember hearing that he’d got in a fight in a game or that he got thrown out of a game because of his behavior. I never heard that.”

Dad rarely missed Ryan’s basketball games, even after the second divorce from mom, and even after Dad moved three hours away shortly thereafter. It was a comfort to see him in the gymnasium when I’d arrive with friends or other family to watch Ryan play. These are some of my favorite memories, in fact the type you only begin to recognize exist when reflecting on them some years later.

But, I also felt it was necessary to keep a good distance from Dad, as moments of his eruptive, demonic outbursts in public made proximity with him, at the very least, a rather awkward affair. He had a reputation in the community that some would joke about later, as if this were supposed to excuse and relieve the stress that his behavior provoked in those who have loved him, who are attached to him. To state the obvious, Dad was not known for his subdued, accepting nature of the things he could not otherwise control. His input was often imposed violently, eruptively, and impulsively. The refs never appeared to hear a word that Dad spewed during these moments; or, if they did, little to nothing was resolved in the encounter. Even the attempt the purge himself of his disquieting fury was unsuccessful. They simply lingered with a heavy cloud, often followed by guilt and shame, never to be addressed, processed, examined, or resolved.

Thinking on it, now, I realize how much potential he must have had in those golden-age years to channel his passion into affairs that were in his or the larger

community’s interests, and to do so in an effective, useful way. Dad’s aggression, as human aggression, seems akin to nuclear energy. It has the capacity to destroy continents or, if wielded properly, empower them with enormous utility.

“And I would say that mine was moderate-plus,” Dad understates, “but a lot of my hostility came because when he was eighteen years old and I had just finished high school, he died, and I didn’t have him anymore.”

Now, I nearly miss it, but I notice that Dad has just confused himself with his father. Noting to myself that this is an indication of unresolved trauma, I ask him: “Did you say, ‘he’?”

“What?”

“You said when ‘he’ was eighteen years old. Did you mean to say that?” “I did?”

“I think so, yes. You said, ‘a lot of my hostility came because when he was eighteen years old, he died. I think you mean when you were eighteen years old.”

“Yes, that’s what I meant.”

Dad’s comportment changes again. He begins to appear more mournful and subdued as he recalls the loneliness of attending sporting events by himself during the period following the death of his father: “It’s just me,” he laments, “and now I’m having to deal with my own emotions that are really churned up because he’s gone. I don’t have him as my best sports buddy anymore.”

Dad’s phrasing startles me a bit, and I ask him: “Is that what you had with him?” I have never heard Dad speak about anyone in this way, nor have I witnessed him regress almost to the disposition of a small, helpless child ever, in the past, without growing

furious and violent. I am almost undeterred by the novelty of this realization, but another pressing emotion begins to materialize, which I detect is comprised mainly of a mixture of feelings that swell from both disgust and guilt, in that order Is it the newness of hearing Dad speak with love and affection for another man? Am I struggling to accept that Dad was affected so deeply by losing grandpa?

Dad confirms that he and his father were affectionate sports besties as he introduces me to a larger, more tragic narrative: “The year before my dad died, when I was eighteen, I was one of the best baseball players in the state. But, after that, I’m a freshman at Millersville, sitting on the bench, and my father’s gone. ”

“When did he die?”

“It was February of 1970.”

“February ?”

“The eighth of February, early on a Sunday morning.”

Dead fathers, part one.

“Listen, you’ve told me a little about grandpa’s death before, but I wonder if you wouldn’t mind telling me the whole story, you know, as you experienced it.”

“I can, Devan, but this is going to be tough.”

Dad’s demeanor is suddenly more grounded and authentic to me than before. I feel relief. I say: “Well, to your to whatever feels comfortable. It’s okay if it ”

“ No, it’s just tough. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. It’s just it will help you understand why this period of my life was so difficult.”

“Thank you.”

“So, my dad called me up on the sixth of February 1970,” Dad begins. “He told me that he had developed a pneumonia a flu-like pneumonia. Sherma was in Provo at BYU and Mike had already started in the service. I was in my freshman year of college, and Nancy and Jim were still young Nancy was fourteen and Jim was nine. So, you can see I’m the oldest at home.”

Dad felt like he was on his own.

“I was living out on Millersville campus, and that Friday night I had a date. Later, about an hour and a half before I went to pick this girl up, Dad called me. He told me he was at the hospital, that it was precautionary, and that they wanted to keep him there until his pneumonia had cleared up. His doctors were concerned because of his coronary artery issues; remember, he’d already had a heart attack five years prior.”

“Oh, yes. I remember.”

“So, he had this diagnosis and they were concerned about his flu.”

“Do you remember what the heart attack was about those five years back?”

“What do you mean “about”?

“What caused it?”

“Oh. It was a blocked artery.”

“Would you remember which one?”

“It was the same thing Mike had a few years ago with the quintuple bypass.”

Several years ago, my uncle, Dad’s oldest brother, had the surgery and recovered well from it, but I can’t help except feel it is a portends of my future, given that I have inherited so much of my grandfather’s genes. Marie suffered from coronary artery

disease, my grandfather died of it, and Mike has received invasive treatment for it. I have been on Lipitor since my early thirties. We are all in the very process of dying.

Dad goes on to say, “My dad’s heart attack was massive. But, they didn’t have the treatments they have today for these issues. They gave him nitroglycerin to get his heart going when he would feel pain, and that would thin the blood out a little and make his heart feel better. But, his treatment for coronary artery disease was more maintenance than curative. Their focus was on keeping the heart strong, which it couldn’t do if it wasn’t getting the blood properly.”

“I see. So, grandpa called you to tell you he was in the hospital and that he had pneumonia.”

“Yes, and he asked me to bring him his briefcase from the house so that he could get some work done while he was at the hospital. I think he needed to grade some papers for his journalism class at Millersville.”

Dad continues, “He wanted me to bring him his pipe and tobacco, too.” “Oh?” I say, surprised that it was an option.

“I was planning for my date and I didn’t want to do this for him, so we argued about it. I told him that I didn’t have the time to bring his stuff to him, but he insisted: ‘Mark, I’m your father. I need this stuff. You’re the only one who can bring it, so bring it over.’ So, I was ” “ put out.”

“ a typical teenager. I wanted to get on with my date, you know, not you, ” Dad explains, again, speaking as if it were in the present. “So, I relented and brought him his

things, but I was angry about it. My demeanor changed eventually, but there was no reason for me to be angry at that point.”

“Maybe you felt a little guilty about that.”

“Oh, the guilt just increased as the weekend went on,” Dad agrees with fervor. “Because, when I went in there that Friday and gave him his stuff and we talked for a few minutes, he seemed just fine. He was sitting up. He had the table out. He smoked his pipe. He was doing what I see him do at home.” This caricature of grandpa brings me delight. “And I had already gone through his first heart attack with him. So, what I’m thinking in my mind is: He’s in the hospital. Oh no, what’s going to happen?! But, he looks just fine. Nothing’s going to happen You see? I’m trying to reassure myself.”

“Sure, of course.”

“He’s in the hospital and he has a weak heart. We all knew it. But, I didn’t get much information from his doctors, which I think was typical back then. Kids got no information. So, he might have been gravely ill when the doctor put him in there, and he was putting on a good show for us, you know? Who knows. I mean, who knows? But, he looked okay to me and he interacted well and he was friendly with my date.”

The bleak realization seems to have hit my father that he could have been more prepared for the death of his father had medical personnel been more forthcoming with their communications regarding grandpa’s prognosis. I wonder what it is about Dad’s health that I don’t know. I wonder if I will have to contend with this same issue as he gets sicker.

“So, I went back to my apartment that night as usual and fell asleep. I had no idea the anvil that was about to be dropped on me. At about six o’clock in the morning, the phone rings. It’s my mother.”

“Is she calling from the hospital?”

“She is, but I’m thinking: Why is mom calling me? She never calls me. I’m not that close to her. And I hear her say, ‘Mark, you need to come to the hospital. Your dad had a heart attack last night.”

“Oh, gosh.”

“When I walked into his room, as soon as I saw him, I knew he was going to die. He had tubes everywhere. He was hooked up to a bunch of machines, all of his monitoring machines, and he looked they had they could do nothing more, and intuitively I knew that.”

“Was he able to talk?”

“Yeah, a bit. I don’t know. He had an oxygen mask on; but, I don’t remember what the conversations were about.”

“Okay.”

“

Except one That evening, Saturday evening, on the seventh, he and I were scheduled to go to a baseball banquet hosted by the St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, which I had played the previous summer. My dad wanted me to go to it. I remember him saying, ‘Mark, you must go to the banquet without me,’ but I didn’t want to go.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I asked him, ‘Why would I need to go to the banquet, Dad?’ I said to him, ‘You’re sick. I want to stay here with you ’ But, he insisted. ‘You need to go to that

banquet,’ he insisted, ‘Please promise me that you’ll go.’ And I did as I was told. I went to the banquet.”

“I see.”

I find myself surprised to hear my dad imitate my grandfather’s voice, as I’ve never heard him do this before, that I can remember, nor have I actually heard grandpa speak. There are a handful of old movies that Pop took of family in Roaring Spring, some of them featuring Dad as a naked little toddler strutting around with confidence and pride. But, they are silent films, leaving gaps in the imagination of who these characters were.

“That night,” Dad continues, “I stayed over at the house and at five o’clock the next morning, my mom woke me to tell me Dad had died an hour ago.” “At four a.m.?”

“Yes.” My heart breaks for Dad as I watch him swell with grief. His voice cracks as he says, “Fifty years later and I’m still feeling this way.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” I attempt to console. “Take your time.”

Dad presses on. “Just after grandma told me that my dad had died, I found a place in the corner of the downstairs living room and I cried so badly that my nose bled.”

The imagery startles me, a bit. Dad’s nose bled often when he lived in dryer climates. His move from Pennsylvania to the arid deserts of Arizona and Utah awakened a war on his sinuses that I watched him battle almost daily while growing up. It was not uncommon to happen upon a bushel of bloodied tissues lying proximal to where Dad would have been sitting on any given evening or weekend day, regardless of whether it was during the winter or summer. I think he gave it his best shot to clear evidence of these episodes, but happening upon them was always an unpleasant surprise. The issue

discontinued, largely, when he moved back to Pennsylvania. Yet, even still, Dad’s account of his weeping, in this scenario, stimulates an emotional memory I can’t define, but that both moves and disturbs

“Nothing was the same after that,” Dad continues. “I was devastated for three years. I couldn’t get my life together. I couldn’t get past it. It was always right there. I couldn’t get it to move forward from the back of my mind. I was just frozen. I was frozen in time and reliving it.”

I then ask, as delicately as I can muster: “Can I ask what you were reliving?”

“Probably post-traumatic stress,” Dad says with a characteristic blend of hesitancy and frankness. Given my question and his response to it, it appears we’re both arriving at the same conclusion, but I am hoping to get more from him than he initially offers.

“Do you remember anything specific about his death that you kept thinking about?”

“Seeing him the night before, so sick and feeble.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“I wish I could erase that whole memory, but I can’t.”

Isolated hopes.

After several hours of extensive conversation with Dad, covering a multitude of topics, I sit quietly in the sunroom to recalibrate I feel eager to get back to the life I have built for myself in Chicago to return home to my humble, unconventional family to Joel and our friendly, somewhat needy, tabby housecat, Milo. The Phillies are playing the

Mets, and Dad is out in the living room watching. I can hear its echoes, but there is something about them that is uncharacteristically tranquil for me this evening.

I am taking in a documentary about Joan Didion on Netflix called The Center Will Not Hold (Dunne, Dunne, Recine, & Rockstock, 2017). In it, Didion conveys that she writes about things she’s afraid she won’t be able to deal with. She captures the writer’s fantasy:

I, myself, have always found that if I examine something, it’s less scary.

We always had this theory that if you kept the snake in your eyeline, the snake wasn’t going to bite you. That’s kind of the way I feel about confronting pain. I want to know where it is. (Dunne et al., 01:00:24)

What does it mean to examine something so that it’s not as scary? Can I see it? Make eye contact with it? Can I hold it with a gaze that keeps it under control or is it able to anticipate my movement?

Didion wrote, of course, The Year of Magical Thinking (Didion, 2005) about her bereavement process following the sudden heart attack of her husband. It is one of a small handful of books that I have read that I actually couldn’t put down, so to speak. But, in this documentary, there is information that is missing from the book e.g., that Quintana, Didion’s daughter, also died in the process of that very year (i.e., her year of magical thinking). Didion and her husband, John, had just returned from the hospital, having received the difficult news about Quintana’s prognosis, when her husband collapsed from his fatal heart attack. I am putting the pieces together as I watch, wondering if Didion softened in the book how upset her husband was over Quintana’s illness

Could the fear of losing his daughter have killed him?

Dad then calls me in to help him change one of the bandages covering his torso. The wounds from his biopsy are oozing blood. The doctor has guaranteed that this is normal and will likely continue for the next few days, but this message is not assuring.

I help Dad remove the bandages on his left side that cover the puncture wounds.

He looks like he has been stabbed several times with an ice pick, and each tiny, round, entry wound is wetted with a solution of absconding blood and decaying antibacterial gel.

“What do I do?” I ask him.

“We just need to blot it dry and put more Neosporin on it, then patch it back up with those large bandages that they gave us.”

“Okay. Where did you put them? Do you remember?”

“I think they’re in the bathroom.”

The bathroom on the main level of Dad’s house is around the corner from his living room. I can hear the echo of his invitation as I am walking away to retrieve the materials he’s requested: “Before you leave tomorrow, we should talk about my will.”

“I didn’t realize you had one already drawn up,” I say from afar. “Are they in the closet or under the sink?”

Dad doesn’t appear to hear me. “I’ve drawn it up with my attorney. His name is Mel Newcomer.”

“What?!” I yell, continuing my search.

“Mel Newcomer!”

“Okay, I’m hurrying!” I say, misunderstanding what he’s said. Hold your balls.

Believing Dad to be in a hurry, I bustle through the closet in his bathroom and the contents under his sink, locating the prize in question. It’s a bag full of bandages, ointments, and prescription medication.

I return to him in the living room. Dad has muted the television. I sit beside him with the bag in hand, somewhat nervous that I might make a mistake, cause problems for him, or even hurt him as I attempt to help him replace his post-surgery dressings. I ask, “How do you want me to do this?”

“Just blot the wet areas so that it’s dry, put some fresh Neosporin on it, and patch me back up!”

“I detect some sarcasm,” I say.

“Well, it’s not that hard.”

It appears that I am centered more on my duty than conjuring a witty response to Dad’s comment, but the truth is, I feel anxious about the intimacy between us. It’s uncomfortable, as if my mind and body are recalling that intimacy with Dad, especially in physical proximity, means something bad is going to happen.

“Mel Newcomer is my attorney,” he continues. “He’s drawn up the will for me and the power of attorney documents that you need to sign.”

“I didn’t realize that you’d drawn one up,” I repeat, referring to the will.

“Yes, we have,” Dad informs. “And, I’ve made both you and Danny my power of attorney.”

Over the course of my wayfaring life, despite my love for the many uses of language, there have been a handful of terms that I hadn’t bothered looking up or verifying before making abject and liberal use of them. For instance, for my thirteenth

birthday, my mother took me to see a production of Les Misérables on national tour, playing at the Gammage Auditorium in Phoenix. In my excitement, anyone close to me got a blast of my continued misuse of the French by pronouncing all the letters in the title. My mother, in a combination of pity and annoyance, corrected me with, “Devan, for heaven’s sake, it’s pronounced Ley Miserab.” Since then, I believe, I have worked ardently to join her in the ivory tower of trivial pursuit.

“Powers,” I redirect.

“What?”

“Powers of attorney. It’s plural.”

As Dad begins to realize his mistake, he renders playfully, “You and Danny are my powers of attorney.”

“Right. So, what does this entail?” I ask, enjoying a semblance of my oedipal victory.

“It just means that you guys will have the power to make decisions on my behalf, especially if I can’t do that on my own.”

I understand what you mean by power of attorney, but what decisions do you need me to make on your behalf?

I complete the task of replacing Dad’s dressings while contemplating the fact that Dad has chosen me to serve in this role. Overall, I receive it with characteristic ambivalence. I am honored that he would consider me a responsible agent and warden of his affairs, but also cautious about ways this might promote an undesired enmeshment between us. Plus, if something goes wrong, it will be my fault more to me than to him; but, my fault, nonetheless.

Dad then dictates a list of his wishes, and I take careful notes. He feeds me random figures regarding full dollar amounts as significant matters occur to him. They are of loans paid and unpaid, mortgages and taxes, assets and liabilities, savings and expected incomes, the expenses from his business and plans to sign it over to his associate, Karen. He explains how we should procure funds from his assets to pay his debts if they remain, noting that we’ll likely need to do this for his funeral. He concedes responsibility for making important decisions about these matters to all four of us all four of his children after his death.

I feel grateful that I am keeping a record of Dad’s requests, mostly because I don’t want to forget them; mostly, because I want to do right by him and honor his wishes after he dies

“In the event that I live long enough, Devan,” Dad then conveys, “I should tell you that I will likely move to Wyoming.”

Dad shows me the paperwork for an isolated, twenty-acre plot of land that he purchased at the base of a hill in the northern plains, close to Powell, where my youngest brother, Danny, and his fledgling family reside. It cost him forty-two thousand, and I can see the boyish excitement in his face as he describes his hope to use it to work with my brother to build adjacent houses one for himself and one for Danny.

I express some forceful delight with Dad as he explains these ambitions. He reports that Danny couldn’t be more pleased, which rings true for me, given the special bond Dad has developed with him, his wife and kids, and vice versa one that transcends anything like it with any of the three of us, born in a tidy cluster almost a decade before him.

I work to express support, but this is shadowed by an ominous feeling that Dad’s plans to move to Wyoming are ambitious and unrealistic both qualities that I have always observed Dad instinctively work to avoid, and almost always at his own expense.

Dad never took risks, I mean to say; or, if he did, they crumbled miserably into hopeless insolvencies before ever having a chance to hatch. I struggle to position myself in the heart of the tension between the desire to be supportive and the desire to help Dad face the kind of reality that has soured his life for as long as I’ve known him. With fantasies of Dad falling to the floor from exhaustion, a heart attack, or his cancerous body breaking apart, I ask him if he’s strong enough to build a house. His response provides some comfort: “Well, no, those days are over for me. But, Danny expressed interest in doing it. We’d likely hire out someone to help us with the bulk of it.”

Dad’s demeanor shifts from showing an idealized, youthful excitement to a heavy longing, as if another dream has died before it was fully conceived. This shift is a characteristic one for him. It seems to reveal an everlasting conflict he knows all too well the bitter and ongoing war that endures within him between optimism and hope and cynicism and despair, whereby the latter almost always appears to win for Dad. I wish he didn’t play it so safe. I wish he had more confidence in his dreams. I wish he realized how much of an asset they are to him, rather than downplaying them as an unrealistic whim. He doesn’t realize, it seems, how much I have always needed him to do this and to make it work.

“It’s not something that I think is going to happen,” he says, “but I sure would like it to.”

I have a dream about James Franco.

Later that night, I have a dream: James Franco and I are courting each other. He is not pursuing sexual or emotional contact, or even a connection with me, but he is allowing me to pursue these with him. This consists mainly of bodily contact, and I am moved and excited. Then, we are in some apartment building some room of that apartment building a bedroom and we are kissing, perhaps exploring each other, and it is, again, very exciting. Later, I tell Heather that I am considering a relationship with him, knowing that she will be impressed with this that she’ll like this. Then, it occurs to me that I will have to forsake my relationship with Joel that there was no way to have both and I become very sad I am thinking that there are too many things that I would lose that I don’t want to lose if I were to pursue a relationship with the celebrity, and it felt like a terrible paradox.

I wake up from the dream overtaken with grief, nearly in tears.

I discover grandma’s letter to Dad from 1981.

After breakfast, I prepare myself for the trip back to Chicago; but, I have a few extra hours before I embark, so I sift through stacks of grandma’s old files and papers. These include hundreds of pages of journals along with copies of (and some original) genealogical records that date back many centuries. Saved are also old photographs of family, holiday and birthday cards that grandma received from family and friends, and letters one of which I am surprised to see she had written to my dad As I glance over it, I feel I’ve struck gold. It is dated Tuesday, February 24, 1981

I set the other artifacts aside and take a seat at the edge of the bed. I want to devote all of my attention to the content in this letter. As I read it, I discover that grandma

had just returned to Pennsylvania following a visit to our little, fledgling family in the cold, Utah winter of that year. Parts of it stand out to me:

Dear Mark, I’ve been going to write to you ever since I came home from my trip. I think we should write more often, our telephone calls are fun, but we seldom get beyond a point.

Seldom get beyond a point Is she frustrated by this?

I just finished reading families can be forever,18 and we need to believe this with all our hearts mind and souls and live for it likewise.

September 10, 2018, from my journal: Grandma is exhorting him as if one of the general authorities of the Church, who mimic the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament Why is she taking this posture? Dad’s not going to listen to it. Your negative thoughts toward Daddy are from the adversary.19 The Lord has simply said Honor your Father [sic] and mother. If you would get rid of some of his teachings (Earle’s) cast off that awful yelling at the T.V. when a ball game does not go your way. I hated it in Earle and I hate it in you and someday a sweet little girl will hate it in your sons. I remember when reading Winnicott for the first time at CRPC, and Dad couldn’t, I just knew that he couldn’t “survive” us well. That appealed to me a great deal. Ryan was going through drug problems, and sort of the issue of survival, which has become so important for me in my clinical work, it hit me like it does when the Spirit is speaking to

18 Grandma may be writing about a book that’s out of print, here, but I was not able to locate it. She may also be referring to a seminal talk by the Mormon prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, titled “Families Can Be Eternal” (1980; see: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/generalconference/1980/10/families-can-be-eternal?lang=eng for a recorded version of the talk).

19 This is a Mormon appellation for “Satan.”

you in Mormonism. There’s truth. Dad could not survive me because he thinks that people are fundamentally bad, and expressions of natural aggressions and so forth are considered evil and need to be squelched. That’s my dad’s basic posture with almost everything. And I don’t think he wants it to be that way, but that’s how he always has been Games are just not that important to cause you to act that way. I’ll admit they are to enjoy (but it’s like free agency as long as you don’t take away someone’s freedom you are too [sic] do as you please). Well, you surely do take away from enjoyment.

I remember Danny, he couldn’t have been more than six and Barry was visiting from Roaring Spring. Danny blurted something out to my dad about how Dad wasn’t very good at something, I forget what it was exactly. Dad ripped Danny a new one in the cleanest sample of abject retaliation that I had ever seen up to that point in my life. Absolutely berated Danny for it. I came in the room moments after it happened. Danny was sobbing in a corner. Dad had a psychotic, frenzied cloud of fury about him, for which he appeared, in the phantasmic moment, to feel utterly justified. Barry was sitting on the couch. He didn’t know what to do. The beast was unleashed and no one knew what to do, least of all the victims of it.

I miss our communications, Why did she blot this out? Why did she not continue with this thought? Did she feel embarrassed? Is it too intimate? Why did grandma always insist on this type of avoidant distance?

Then, with my mind frenzied by these thoughts, I notice the statement in grandma’s unsent and unsigned letter of exhortation to my father: “In my mind is the hurt look on Devan’s face, even though you didn’t slap [him] hard, his feelings were so hurt.”

That is surprisingly empathic of grandma to notice how I felt.

So, this is dated February 24th of 1981. Hmph. Heather was only a month old. I was just a year-and-a-half. Still learning to walk. Just beginning to talk. Maybe just beginning to formulate enough verbal capacity to manage the word “Hatu” (Hay-too) out of Heather. Beginning to grow excited about popcorn and snow. What on earth did I do to warrant this kind of discipline?

My thoughts about this startle me as they drum up some frustration with Dad, but I quickly suppress it. I don’t want to shake the boat with him. I don’t want to overwhelm him by asking about our past, even though doing so holds potential (at least theoretically) to help our relationship to improve. I simply don’t have the faith in him that he will be able to handle such a confrontation, and not because he’s sick or growing feeble. Outwardly, he appears in good health. He walks, talks, thinks, and behaves as he always has, as I have remembered him. No, I rest contented in this lack of faith in my father. It keeps me safe from experiencing something with him for which I never, not ever, quite feel prepared.

I wonder, though, if my frustration is linked to a deeper fury that I have altogether unlinked from the terrors and fears of childhood that are connected to my experience of him. If fury is there, the repression of it occurs, of course, rather instinctively. It would indicate a syntonic, even somatic operation ( my body does, after all, get the brunt of

this), which time and experience have proven to me to be necessary, given a combination of my history with him and my hypersensitive constitution. All I am aware of feeling is the burden of depressive sadness, which connects to the grief I felt waking from my dream earlier this morning

As I drive southward to Baltimore to catch my flight home to Chicago, I feel relief. The windows in my Toyota rental are open, letting in some cooler, end-of-thesummer air. This sense of release I find adds to the autonomous energy I am pleased to recapture for myself as I anticipate rejoining the tempo of my life in Chicago and being with my family there. The anticipation of this is enhanced by the atmosphere around me

the taller-than-usual deciduous trees perched atop massive, rocky crests that create a canopy for the bustling highway that has burrowed through it the wide and stony splashes of the Susquehanna River just behind me. The verdant foliage here never fails to impress me, as I recall that it will soon change color and drop to the ground leaving only brown and black sticks covered by blankets of ice and snow.

I begin to reflect upon the breadth of information that Dad has conveyed to me over the last few days. Later, I write of it: I am thoughtful about Dad’s incapacity to be able to survive us and the hunger that I have always felt of having someone who could help bring out of me something significant that matters to me about my “true” self. (I mean this, of course, in the Winnicottian sense ) My dad taught me to hate myself, to fear myself at a very early age. It coincided with, of course, the teachings of the Church, and mom contributed to this, too. But, no one or no thing has had such an impact on this selfhatred than my dad, his example, and the momentum of his brutality.

So, what I need to do is I need to do the hard work here. I need to stop talking about the fluffy stuff with him. I need to get into the fucking hard stuff about my experience with him. I need to accept and speak to him about his emotional and physical abuse. Because, I was afraid of him. I need to not hold back, but I’m having a hard time with how to do that because I don’t want to exaggerate things. But, I mean, Dad is a bully. I really only have to watch President Trump do anything really to start feeling all of that fury begin to emerge.

Good Dad/Bad Dad

Things my father taught me (part one).

In the days that follow my return to Chicago, I feel motivated to capture significant thoughts about my relationship with Dad that often occur when I’m daydreaming, usually while commuting, showering, cleaning, falling asleep, exercising, or the like. During a mid-afternoon break, I venture to the electronics department at the Target on Madison and State to purchase a small, handheld digital recorder that I can use for this purpose. Soon thereafter, glimpses of memories with Dad begin flooding my mind, which I work to record as they come.

With my trusty device in hand, I begin to make an intentional list of what I remember Dad (actually) taught me as such things comes to mind. The first ten go as follows:

1. Be respectful of your elders. The older they are, the more respect they deserve.

2. Don’t chew with your mouth open.

3. If you eat your vegetables, you will grow hair on your chest.

4. If you use your arms while you’re running, it will help you gain momentum.

5. Be polite to others.

6. Capitalism is the only applied economic theory that works.

7. It is imperative that you clean up after yourself.

8. How to make a wall out of studs.

9. Be respectful of your parents, no matter what.

10. Keep the law and stay out of trouble.

From my earliest years, I recall my father tickling my knee in the car, while singing a rhyme: “Ticky, ticky on the knee. If you laugh, you do love me.” Heaven knows where he came up with it, but it was oft recited when I was lucky enough to score the passenger’s seat next to him during any of our “just us” moments to the store or some destination like it. Sometimes, I would feign a chuckle to respond to his bid for affection, but most memories I have of Dad’s quests for intimacy make me uncomfortable to recall, as intimacy with him has always felt awkward

Somewhere in there, I think to myself, I must feel more than this. Why only the irritation and discomfort?

Another memory: While sitting on a couch or chair again, in our earlier years together Dad would sneak up behind me and use the knuckle of his hand to simulate an egg cracking on top of my head, which he executed with such precision and accuracy that I would sometimes check to verify he hadn’t actually left a splintered yoke there. I think this delighted him to know he was so successful with the artifice, and, perhaps, his ability to get the playful banter between us that followed.

Then, another: Before my mother removed us from Orem, Utah I was about six years old. A few weekend mornings, I recall that, after preparing pancakes or French toast for us, Dad covered his face to the top of his head with a blue, turtle-neck shirt, revealing only his hair and a pair of glasses that he rested on his nose just atop the shirt covering his face. He’d stagger and groan around the kitchen after us as if Frankenstein’s monster, providing shrills of delight to the three of us as we ran from him with childlike screams of simulated fear and pure joy.

But then, I recall, during that same time, fearing Dad’s volatility and working to generally avoid him: One Sunday morning, Ryan and I were little I couldn’t have been more than three and Dad was angry that I hadn’t cleaned my room fast or good enough, I suppose, or I wasn’t getting ready for church the way he wanted. Whichever it was, he stormed into our room, grabbed me by the belt of my little Corduroy dress slacks, just at the base of my back, and struck me two or three times with such a shock that I urinated through them. As I struggled to get myself free of him, Dad must have knocked me in the nose and I began to bleed. Ryan recalls that, following the gruesome affair, there was “blood everywhere up on the walls, in the hair of Dad’s arms,” so much that “he had to get something to clean it up” (personal communication).

“If Henry Wingo had not been a violent man, I think he would have made a splendid father” (Conroy, 1986, p. 5).

With delinquent pride. Facing the sobering truth of Dad’s mortality continues to spark in me a desire to identify how I want to be like my father and what aspects of my personality I have fortuitously inherited from him that I should consciously work to accept or relinquish.

My mother assumed a traditional role and prepared most of the dinners we enjoyed while growing up, but Dad taught me to enjoy cooking as a wholesome and acceptable performance of one’s manhood. This was a bit radical for our socially-conservative family. When Dad and mom remarried, we were nearing the end of Raegan’s second term, and Bush Sr. was on his way in. Growing up in a social environment that welcomed, ubiquitously and without challenge, the conservative visions and philosophies with which these administrations invaded our homes, Dad appeared almost a progressive radical when it came to this aspect of gender non-conformity. Cooking was more natural for him than doing yardwork, fixing a car, or adjusting the plumbing.

In this, Dad seems to be adopting the behaviors of his grandmother, Marie, who would leave early or even stay behind from church on Sundays to prepare a pot roast with mashed potatoes that everyone could enjoy afterward. This meal remains one of my family’s very favorite repasts, especially when prepared by Dad. I learned from Doris that before Marie became a Hite, she belonged to the Kauffman family, who ran the Eldon Inn the only hotel in Roaring Spring that now serves as the community’s local library. Doris conveyed that Marie had a unique reputation for her cooking prowess, which travelling boarders from all over regularly enjoyed. So, Dad rarely endured the three-hour block on Sundays at our local, Mormon Church in Lakeside. Rather, he frequently disappeared before the second or third hour to prepare Marie’s dinner for us and catch an afternoon game or two in the process. It was not uncommon to return home to find Dad in an apron, ardently mashing a definitive, five-pound set of Russet potatoes, while stealing smart, well-timed breaks to quickly wipe drops of sweat from his brow. It’s an image I’ll never forget.

Dad’s mashed potatoes link with Hite tradition in a way that extends beyond Marie and her fearsome reputation. Doris also conveyed the story of our quirky aunt, Sarah Hite (Appendix A, Fig. 10), who would wake at times early in the morning (or late at night, take your pick) to peel and boil up a small pot of comfort potatoes as a midnight snack. I love this. I have also reasoned that three a.m. is an ideal time for such a delinquent and naughty nosh, but my poison of choice has normally been an irrationally large bowl of sugar cereal to put me back to sleep, a habit which likely did nothing good to battle the development of type-two diabetes later in my life. Nevertheless, it has often worked to soothe over a heaping dose of anxiety generated from jolting awake at the crossroads of the witching hour.

Growing up, especially in my earlier years, I gravitated toward quirky, strong women, because I suspect I admired them and wanted to be like them. I learned to appreciate their freedom of spirit and lively personal identities, affording something after which I could pattern myself. I think I also relate to the general nature of their social struggles. Either way, Doris had said very little about Sarah before I got the impression that I would have liked her very much.

“She always wore a hat,” Doris recounted, “because she didn’t think her hair was any good.” Remembering this makes me chuckle as I recall Doris sitting at the table she’d made for us, her head pinched from ear to ear in a pair of headphones designed to help her hear her conversational partners better a huge, clunky apparatus of a thing buried in a dark swirl of poufy, vieux jeu style hair as if her head were caught in a vice (Appendix A, Fig. 11). “And she enjoyed writing,” Doris remembered. “She wouldn’t go

and buy a fancy card when someone was in the hospital. She just wrote on note paper with a pencil something very clever and amusing.”

Doris also recalled stories of neighborly kindness amongst my Pop’s siblings, which included Sarah. My uncle “Punch,” the youngest of his generation, owned the furniture store in Roaring Spring. For years, it was connected to an undertaking business that he and his brothers owned and operated. One morning in December, an impecunious fellow named Screech came to the store to work out a deal regarding a bill showing a debt he’d owed her brothers for a piece of furniture that he bought with some form of credit that my uncles had extended to him. They weren’t at the store that day, and Sarah was clerking instead Now, I had grown up hearing a touching story of Punch forgiving the debt of a disadvantaged family that couldn’t afford to pay the remaining balance on a bed for their little girl. The story always seemed to bring a tear to my father’s eyes when telling it. I had even thought that Doris was repeating it for me. She couldn’t recall the reason for why Sarah did what she did, but regardless, I was moved to hear that Sarah forgave his debt: “Just forget it, Screech,” Doris says imitating her voice, “You have children and Christmas is coming. Just forget the bill.”

Hamlet’s revolt.

Friday, September 28, 2018. A few more weeks have passed since my visit with Dad, but not without event. I get wind of the Kavanaugh hearings with the rest of the country and declare fiercely on Facebook that “I believe Christine Blasey.” I am startled by the “evidence” that Kavanaugh’s lawyers expect the American public to accept to be legitimate, given that so much of it appears manufactured to me. I feel sadness, even fear and helplessness, as I contemplate the prospect that the Republicans under Trump are

working to subvert the most important court in our country by filling it with an emotionally-fragile man, who likely it seems very likely possesses a past of committing acts of sexual aggression against others

I begin to recognize, rather seamlessly, a depressive disappointment I know too well that materializes within me as I contemplate these matters. Its logic leads to impressions of my father, and I struggle to control my rage at him. In the early nineties, you see, my father assumed a position and a role as a priest in the cult of morallybankrupt reprobates like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Carlson. His daily “bible study,” Fox News. His afternoon meditation, the “Rush Limbaugh Show.” If Dad was not consumed by the Pirates, Phillies, or BYU football, he was blistering the house with the infernos of his hand-me-down, Republican ideologies, loyal to the false illusions of its deceitful economic promises and platforms. Dad wasn’t the kind of father who promised fishing trips only to renege on them later; he simply never made them in the first place.

Dad’s behavior appears to me as if he were a member of a dangerous, mindcontrolling cult. Never have I heard him speak in criticism against Republicanism in any meaningful way that I can remember, nor does evidence exist that he has ever believed anything else in the political sphere other than whatever it is that spawns from within this wretched movement. His fierce devotion to his party is equal to his investment in sports, with the same emotional volatility that’s in every way attached to it.

Knowledge of this is a burden that I don’t want to carry. I don’t want to associate my father with the growing, mindless horde of contributors in America that uphold and sustain the ominous rise of Trumpist fascism. It is true that, since Dad got sick, he has curtailed the sort of spoiling-of-family-gatherings, political proselytizing that often

characterizes much of the sociality of his compatriots; but, nevertheless, I know he voted for Trump and in a swing state, no less. My awareness of this haunts me.

My god, I realize, how on earth is this man my father?

On October 6, 2018, the day Kavanaugh is sworn in to the Supreme Court, I post on social media: “I. am. Heartbroken.” A few days later, I happen upon the poem Pity the Nation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (2009), and I post it alongside others of similar thinking, fully aware that it reflects the core of what I hate in or about my father Abjectly. Ruthlessly. Thoroughly. “Hate” is absolutely not a strong-enough word. His poem capitulates what I consider to be a significant part of the very worst of my father’s personality:

Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.

Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own.

Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

Pity the nation oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away.

My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

Throughout the next couple of weeks, I work as best I can to promote the voting process, borne out of a healthy faith in the democratic system I have come to idealize. Using social media for this platform, I feel energy from investing in myself, even for myself. Sometimes, doing so seems to feed the same sort of fury-unto-exhaustion I witnessed in my father; other times, it seems these postings of mine serve as public statements to the cosmos, whomever will see, but I think primarily to myself that I am, in fact, not my father, and that I like this fact, and that I hope my behaviors continue to propel me on this trajectory outward and away from him.

The Frenchman and the serpent.

Early Saturday morning, October 27, I wake up at three in the morning from a violent and ominous dream: I am frantic to get a Frenchman to own up to the fact that he has feelings for me that were expressed in some kind of sexual activity; yet, he refuses. He grows frustrated with me as I say to him: “Why won’t you just admit this?” and “Come on! It’s obvious!” He then leaps up and lunges forward at me (like a snake attacking), grabbing my head and snapping my neck.

I jolt awake like a stock character in a poorly-written horror film, bellowing out in terror and pain. The muscles in my neck have frozen stiff toward my right shoulder in the very direction that the Frenchman-serpent of the dream has snapped it. It won’t move. Blistering pain shoots down my neck and back as I attempt it.

All of this commotion awakens Joel. Still ascending into consciousness, he questions if everything is okay.

“No! My head is stuck. I can’t agh! I can’t move it.”

Fearing that my outburst has affected him or might overwhelm him, I take a few deep breaths while I attempt to calm myself. Joel fetches his glasses and turns on the bedroom light next to our bed.

“How can I help?” he asks, his tone mirroring my distress.

I want to dismiss him, avoid him; my impulse is to push him back or away, or to escape the situation, relinquishing him to the cloudy dust of anxiety I have already stirred about the room; but, I reason that this will only escalate the problem I would be otherwise be trying to avoid.

I turn my back toward him and ask him to rub it while I gently breathe through the process of working to stretch the muscles in my neck so that I can move it properly again. This is a technique I have learned from grappling with the mounting aggravations of aging into my forties. Almost every morning, especially in the colder months, I wake with a vulnerable, unstable sensation in my body that the muscles in my lower back will be thrown out if I am too careless and thus make the slightest, wrong move. I have learned that it helps to sit and take deep, intentional breaths in and out as I focus on the muscles in peril and stretch them cautiously into more functional capacities.

Joel complies with my request as I take my left arm and gently encourage movement with my head. I note to myself that I am resisting the process as the muscles frozen in place begin to flex, sending further, piercing jolts of pain through my head and back.

“Agh! Something is terribly wrong, my love,” I declare as my eyes begin to water with panicked, helpless tears. I begin to think I might need to go to the hospital, but this thought is countered with something like: This cannot be an option I am not going to the hospital because of a dream!

I take another deep breath and concentrate on getting myself into a more immersive and mindful state. I can feel the warm, confident, and devoted hands of my partner, keeping with my instructions, and this infuses my back with ease as he moves his hands up my spine until he has connected with my own at the base of my neck.

“Yes, just keep doing that,” I encourage. “Keep massaging my back.”

The treatment is ultimately successful enough for me to lay myself back down and resume another hour or two of sleep. But, it won’t be until later that day after taking globs of Ibuprofen and rehearsing the same intervention several times over that my head and neck are fully functional again. What on earth did I tap into?

Early mornings, part one.

Monday, October 29, 2019, 6:45am. I feel embarrassed as I write about things like this. I don’t know why, but I feel angry this morning. Ugh! No, it’s abject, wretched, barbaric, fill-my-asshole-with-tar kind of rage. I feel rage this morning.

I started to become aware of it just a few moments ago as I was coming in to work. No Facebook, though, muddling my commute. No memes. No Trump. I took the red line, so no traffic. No sociopathic cut-me-offs in manic congestion.

Maybe it’s anger that I don’t want to be here. Anger at feeling forced to do something.

Whatever it is, I think I caught it from Dad. Like a bad virus. Years of early mornings were a mess for him. Maybe, in the subtle recesses, I’ve internalized whatever it means to me to him to feel compelled into a way of life that feels imposed, rather than the other way around.

This realization, true or not, is different for me. I usually enjoy coming in. I usually feel energy in the mornings with excitement to do my work. It’s not the same anymore. It’s just rage.

Moving Toward the Ill One

A few days later, I receive a call from Barry delivering the regretful news that Doris has died. Somehow, I had missed that she was in the hospital due to a bad fall in her home during the late hours of the night. I had missed the chance to drop everything and sit with her through the last few days of her life. To thank her for her stories.

As I glance through the pages of notes that I took from the auspicious and now providential time that we spent together in conversations about our family, I reflect with gravitas on how many questions I have for her that will now remain unanswered.

Learning about treatment.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018. It didn’t take long for us to learn from Dad’s doctors that the tumors in his lungs were, in fact, renal-cell carcinoma, and that his original cancer from 1994 was back in full, metastatic spread. Dad’s primary oncologist, Dr. DeGreen, decided to place him on an immunotherapy treatment of what’s called Opdivo and Yervoy. Dad reports, with optimism and hope, that this treatment has just recently received approval for use in the United States after promising trials in Europe.

“I think the best we’re gonna get is to extend the quality of my life a bit,” Dad says, “and the immunotherapy DeGreen thinks is going to accomplish that. He still has hope that I have some time left.”

From previous conversations, it took several weeks for me to catch on that Dad’s immunotherapy was serving as a replacement for chemotherapy, and that the two are not the same. The former, I’d later discover, is a type of treatment that stimulates the body’s own, natural defenses against the cancer. The latter, which Dad underwent for the better part of the first two years treating his lymphoma, is a general term applied to classify any number of drugs used to kill cancer cells directly (McCluskey, 2016).

Until Dad, I hadn’t thought much about these classifications and distinctions. Following the discovery of the results of Dad’s biopsy, I asked him if he’d mind granting me access to his electronic medical record online so that I could work more effectively to piece together the history of this horror in terms of what it indicates about where we’re at now and where we are likely to be going. Dad agreed with delight, and this delighted me in return, given that I had figured he would find this request impinging. But, Dad’s response disabused me of this fear almost immediately. He followed up a few days later with appropriate login information and instructions regarding how to access these records, even taking me through the process in-vivo.

Learning about the biopsy results has been chaotic and confusing. I don’t actually remember Dad ever saying to me something like: “It’s confirmed. The biopsy shows that the renal-cell carcinoma has returned,” which is then followed by an understandable period of education, grief, and adjustment. It’s likely that something like this transpired, but I don’t remember it

So far, as of today, much of the information I need to understand Dad’s situation I have been able to piece together on my own through random bits of material he’s communicated in conversations with him to date. With Dad’s chart at my disposal, I can find the clues I’m looking for to understand the highly-specialized medical jargon informing the process of diagnosis, treatment, and ultimately, prognosis.

I’m surprised as I realize that Dad’s lung cancer isn’t really lung cancer at all, but kidney cancer in his lungs. I had always assumed that “lung cancer,” as I often hear it thus called, was a special type of its own, and perhaps this is actually true, to an extent; but, Dad is not speaking of his “lung cancer,” as such, but as “renal-cell carcinoma,” which is, of course, cancer that originates in the kidneys.

Trying to work this out to decipher this information reminds me a bit of my introduction to studying Latin at the University of Utah my freshman year, where it seemed to me that I was working to understand both a new language and a language about how to learn the language simultaneously. For instance, today, Dad’s medical chart shows that “an acute embolism and thrombosis of deep veins of the upper extremity” was discovered after regular examination. This sounds serious, and I wonder what it means. I type it into Google, which turns up an information page published by the Mayo Clinic: “Deep vein thrombosis (DVT),” it says, “occurs when a blood clot (thrombosis) forms in one or more of the deep veins in your body, usually in your legs” (Mayo Foundation, 2020).

Upper extremity. This is Dad’s upper body? Upper arms? Is the extremity “upper” or is it the upper part of the extremity?

It continues: “…causes leg pain or swelling…” “ …can occur with no symptoms…”

Is Dad aware of this?

“You can get DVT if you have certain medical conditions that affect how your blood clots… can be very serious… blocking blood flow (pulmonary embolism)…”

Where did I see that: “pulmonary embolism”? Dad had this. “Pulmonary” means lungs of the lungs.

“When DVT and pulmonary embolism occur together, it’s called venous thromboembolism (VTE).”

Scientists must have fun naming things

An ancient monster.20

The following Saturday, I make use of a two-hour lunch break between appointments to venture down to the Barnes and Noble at DePaul University on State Street and Jackson. When I arrive, I locate a sales clerk in her later years named Mary and ask her if she can recommend any autobiographies, memoirs, and/or appropriate essays dealing with cancer. I tell her I want to learn as much as I can about what it is and how people are dealing with it.

“Yes, perhaps the best book on the topic, you know, if you’re looking for an essay, is this one,” she says, pulling The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010) off the shelf and handing it to me.

20 Mukherjee (2010) writes, “Even an ancient monster needs a name” (p. 46). He continues, “To name an illness is to describe a certain condition of suffering.”

“Thank you,” I encourage, before even glancing over the work. “This one looks like it will do nicely.” Mary also recommends the title When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016), and I add it to my short stack of resources.

I feel more inclined to buy these books because both authors have been considered for the Pulitzer Prize, and both are written by East Indian medical doctors. This generates some guilt, but my need for this type of justification is assuaged as I quickly flip through the pages of each, noting the comprehensive nature of the work written by Dr. Mukherjee. “A Biography of Cancer” it reveals. The index also shows that he has dedicated a nice chunk of the book to explaining the nature and treatment of Hodgkin’s lymphomas. Perfect.

I purchase them, provide Mary my phone number, and ask her to let me know if she can think of anything else. She agrees. As I leave the bookstore, I feel proud of the courteous nature of our interaction, as if the bulk, if not all of it, were up to me to make that happen.

A lion roars.

By now, Dad and I have become accustomed to regular phone conversations that typically include anything from conversing around follow-up questions I have or updates regarding his health. Today, December 16, 2018, I plan to speak with him about the latter. Dad and I had agreed to chat after I received a text from him the night before, alerting me to recent news that the tumors in his lungs have gotten bigger since September. I phone Dad, not sure what to expect.

“Tracy and I had an appointment with Dr. DeGreen,” Dad reports frankly after a few moments of initial pleasantry. “He explained that, oftentimes, when immunotherapy

is started with kidney cancer, you see what’s called a ‘tumor flare,’ which means it flares up sort of like a lion roaring when it’s being attacked.”

“That’s a helpful metaphor.”

“So, it’s better than I thought.”

“Wait, how is it better?!”

“DeGreen said that and I had heard this before but, he said that the kidney cancer that I have is not the most aggressive form. So, that’ s good news. And the second piece of good news is that the mantle-cell lymphoma is still in remission.”

“Oh, I see.” I don’t, really. “Well, that is good news!” Just play along.

I note to myself that Dad has already explained to me that he was in remission for the mantle-cell lymphoma. I wonder if he doesn’t remember it? Dad tends to repeat information afresh, failing to recall that he’d already communicated it well-enough beforehand.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I think.

I’m distracted. Stay focused.

I feel uncomfortable; false.

Maybe the moment is confusing for me, given that I have only been aware of this news for a little under two weeks such that it is not as much of a surprise to me as it is to Dad that the remission continues to carry. I think he wants me to join him in his excitement. Why is this hard for me?

“I asked him about the blood clot in my lung and he said it’s still showing a spot right where it was before, but it doesn’t seem to be nearly as big. He said it may just be dissolving. But, he told me that these issues are the last thing he’s worried about.”

“What issues?” I ask, still working to keep up.

“My heart and the clot.”

“Oh, yes. Right. Sure.” Pay attention, Dev.

“

So, they are going to continue with the regimen that I’m on and I go in again next Wednesday, right after New Year’s. Then, sometime in early February, they’ll do scans to see where I am at from there.”

“Well, kick its ass, Dad!” Good. Be encouraging.

“

As it stands right now, it was much more reassuring than it started out to be.”

He then explains that DeGreen was aware that Dad would be anxious about hearing the word “bigger” through voicemail. So, rather than provide updates by phone, he asked to see Dad face-to-face. This seems considerate enough for me, but I wonder why the doctor left such a charged message on Dad’s voicemail in the first place.

It occurs to me that Dad has spoken and continues to speak openly about his faith in Dr. DeGreen, which adds to my confidence that Dad is getting the best treatment possible. Both of us, perhaps, need this confidence, even if our needs in this regard stem from separate and distinct motivations, which is likely. For instance, mine seem to stem from the desire to keep emotional distance and avoid feeling overwhelmed It is as if to say: If Dad is getting the best treatment possible for his cancers, then it will keep moments where I don’t want to have to comfort him, but feel pressured to do so, to a nice minimum.

It seems that my focus on keeping Dad happy makes it rather impossible for me to really “lean in” to the experience that he’s having. This isn’t to say that I am unable to feel things with him, nor am I unable to mirror his feelings using appropriate descriptions.

On its own, these actions appear to be sufficient enough to help stabilize his moods and emotions. The procedure reminds me, to a point, of what occurs in my clinical work. I can feel what others are feeling without having the experiences that they are having, and such is the case with Dad, at least (or especially) when we are discussing matters of his health and treatment.

Sometimes, I think, these are the moments where Dad and I connect in ways for which I have been hungry most of my life, a process sported by the almost preternatural processes of empathic communication. Yet, I feel too centered around taking care of Dad’s emotions on struggling to keep, for him, what’s positive to him positive to me, and I wonder if this forecloses on facing the reality of Dad’s actual decline. I wonder if I am really present for him

“I trusted that DeGreen would have all the information for me,” Dad continues, “and he did. It looks like it’s just an anomaly that occurs with these tumors.

Immunotherapy makes them flare up for a while before they begin to break down.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” I guess.

“

So, Tracy and I went to breakfast afterward to process what we learned. We both kind of came away feeling like that was as good of news as we could get, and that ” “ Sure.”

“ that we’re going to rest on that hope.”

“That’s really great, Dad.” Good. Stay positive.

“If I only had mantle-cell lymphoma, I’d probably be looking at years of remission. Even if I had relapses, I would be able to pull back into remission for periods of time, even though it’s not curable. This lymphoma is not as life-threatening, though

not immediately as life-threatening as the kidney cancer. But, both of the drugs he’s giving me are maintenance drugs for both of these cancers. So, I should be keeping the mantle-cell in check for now. Hopefully, this will reverse itself according to what he’s said. Hopefully, this will all reverse itself.”

Dad’s voice is invigorated with optimism, and I feel I have been given no good reason to doubt him.

“Okay!” I force. “Well, I feel really great about this.”

“That’s the way he presented it. And I’ve decided well, we decided that this was good news. So, we went ahead and had breakfast.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Dad ”

And then, a sprinkle of something authentic seems to reveal itself amid the scrupulous, stressful turmoil of the last few minutes, and I feel at liberty enough to say, “I mean, what a rollercoaster, right?”

“It’s been that way for two and a half years now.”

It’s been that way for much longer than that, but let’s not ruin the moment.

As our conversation comes to an end, we promise to check in with one another later in the week. I’m relieved that Dad feels confident, but as I take a breath and rest into my body in a crude attempt to locate the underpinnings of what I have hitherto been setting aside, I locate a darker authenticity: This is Dad’s final engagement with hope, I envisage. Hope that his carcinoma will disappear and his lymphoma remains in remission; that he might have more time to mend the wounds of old battles, inside and out; that he will have the capacity to support himself, perhaps, and his health care needs as his treatment continues to unfold; that he might continue to feel the relief that comes

from when his oncologist reports to him that what looks really bad is really an indication of things moving promisingly forward.

But, what if I don’t share with him in these hopes? What if Dad can detect that I feel this way? And, what kind of person am I if that’s true?

Monday, December 17, 2018. A “lobulated left hilar mass extending into the left side of the mediastinum” is showing. Google results aren’t as forthcoming, but I remain steadfast in working to break it down. “The hilum” is where “the bronchi, arteries, veins, and nerves enter and exit the lungs” (Eldridge, 2021).

This must be where they found the first tumor.

The Father You Could Not Be

I wish I could bring a You into being, perhaps like Pygmalion’s statue. Though, wishing You is not the you I knew not the you I loved nor hated.

It’s a You of you that has never been Y/you, and inevitable time has abated.

It’s a You I would think myself proud to have: I would follow this You with honor find ease in His strength and confidence, I’d think find esteem in calling You “father.”

I dreamt up so much of this You in my youth. You persistently pressed in upon me.

When the smoke from the fire of It burned wholly on, did It touch not your senses and register, then?

If It thus did this real you, in fact and you did so much nothing about it, then what type of “you” would refuse to reply? Who lets it pass by not to grasp it?

It may be my wish is too awf’lly unfair, though keen and committed it is, to hunt, goes your boy, for the You that’s elsewhere so determined to find, if just in his mind, the You with whom you won’t compare.

What is more, I think you imagined in me, a person you never quite liked.

In me, I believe, you sniff’d your wide failures: your flops and your hazards, your missteps and blunders a cavernous futility. How hard that must be to see.

At three, it began as I pined for a fox, with a floofy, thin frame of orange and white. He stood on hind legs and went all about, to make what was wrong fin’lly right.21

21

Reitherman, W. (Producer, Director). (1973). Robin hood. [Motion picture]. United States: Buena Vista Distribution.

Not three years later, I found such a man, who lived in the dwelling below us.

I think he was gentle, restrained, and reserved so much to appear unassuming. His daughter he loved; his wife so esteeming, and this boy remained bereaving.

About the same time, as early as six, I learned of a velveteen rabbit, who’d learned to be real, he must first uncongeal, from his friend, who loved him exquisite 22 And thus, I could not comprehend nor fathom, why something so good should be lost. How friendship, hope, and love such as theirs, with the garbage and waste should be tossed.

This pining continued from one to the next, from Superman23 then to John Book.24 Some known, some obscure, but linked in like manner: They each help a boy feel safe and empowered.

By fourteen, this longing for You grew in heaps, from Willie,25 McGee26 to the ilk of Brig Day. In them I found You a you that I knew, a you of You that they keenly portray.

In some of these men, I found pride from their greatness; I wished to be in on that. But, mostly they gave me a hope all about the You that might bloom into wholesome, full-format.

And thusly, I travelled from this You to that, cycling ’round singular spells of despair pining and hoping,

22 Williams, M. (2017/1922). The velveteen rabbit: Or how toys become real. London, UK: Suzeteo Enterprises.

23 Spengler, P. (Producer). Donner, R. (Director). (1978). Superman: The movie. [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Brothers.

24 Feldman, E.S. (Producer). Weir, P. (Director). (1985). Witness. [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures.

25 Daigler, G., Lupovitz, D., & Richter, W.D. (Producers). Richter, W.D. (Director). (1991). Late for dinner. [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures.

26 Ziskin, L. (Producer). Haines, R. (Director). (1991). The doctor. [Motion picture]. United States: Touchstone Pictures.

longing and coping with faith that this you might repair.

I’ve grown rather wary, in the night of your life, so much that I’ve wanted release, in fact, from the onerous truth that’s implied here: To be locked in a process I never quite chose, of all things in reference to Y/you. They emerge in how I think and act how I hope and for what I wish.

And now, I feel summoned to release this desire, and let be the You that could never be you: the sketch of a father to uphold and inspire, the You that became so inwardly dire.

And, I know, in some way, that this You he exists. I’ve seen him be father to others. And that haunts me more than it bothers.

Dreaming of “Y/you.”

The new year comes and goes. Trump is arguing now that Congress should pay for his ridiculous, asinine wall, and the news is reporting that this will likely lead to a government shutdown. I can’t help but feel a seething surge of concentrated hatred for the president that I don’t believe I have ever felt for another human being before, stretching my emotional capacity and putting me into direct touch with parts of myself that I didn’t know or have the courage to admit existed. I feel justified in my hatred, however, because I am actively convinced that Trump will go down as the most inept, destructive president in American history. This man is the fucking antichrist.

It is a Sunday morning, which means that Joel is playing volleyball with the Chicago Metropolitan Sports Association, a league established for and comprised of gay athletes. Today he’s competing in a tournament, which means he’ll likely be out for most

of the day. I use the time to review the contents of the conversations between Dad and I since they began for us back in September. I note that, in total, I have recorded about six hours of irreplaceable dialogue that has transpired between us, either by phone, videochat, or during visits to Pennsylvania.

As I survey our conversations, I notice that they are covering a rather bulky and diverse wealth of topics, including updates on Dad’s medical history and present care, and memories of his past. I have asked him about why he decided to marry (and divorce) my mother twice. Rather than answering the question directly, however, he has provided an account of the history of his education, and the reasons for repudiating a career in baseball and elementary education before landing in clinical psychology. We’ve also talked about his parents’ relationship and the double-bind in which he felt placed over the issue of religion, given my grandparents’ avid disagreement around what church Dad should join. Dad addresses the history of his financial ups and downs and what’s in between of mortgages and debts, his consulting business, and of working for the government vis-à-vis the Apache Tribe in the White Mountains of Arizona.

As I review our dialogues, I am impressed to find that I am wrong about my initial judgment of them. Dad and I are not at odds quite as much as I had thought, nor are we talking past one another in our usual fashion. I notice that we’re conversing as if on a team or in a partnership, especially as we discuss as I work to understand his state of health, progress, and prognosis. I think Dad can sense that I care about him. I am delighted as I realize that our newfound collaboration seems to resemble the type of alliance I work to build with my patients something that I consider of necessary value for delivering an effective treatment.

I also recognize that there are many questions that remain that I want to discuss with Dad. The urgency that stimulated this enterprise has been ever-increasing at a steady pace, where I feel that time is certainly not on my side. The struggle is real to balance this urgency with what I know I am capable of. As much as I can muster it, I contemplate, I need to face what’s hard to face to dive into it and up the ante with him a bit.

Later that afternoon, I pop up some Kirkland-brand, microwave popcorn, grab a sugar-free soda, and with Milo curled up at my side, I watch a film with which I connected a great deal when it was first released. The movie is an obscure one, which never really made any meaningful headlines, titled My Life (Lowry, Rubin, & Zucker, 1993), featuring Michael Keaton and Nichole Kidman.

As I view it again, now several years since the last time, I marvel as I make some thematic correlations: Michael Keaton plays a character named Bob who is dying from a form of cancer that he reports, at the beginning of the film, “started in the kidneys and has spread to his lungs” (Lowry et al., 00:06:04). Bob’s doctors have given him a prognosis of not more than a few months to live. Moreover, his wife, Gail, is pregnant with their first child. So, Bob begins filming himself, talking to his camcorder so that his son-to-be will have the chance to know him

In these recordings, Bob imparts little pearls of great price that any conscientious father might want to impart to his developing son. For example, Bob shows him how to shave. He demonstrates how to shake someone’s hand properly, draw a technical foul in basketball, and jump-start a car. He reads stories to him. He discusses types of music, their family history through photographs, and his sentiments regarding the possibility that

Gail will remarry. Throughout the film, Bob appears focused on even preoccupied with a keen desire for his son to know him.

Why is it so important why does it seem to matter in such a way for a boy to know his father or for a father to be known by his boy? Bob is driven by something virtuous as he catalogues his thoughts, feelings, impressions about life and such as he imparts wisdom to his unborn child before his child is born and the father is dead. Where does this come from? What’s the instinct that drives this? Narcissism? Mania? Love?

How do we know that our boys need us to engage with them? And, what is infinitely more urgent, what on earth blocked my father from tapping into and being driven by this instinct?

I was 14 when the film came out, just a season before Dad would sit us all down that early April of the following year to reveal he’d been diagnosed with and would be undergoing invasive treatment for his deadly kidney cancer. I hadn’t made the central connection between the film and my father quite yet, perhaps because I didn’t think at the time that Dad was going to die. But, I can’t overstate how much the film meant to me during that time that fall of 1993. I showed it to everyone I cared about. I watched it alone on Saturday nights. I listened to the film score to help me relax. In my solitary moments, as if it were something I could actually achieve or something that was even due to me, I held tightly to the desire for the type of character Keaton and the creators of the film had fed to me and taught me were possible. I idealized Bob, you see, and I never made the obvious connection between this father and my own, until now.

My question about instinct isn’t nearly as significant to me than what it meant for me, at fourteen (and now, perhaps), to pine for the type of paternal devotion that Bob

expresses to his boy so liberally throughout the film. Bob is gripped by the ambition to leave something for his son to cling to in the days, weeks, months, and years of his life without him. He is of singular focus.

I needed Bob to be my father.

I needed my parents to love and support each other in the way Bob and Gail did.

I needed my dad to love me in the way Bob loved his unborn son.

I begin to realize that I have failed to properly mourn the losses of my father, even though he is still alive. Evidence of those losses is clear to me, given my understanding of melancholia, and especially due to the fact that I don’t really know what those losses are. My parents divorced when I was six. Mom then moved us from Utah to Arizona to be closer to her family. I remember her grief. I think I identified with it. A few years later, Dad and mom were remarried, Danny was born, but they divorced again five years later when I was fourteen. Are these losses rooted in practical adjustments that occurred around these matters? Dad stayed in Utah after the first divorce, for a time, then moved to Arizona to be closer to us. After the second divorce, he quit his job with the Apaches and moved to the Phoenix valley. Perhaps.

At this point, I know that my experience of pining for Dad created a torrential storm for me, indeed. Watching the film today reminds me of this. It was a pining of a singular sort that began as early as three and lasted until the end of my twenties. I never doubted that it was rooted in the loss of my living parent, even though it seemed I was grieving something that, quite frankly, resembled the bereavement following his death.

My work with Dad no longer seems to be about gathering the stories of his life and family history, alone, nor is it merely about working to follow up on his treatment.

No, it seems to be more about my demand for a different type of relationship with him that yields a different sort of relational consequence between us. I need him to leave me with something about himself that is of great substance, so that I can, at the very least, understand what I have been dealing with in my history of the multifarious absences and losses of my now, nearly-dead father. I need to work it through better, whether it has been effected by divorce, emotional and/or physical abuse, or something I haven’t yet identified.

I realize that I’m not over this yet and time is running out.

Dead fathers, part two.

Over the next few days, I begin freewriting around the effects that grandpa’s death seems to have had on my father and me. Sketches around this idea begin to constellate into broader themes that quickly become an outline for a paper that I decide to write and submit to the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) that will meet in Urbana-Champaign later this year. I title it Dead Fathers

“

In his work on loss and the developing ego,” I compose, “Freud showed that the experience of losing a loved one can propel one to unconsciously bring the experience of the lost person in, which institutes the foundations of his personality.” I then continue to say, “It is a melancholic attempt of the psyche to preserve the one who has been lost and to save the formative experiences that one has had in relationship with the lost figure” (Hite, 2019, p. 4).

The resonance of this last statement is vivid to me, as if I have been visited and enraptured by an archaic genius something purely intelligent. The bedrock of Dad’s

focus, it seems to impart, has always been to preserve the internal experience of his lost object. It has not been to attend to your emotional needs as his son.

This possession hits me rather hard, and I must pause for a moment I bury my head in my hands. I can feel warmth in the palms of them as they gently pat my eyelids, now closed. My fingers brush against the infantile hairlings that cover my baldy, glabrous scalp, while my thumbs stroke the temples of my head, now entreated in unison. I take deep breaths, mostly through my nose, going in and out, back and forth. I recall the skills

I acquired while completing a ten-day, Vipassana meditation course in the summer of 2014, as I practice noticing cold air going into my lungs and the warm out going out of them.

True, you didn’t know how to ask him for your needs True, you didn’t even think you wanted them from him. But, you can see the evidence of it both that you needed him and wanted him in all that time through your early and late childhood, adolescence, and even as a young adult. And perhaps, even perhaps you need and want him now.

But, this thought is really just a whisper, if I can detect it even at all. Contemplating Freud’s paper has stimulated, mostly for me, insight regarding the reality of Dad’s primary motivations, not my own. My focus, to be precise, remains on what was blocked with him, rather than on what I need or want from him, both prior to and during these operations.

Yet, there is a benefit in this. I begin to see the role that baseball (and other sports), as well as Dad’s political preoccupations and loyalties, have played in stultifying the bondedness in our history together. Another type of intelligence starts to materialize:

“Loyalties” now, there’s the rub! Loyalties to inanimate objects that cannot provide a return. His loyalty, I continue to begrudge, functions like the rabid, feral effects of a toxic street drug, singularly possessing the mind of the beholder and driving it mad with the desire for more of it, even unto death (And, like all such substances, it either annihilates or forecloses upon the relationships in your life in Dad’s life in my life.)

I reason that Dad must have foreclosed upon father-son activities that could have developed vibrant forms of intimacy between us, and he did this because he presumed they would threaten the preservation of those he had built and internalized with his now dead father. Dad’s refusal to mourn, therefore, must underscore the reckless mishandling of our relationship.

These are not just activities, though, I add, but relational qualities of involvement between two people that extend beyond or provide a unifying meaning to them. Nevertheless, whether unconsciously or not (the latter is unthinkable), this forfeiture was brutal for me.

In my youth my early adolescence, that is I played baseball, soccer, and football for a season each. I don’t remember that Dad and I ever practiced together, even when I played baseball. That is, I don’t remember playing a game of catch with my dad. I don’t remember Dad giving me pointers on how to hit the ball this way or that. I can’t remember that he provided me with useful pep talks after practices or games that would help season any hint of talent I might have inherited for them. If he tried, I was likely resistant to it. I do remember his pride how he cheered me on with the other Dads rather permissively. I remember the way he defended me in my hyperbolic sensitivity to

the clumsy, banal reprimands of my little-league, football coach. (I think I missed a block or catch or something.)

“Can you please be a little more careful with how you direct my son?” Dad requested. “He’s a little more sensitive than the rest.”

“I can tell,” replied my coach.

For the first time in my life, as I write, I begin to clarify who my father is to me. I begin to become acquainted with the great thrill of comprehending him better as I toil about working to formulate my ideas and representations of him. I am bringing my father into colorful being with a voice of my own, and I feel empowered by it.

And yet, at the same time, I begin to access something slightly darker and more sinister. I begin to fear, that is, that my thoughts and ideas will induce an emotional collapse in my father, should he ever get wind of them. As I contemplate the historical nature of Dad’s reception to my creative ideas, I grow very anxious. Memories begin to materialize that seem to capture the usual mechanics of our discourse.

Toward the end of the summer before my first year at Yale, Dad and I took a memorable road trip across the country after I graduated from the University of Utah. He did this to help me relocate from Salt Lake City to New Haven. It was 2006.

Dad and I dutifully loaded up a small, rented, ten-foot-long, U-Haul truck with my personal things, including a hatch for my car. I didn’t realize until later how much it had made him anxious to have that obnoxious, ramshackle of a Plymouth Colt attached to the truck as we navigated across the great plains of the USA. We braved a few storms and maneuvered through a handful of larger cities (my first contact with Chicago was one of them), and we did so without incident.

For the most part, I think we had a good time together. Dad snores pretty loudly, so I had to retreat to the hotel closet both nights of the journey to recover some rest (earplugs weren’t doing the trick), about which we later joked each other a bit, making light of the sore neck and back that I’d been suffering as a result. Until we broke the first major leg of our voyage at Dad’s house in Pennsylvania, conversations with him were amiable and fun, undeterred even by his abiding fear of incurring problems as a result of the car in tow.

We spent a few days in Lancaster before embarking on the remaining, four-hour leg of our trek through New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut that would land us in New Haven just in time for orientation. As we drove through the condensed traffic of the New Jersey Pike, as if to provoke him (Reik, 1941), I made a remark about the overwhelming pollution in the air. This triggered a hot and distressing discussion between us around climate change.

“Devan,” he lectured with increasing vitriol, “in the 1970s, it was global cooling; now, it’s global warming. They can’t make up their minds. The whole issue is nothing but a socialist conspiracy invented by those who want to take away everyone’s economic freedom. The fact that you can’t see that proves that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A penetrating sense of despair and melancholic disappointment pierced the pit of my stomach as I realized, again, what Dad has chosen to believe. With full and active refusal to accept that this is my father, I recognized, however, that I wanted to overturn the conversation; yet, this seemed like a copout. If I can reason with him, I figured, I can make him what he is supposed to be

“Who is ‘they,’ Dad?” I confronted. “Can you pinpoint that for me?”

“Who do you think I’m talking about?! They the liberals the liberal media the liberal think tanks. People like Al Gore.”

“Well, it’s just ”

“ Do you know where Al Gore lives?” Dad challenged petulantly, as if pundit on Fox News. Jolted by Dad’s interruption, I hesitated, except to ask him, “What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you, because you don’t know He lives in Florida.”

“So?”

“He lives in one of the areas of the country that would be decimated over if global warming were really a thing.”

“What is that supposed to prove?”

“It proves that you and any of these other nutheads don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“So, the overwhelming data that we have at our disposal is all a global, economic conspiracy because what? Al Gore has a house in Florida?”

“Ah, Devan, fuck you!” Fuck me, indeed. “You don’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about!”

At this point, I had realized that continuing in this competitive brawl with Dad would yield little, if anything at all, except to deepen the quagmire that I felt I was already in with him. But, nothing of value would come of it, and I knew this. Fighting him squabbling with him seemed useless, yet I also felt ashamed of the fact that I had allowed myself to become small and powerless before him. Ashamed of the fact that

I didn’t have more data at my disposal to throw at him. Ashamed that, even if I did, he wouldn’t change his views, but rather become deflated, small, and powerless in himself. Fighting with Dad over these issues accomplished nothing more than a zero-sum outcome of defeat. The choice with Dad has always been to either submit to his aggression and deflate therein, or to pound him just hard enough (mostly to get him to back off) so as to induce the same small, deflated, powerless outcome in him. This, the latter outcome, always felt to be much, much worse.

Nevertheless, Dad would not lay off. Instead, he persisted in saying, “You’re a fool, Devan. You don’t have a single, unique idea of your own.”

“Okay,” I implored. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“That’s your choice, but if you want to have a real conversation with me about this, we can have it; but, until you do the research for yourself, there’s nothing else to say.”

No, Dad. What you mean to say is: Until I agree with your sordid and sociallydestructive ideas, I have nothing valid to offer. You are the epitome of coercion by default.

I should note that use of the expletive “fuck” or “fuck you” was considered the very worst in our household while growing up, next to taking the name of God in vain This was due to a standard that my mom set for us that we all observed rather faithfully. When my parents would fight, following or observing principles of discourse similar to what Dad and I just exhibited, they seldom employed either obscenity, which showed a remarkable modicum of restraint in an otherwise chaotic and gruesome row. Moments when they did indicated to me that something very wrong is about to happen.

Some of the worst fights between them transpired, ironically, on a Sunday afternoon, following a jubilant day of cleaning the house together inside and out as a family. Sometimes, silverware were thrown across the table I recall, once, a mayonnaise jar exploded on the wall just behind Dad’s head, missing mom’s intended trajectory by an inch or two. Stains from the oil in the dressing remained baked into the wood of that wall, so much that, years later, as we were moving out, someone noted with a keen penchant for dark humor, something like: “I see these stains have lingered quite nicely.”

So, to hear Dad hurl “fuck you” in such a context suggests to me that he was exceptionally furious with me and determined to achieve an outcome that no longer assumed my relevance nor, perhaps, my humanity.

For the remainder of the trip to New Haven, Dad descended into a guilt-ridden, depressive slump from which I was unable to rescue him. A thick plume of self-defeated misery consumed his countenance, as if Pig-pen’s characteristic cloud of dirt and debris (Melendez, 1965). He spoke very little, while I withdrew into hypomanic fantasy of what my future might hold without him in it.

Meanwhile, the echoes of Dad’s assessment of who I am, even now, continue to reverberate: “You’re selfish, Devan!” and how I loathe the way he pronounces this adjective, with the hard and intractable vowel: “selfēēsh.” But, most of all, I hear the reiterations of his judgment of me of my ideas as if to say: “You are stupid, ignorant, and ineffective at putting together anything to say, to me or anyone else, that has any value whatsoever.” Then, coupled with, “now, fuck off!”

I finalize some edits, read the paper over carefully, and then submit it to the appropriate organizational group for the ICQI conference. If it’s accepted, I will work up

the courage to share it with Dad before I present it. I will ask him for his thoughts and feelings about what I have written, along with his permission to read it publicly to others. I hope he will celebrate what I have become capable of doing with my ideas.

Fait Accomplii27

“Which tumor is bigger?” Dad asks Dr. DeGreen.

“All of them have gotten bigger.”

February 6, 2019: 206 days before Dad’s death.

Joel and I have arrived in Pennsylvania again, and I am with Dad, now, at the Lancaster Cancer Center for one of his regular treatments. After a short wait in the lobby, we are greeted by Dr. DeGreen.

At this point, I have heard so much about him that he has become iconic, almost surreal, as a notable personality in the cast of Dad’s caretakers. Yet, I’m surprised when I first meet him. Dr. DeGreen is shorter than I’d imagined and more eccentric in appearance. He features a strong, handsome face with a striking smile and dark complexion. His hair is also dark and long, and I imagine him putting it up in a kind of confident “man-bun,” but today it’s in a ponytail. The name “DeGreen” is not Native American, of course, but this is how he appears to me perhaps, as if his heritage were a cross between Italian and American Indian.

27 From Rando (1986): “In the field of grief and bereavement, the focus of intervention is usually on assisting the survivor to cope with a fait accompli, and there is nothing that he or she can do to alter the situation” (p. 4). Then, she writes, “Each of these losses is a fait accompli and this is what is meant by anticipatory grief entailing mourning over losses in the past” (p. 15). Here, the title is written in the plural form of the noun, as this section is meant to show a series of such events that are moving rapidly toward events that neither Dad nor I have any option but to accept that they are transpiring.

As we arrive in the consulting room, Dad indicates to DeGreen that he’s been out of breath lately, coughing more and feeling pressure behind his sternum: “It feels like I have my pneumonia coming back,” he reports. “I’m coughing green and yellow junk, and sometimes there’s blood.”

DeGreen normalizes Dad’s symptomatology, casually connecting this pressure to his previous statement that Dad’s tumors have grown. “That’ll make sense if you have obstructed airway. But,” DeGreen concedes, “I’ll put you on an antibiotic today, just in case.”

“Can you do that?” Dad asks, as if impressed by DeGreen’s decisive, plucky selfconfidence and air of authority.

“Yeah, of course, ” he replies; his response is humble and optimistic.

They appear to be on a team, as if they have configured their relationship in such a way as to become meaningful for both of them, even beyond the professional dynamics of it. DeGreen strikes me as someone who’d be coaching a little league team or women’s volleyball, and this folds nicely into what I imagine to be Dad’s expectation for the type of authority to which he’s only too glad to submit. Likewise, DeGreen appears to have maneuvered well into this dynamic with Dad, and it plays well for both of them, mostly toward sustaining a mutually-machinated objective, it seems, to deny the abject horror of the evident state of affairs before us: that Dad’s carcinoma tumors have irrevocably grown.

“We’ve got to think about a different drug,” DeGreen sports, again, with peculiar composure, “and it’s gonna be horrible. It’s not gonna be an IV anymore.”

“So, I gooped myself up for nothing today?” Dad jokes

To “goop” himself up before treatment means to prepare the infusion port that is stationed on Dad’s upper chest, just below his clavicle bone. The port, which is inserted under the skin and is not removed, allows his doctors easy and reliable access to the subclavian vein, just off the superior vena cava. The port is a doorway for both administering regular treatments and drawing blood.

Dad seems, to me, more disappointed in the fact that he had needlessly prepped himself for today’s treatment than with the awful news we just received that his immunotherapy, which held such promise for him, has failed entirely to stop the progression of his illness.

Dr. DeGreen then sets forth some options for Dad. The main one is to start him on a new chemotherapy treatment called Sutent, a drug that he informs can be taken orally. He describes that, due to the intolerant nature of the drug, Dad would need to be monitored closely. The side-effects of Sutent, and those like it, DeGreen also notes, usually include skin rashes, liver function problems, and problems with blood pressure.

“That’s not very good with my heart,” Dad states, sounding more realistic now.

“No, but it’s necessary,” DeGreen presses. “Your heart is beating against a tumor mass, which is already limiting blood flow to the rest of your body.”

Dad listens with his head slumped down. It is difficult to tell, but his body language reminds me of the sort carried by the young boy, beleaguered with the type of disappointment he might feel recognizing that his father will not make it after all to an important game or a promised camping trip. His comportment communicates this or any number of the sort of grievances that really matter at that age: denial of access to a muchanticipated visit to a favorite waterpark or playground, losing a game in which he’d

invested great significance, or displays of defeat while burdened with guilt for making a mistake.

I place my left arm around Dad’s shoulders from aside, seeking to comfort him by rubbing the top of his back with supportive affection. This feels awkward to me, as my gesture is, albeit, somewhat forced; but, I am glad to see that Dad appears able to allow it to soothe him.

DeGreen then moves to his computer to access Dad’s chart. Likely to lighten the mood, he banters a bit about Nancy Pelosi’s overdetermined applause for President Trump the night before during the State of the Union. It appears that he favors Dad’s politics, and has, perhaps, learned how to employ discussion of them to make connections with him

Dad quickly redirects the conversation, however, as if protecting my experience of meeting his treatment-center family with the hope that it will not be soured by mention of support for conservative politics: “Devan, my son, here,” Dad informs with pride, “knows everything we all know about my health. He’s gone over my records and all of the scans. He’s as well-versed in this as anybody. He’s also my power of attorney.” Then, as if to sum up, Dad adds: “He’s just in town to help me out this week.”

Dr. DeGreen is unaffected by Dad’s comments. Instead, he has diverted focus toward reviewing and inputting information into Dad’s chart, which generates a pregnant silence as the moment passes through the space between us. At that moment, Lori Gerhart, the nurse manager, joins us.

“Dr. DeGreen, can I ask you a question?” I inquire, undeterred by the nurse’s interruption. He takes a moment to register my petition before signaling for me to continue.

“If I understand right,” I press on, “my dad has two forms of cancer and both of them are terminal. I get that you have been treating his lymphoma and that it is otherwise in remission, now, and that the renal carcinoma tumors in his lungs are the most urgent, you know, for these treatments. You’re talking about putting him on Sutent, and it sounds like that might help, but at what point is it right for us to, you know, stop treatment? I mean, when is enough enough, you know?”

DeGreen’s composure shifts as he turns himself so as to face the two of us directly, nurse Lori indirectly at his left side. I feel, now, as if I have spoken out of turn, which propels me to examine Dad’s response for any indication of how I may have offended him or erred in my judgment. It feels a bit like I’m in the principal’s office.

As I turn toward Dad, I see that there is a pain in his eyes that seems to reveal a combination of mortal fatigue and surprise. Life has worn him out. Death seems almost welcome, as if he has been fighting to survive these illnesses out of duty rather than an abject instinct or passion for his own life. That passion is something that I have never witnessed in him, really, even before or beyond his cancer-free moments. Enough may very well be, now, enough.

“Dad?” I ask. “Have I spoken out of turn?”

“No, Devan, you have not,” he replies, now more subdued in the depressive grief all of us have been working to avoid. “Truth is, I have been feeling a terrible increase in pain lately, especially throughout my chest and arms. I feel tired all the time. I’m not

hungry when I should be. I’m forty pounds lighter than I have been in twenty or thirty years. I feel ”

Dad appears overwhelmed or perhaps fearful, himself, of overwhelming us

“It’s okay, Dad.” I say, attempting to encourage him.

“I feel that I understand why people give up, you know?”

“Yes, I do,” DeGreen interjects.

“You’re conditioned by the time you’re a kid,” Dad continues, “to go to the doctor and the doctor will give you medicine and it will make you feel better. But, this stuff doesn’t work that way. After a while, you get tired of not feeling well. I mean, I am tired of not feeling well.”

“Mark, my job isn’t to ” “ In everything I’ve ever done,” Dad advances, “the side effects to the chemo and all of the diagnostics have felt far worse than anything I’ve felt with the tumors.”

“Mark, my job is not to pump you full of drugs,” DeGreen states with determined confidence. “If you’re getting tired of this tired of getting therapy from me you’ve gotta let me know.”

“Well, what’s the alternative?” Dad inquires. Death. The alternative is death.

“Have you considered supportive care services,” Lori interjects, “while you’re taking the treatments?”

“I’ve, um,” Dad collects himself. “I’ve received information about them from the Center and the care team has already reached out to me.”

Lori, as if she didn’t hear Dad, proceeds to clarify the bones of supportive services anyway, noting how they can help him through the grueling side effects of a new treatment like Sutent. I grow annoyed as she does this. When health professionals attempt to sell an intervention with the obnoxious insistence of a used car salesman, I tend to wonder what’s up. I believe that Dad has just indicated his desire to surrender to his inevitable prognosis, I am thinking to myself, and DeGreen has encouraged him to indicate as much if Dad reasons that doing so is expedient. Why are we not going this direction?

I then begin to wonder if nurse Lori is responding to the observation of Dad’s lack of passion for his life that I stumbled upon just moments earlier. And I wonder if she’s mirroring a feeling or reaction that I have otherwise learned to disavow over a lifetime of exposure to it as my father’s son. Perhaps, she is frustrated because she doesn’t want Dad to give up. As if to mock the grief that a more direct realization of this truth might otherwise arouse, my thoughts devalue her natural inclinations with something like, Oh dear, foolish woman! You aren’t going to be able to arouse this man’s passion for himself and for his life. The time has long passed, and the latencies of this depressive withdrawal, now realistic to his actual circumstances, go far deeper and are far more intractable and resistant to anything you’d be able to say or do than you’ll ever know

Even so, nurse Lori’s albeit subdued frustration with Dad perturbs me.

Dr. DeGreen excuses himself at just the point I would think he’d interject a reminder that Dad does not have to continue with treatment, essentially ending his care. I’m surprised that he doesn’t, but I quickly readjust my performance so as not to appear impolite or ungrateful before he vacates the examination room. I thank him. I express

gratitude for his work. I observe and fulfill the fantasy of what I believe Dad would want of me. Perhaps, an important moment is lost for us, into which I could have helped us to face something together by following our guts rather than working to appear socially pleasant and polite The moment passes, though, before I can apprehend it, as my instinct is so often to be all-too conversationally safe over sorry.

“Thanks for being here for him,” DeGreen offers, speaking to me.

“No, I should thank you,” I hasten to add. “Dad speaks very highly of you and the care he’s received. Thank you for being here for him.”

DeGreen then attempts to boost my dad’s confidence and mood. Dad’s response to this is less promising than I think DeGreen would like, but DeGreen persists: “You’ve gotta move to Wyoming, man! Gotta take me with you, remember?!”

It appears that DeGreen has adopted Dad’s vision, which impresses me. He says, “That’s my dream, brother, to go off the grid!”

It may be because Dad wanted so much to believe this was a possibility, or it is an expression of Dad’s almost autistic dedication to speaking too literally about such matters. It may even be that Dad is feeling fatigued by the death of hope, but whichever it is, Dad’s response churns within me a rueful cocktail of anger and disappointment: “Nah, it’s not gonna happen anymore. I’ve taken my house off the market.”

Mr. Roaring Spring.

As the appointment comes to an end, Dad asks me if I would like to tour the facility and meet more of the staff. I agree. Within moments, we enter the infusion room where treatment occurs. It is comfortable and pleasant, sporting a country-home appearance with plaques on the wall that I imagine are designed to encourage patients.

One says: “Believe, Dream, Wish.” Another: “Because If You Keep Hope Alive, It Will Keep You Alive.” Then, I spot the quintessential: “Live, Laugh, Love” affixed confidently alongside them

These maxims generally appear vacuous to me Meeting with them annoys me rather than encourages a mood that I can readily accept to be an expression of my avoidant cynicism. Yet, they also seem to supply or embolden a type of manic flight from the very real and palpable grief that one would inevitably be forced to endure while receiving treatments there while sitting patiently in these nicely-dressed, specialized chairs for hours per visit, plugged into machines that dole out steady doses of this brownish-orange liquid, hoping for a miracle. It is difficult for me to join them in this.

“What do you think of these, Dad?” I ask, excising all hints of this cynicism from my tone.

“What, the quotes on the wall?” Dad squints from afar, struggling to read them. “I’ve got to get new glasses,” he notes, semi-exasperated.

A nurse whose name I have forgotten (she looks to me like a Susan or Cheryl) passes by the two of us and Dad introduces me to her with enthusiasm. I can see that they are well-acquainted that she has developed a friendly relationship with him as a person that she can rely on for a pleasant, emotional boost.

Dad appears to make the staff feel good about themselves and the work they are doing, to the point that I feel a portion of pride in him. In social situations like this, he is at his very best, and I feel grateful that I have this example to emulate, grateful that I come from this stock an inheritance of the talents and gifts of “Mr. Roaring Spring,”

the well-adjusted social pillar of one’s community. It’s Jimmy Stuart in Bedford Falls. It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946).

Several nurses join in the congenial moment that Dad has created, introducing me to each of them with eagerness and pride. I feel shown off, but not embarrassed by it or only a sprinkle of this, at any rate. I have adjusted to this behavior as it accompanied most social encounters that involved Dad and me together in the months following my acceptance to Yale: “This is my son, Devan. He just got into Yale,” or “he’s going to Yale.” It didn’t seem to matter that I was embarking on a course in the liberal arts that was impractical to him not in these moments. Dad was proud of me, if only because of the institution I’d been connected with, and I wonder if somehow this pride has altered the chemistry of whatever deficits we’ve endured.

Conflicting demands.

As we venture back to Dad’s house, I alert my siblings by text message to the news that Dad’s prognosis has deteriorated and that we should “prepare” ourselves. I invite them to call when they are free so that we can discuss it together.

Curiously, I don’t feel sad. Instead, I seem more in the game I’m playing than ever. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in, yet. Until this point, based on the films I’ve grown up watching, I had always assumed that doctors would give dying patients a prognosis of a specific window of time that they have to live, especially when dealing with cancer. Dr. DeGreen and Nurse Lori were both helpful and confusing in this regard.

Is Dad going to die soon? Next month? Next year?

Both spoke as if there were some hope to extend Dad’s life a bit, but at a terrible cost that seems unnecessarily torturous. Dad’s options now appear either about working

to keep him alive at such a cost or to forego treatment and work to provide as much of a meaningful and a painless death as possible.

Later that night, as I’m preparing for bed, lyrics of the song Gethsemane from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar begin to spontaneously play in my head, which resemble the Easter verses from the New Testament: “Take this cup away from me, for I don’t want to taste its poison. Feel it burn me. I have changed, I’m not as sure as when we started” (Jewison & Stigwood, 1973, 01:01:56; see also New Revised Standard Version Bible, 2006, Luke, 22:40-44).

Take this cup away … its poison … feel it burn me It burns the insides.

As an aspiring vocalist in my youth, I felt the musical was sacrilegious and I avoided it out of guilt for loving its melancholic, aeolian composition. Now, I connect to it, but, it seems, more on behalf of my father. I imagine Dad in treatment, laughing with the nurses and working a cheery attitude that is meant to elevate his and the moods of others around him, all the while sporting these bi-monthly treatments on his own. He seems to have made a logical family (Maupin, 2017) for himself, which inspires me, yet I’m also haunted by the discordant images of hope and despair.

The governing dynamics that underscore most my thoughts today and this evening seem guided by the mandate to appease something brutal, harsh, and coercive within me. Is it God? Dad? I squirrel about internally to locate the right or proper emotional disposition, guided almost entirely by the ongoing pressures in the heart of the question of who I am supposed to be and what role I am supposed to play. I notice an ambivalence to either use my capacity to generate and provide support for Dad, or, the

aspect of this I can barely detect because it’s unthinkable i.e., to bolt from him and let the pieces of this process fall where they may on their own terms.

Fighting for life seems absurd; submitting to death seems reasonably acceptable, even gratifying, yet dark and macabre. I feel confused by my role Is it wrong, I wonder, that I am comforted by the thought of Dad’s death? Is it wrong that the strongest emotion

I feel lately is the delight that I might be useful in helping to facilitate a process that is so incomprehensibly real and intractable?

There is comfort in speaking with my siblings about the assumed prognosis. Comfort in helping Dad make plans as if I must be Dad now, if only from a thoughtful and attentive distance. I feel like the supporting role in a well-cast play of absurd, conflicted characters, because at no point, yet, in this epic drama, have I felt the reality the consummate and absolute reality that Dad will likely, actually, die. I can’t wake up. I can’t break in to whatever emotions or moods that comprehension of this might generate. I can’t seem to be more than simply a role, because I can’t locate myself outside the security of being whatever and whomever I am supposed to be. And as the dying process begins to materialize, I can scarcely catch the feeble and languid whispers of the terrible dread that seems to underlie it

Dead fathers, part three.

In the early hours of the morning, a few days later, I wake up with the grumbling desire for a bowl of cereal, even knowing perfectly as much that Joel and I have planned to make Dad and Tracy a traditional, Hite breakfast of French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon later this morning. I harbor no conscious, ill-intent to spoil these plans, I rationalize, but the remaining bowl or two of Captain Crunch Berries waiting eagerly in

the pantry to be consumed can’t possibly blunt my morning appetite. So, I slink out of bed so as to go undetected (and, thus, so as not to be forced to confess to Joel my wily, early-morning scheme). Before I can follow through, however, my bustling around in the kitchen provokes a response from the adjacent living room.

“Is someone there?” I hear. It’s Dad and he’s awake.

“Yes, Dad. It’s me.” I respond, guilty as charged.

I put the box back in the cupboard and investigate. “Is everything okay? You’re up pretty early.”

“I’ve been getting up earlier lately.”

“Oh? How come?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m afraid of dying.” But, Dad doesn’t say this with a tone of acceptance. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He appears to be berating himself, as if he believes that one should be ashamed of the fear of death.

I become distracted. I notice atop one of the steely and resolute, white, colonialstyle shelves that Dad installed last year between the windows of his living room one of the many steps in the grand renovation of his home that there remains a modest nativity scene leftover from the holidays. The creche is humble, adorned with simple, humble characters and a star above it with two lights inside that remain brightly lit.

“You guys hanging on to Christmas?” I ask, taking a seat across from him.

“I’m hanging on to my life, Devan,” Dad replies.

I’m not sure what to say to Dad’s challenge I am even embarrassed as I receive it; but, I find the instinct to transform into the comportment of my professional role

quickly rescues me from expelling the untoward sensation of my embarrassment in what could normally be rather divisive and destructive.

“I was just thinking about the trips we’d take to Roaring Spring to be with Pop and Marie when I was a boy,” Dad conveys. “I can’t tell you how much I miss those days.”

“Well, I don’t know if you need to, Dad. You’re referring to something that’s ineffable.” Then, as if anticipating that he might experience this remark as dismissive of what he’s told me, I hasten to add, “But, I understand, of course, what you mean.”

Nothingness lingers in the air between us, and I begin to stir. Dad is lost in a world that I don’t think he wants to share with me, nor am I, I suppose, feeling up to hearing about it. Nevertheless, I begin to recall the story of grandpa’s death.

“Dad?” I concede. “Do you remember when you told me about the last night you spent with grandpa in the hospital and he wanted you to go to that banquet?”

“What made you think of that?” he asks.

“I mean, if I remember it right, he insisted that you do it, but you didn’t want to. And I guess I was wondering, if you don’t mind me asking, why you went if you didn’t want to go?”

Dad appears slightly annoyed. I think he is accessing an axiom that he likely believes (and resents) I employ when making certain decisions, usually ones that will launch me toward a more robust sense of self-importance. I think Dad figures, that is, that I believe that the desire to have a thing necessarily warrants the actions I then take to obtain it. I don’t remember well the words he’d use, but in moments where his annoyance at this seems to be activated in him, he’d communicate something that might translate (if

he ever said it), “Shoot low and don’t expect much.” Perhaps, Dad has been envious of my tenacity? My sense of purpose? A passion for shooting to enrich my life by obtaining my dreams? Regardless, he appears to have begrudged, rather consistently, those moments where he thinks I have located the confidence to pursue something I want merely because I want it.

What is ruefully ironic is that, when it comes to the question of observing the will of one’s father, I understand Dad more than he realizes. Perhaps, he sees a bit of himself in what I am suggesting by my question, as he responds with regret: “Well, he was my father. I did what he told me to do, even if I didn’t want to do it.”

“Yes, but, what was so special about this banquet?” I pursue. “I suppose I don’t get it.”

“My dad knew that St. Anthony’s was going to give me the ‘most valuable player’ award that night.”

“I see.” Sorta.

“We had planned to go together, but, honestly, I had forgotten about it. My mind wasn’t on the banquet, it was on him. I don’t even remember much about what happened that night, except that I got this award.” Dad continues, as if struggling to make sense of it: “Afterward, I drove back to the hospital and went into his room I set the trophy down on his bedstand, and he said to me, ‘Now you know why I wanted you to go.’”

Dad becomes rapt with grief. I become uncomfortable.

“You know, Devan, that was such a double-edged sword for me! Here he is on his deathbed, and he’s telling me to go have some time away from it so I could have

something to lift me up. Yet, that became our last father-son my last encounter with him. It was going back there, putting that trophy on his stand next to him.”

“Dad, if you’ll forgive me, you’re not supposed to be lifted up when you’re on your deathbed.”

“What?”

“I said, you’re not supposed to be lifted up when some you love is on his deathbed. You’re supposed to be sad. That’s what death does it makes us feel sad.”

“You’re missing the point, Devan,” Dad imparts, rubbing his eyes and cleaning his nose out with a tissue. “The point is that he didn’t want me to miss the ceremony, and neither would I, if I had known what they were going to do; but, I also wanted to be there with him. I was caught in the double-bind the characteristic double-bind of my life!”

I recall, from previous conversations, Dad linking this concept from family systems theory with the pressure he felt from his parents to choose between their religions, effectively pressing my adolescent father into resolving one of their ongoing, tedious, competitive squabbles. Grandma was Mormon, you see; grandpa, a Methodist and happy to be so, part of a long and consistent inheritance that goes back at least to Josiah In September, Dad conveyed what it felt like for his parents to sit him down at age thirteen and, together, compel him to decide which of their respective denominations he should join. With weighty tears in his eyes, he conveyed the difficulty of that decision, the hurt he felt from his father after he chose to mitigate his mother’s demands and go with her into Mormonism. He described the loss of connection that he subsequently suffered with his father from that time forward. That decision appears to have changed

his life. It appears to have directly affected his experience of making yet another doublebound choice in this epic saga between a dying father and his remorseful son.

I think of how unfair this is. I think of how much I hate that religion divided my family. Yet perhaps, most notably, I think of how Dad sat my siblings and me down before each of my parents’ divorces, and communicated unequivocally that he and my mother will never ask us to choose between them something, it seems, that Dad has been successful at upholding.

I then deduce, “Well, maybe that’s what you’re grieving, you know? It’s the horror of that choice you had to make.”

Dad’s demeanor shifts, as if I have hit upon something that seems to matter to him.

“If you’ll permit me,” I continue, “I don’t think it’s true, Dad, that you would have wanted to leave grandpa’s bedside, even if you knew that you were going to get this award. I’m not convinced of that. And I think it’s kind of cruel that grandpa asked you to leave in the first place.”

“Well ,” Dad begins defending.

“ No, Dad, I think it was wrong of him to ask you leave. I think you wanted to be there with him. I think you wanted to talk with him and say your last goodbyes.”

Dad is silent, but he appears contemplative.

“You didn’t want to be at a banquet. You wanted to attend to your father’s deathbed I mean, for heaven’s sake, of course that’s what you wanted! He was your favorite ‘sports buddy’ you see, I remember.”

I begin to feel motivated, even encouraged, to proceed with disclosing to him that

I have been working on the Dead Fathers paper. Yet, inasmuch as a part of me is invigorated with the inspiration to proceed to discuss this with him, it is answered by a vexing, internal pressure of concern and restraint that is equal to it.

“Dad, listen, I have to tell you something,” I prepare. “I’m not sure how you’ll feel about this, just yet I mean, I figure you’ll be fine with it, given what you’ve told me already.”

“What is it?” Dad looks concerned. I hate that this is so hard for me.

“I don’t think it is anything to be concerned about, but I’ve been thinking quite a bit about our conversations since September, especially what you told me about the effect grandpa’s death had on you not just those three years that followed it, you know, but even since then.”

“Yeah, death will do that.”

“Sure, but I don’t think that is, I, I, I do think I ”

Dad, sensing my apprehension, confronts it, as if to challenge it, with: “Devan, whatever it is that you need to say, just say it.”

“I think that you’re still recovering from it. I think that your father’s death still matters to you in ways you haven’t spoken, yet haven’t put to the right words. I think something remains to be worked through, and not just with what’s happened between you and grandpa, but how, you know, how losing him has affected your relationship with others, including including with me.”

Dad appears relieved that my revelation is not more serious to him, that I haven’t revealed some terrible blunder with which he’d have to now contend. Perhaps, he feels I

was about to accuse him of something, or he may have figured that I was about to ask him for money that he didn’t feel in the position to give. It’s true that, historically, asking Dad for money has always been a strenuous, troublesome project that never not once came easy.

Dad’s response affords me a modicum of security. He says, “I’m sorry about that, Devan.”

Then, I drop: “I wrote a paper about it that I’ve submitted for presentation at a conference at the University of Illinois next month.”

“You wrote a paper about what I told you?” Dad almost seems flattered.

“Yes, and I’d like to share it with you. At the very least, I am interested in your comments on it I’m interested in what you think about what I’ve said, even more so than I am about presenting it. I mean, I won’t present it if you don’t want me to. But, I would like to hear what you think first, before I proceed with it in any other way.”

Dad agrees to read my paper, and I thank him for it. Before Joel and I return to Chicago, I provide a clean copy of it for him, titled, Dead Fathers: Grief, Loss, and Generational Father Hunger.

Later that day, I notice an old photograph hanging on the wall in Dad’s office. It’s the sort that has clearly been stationed there for so long that if someone were to take it off the wall, they’d likely notice a perfect, concentric square of dust and discoloration tracing its lonely edges. The photograph itself I have always considered to be rather iconic, even since the day my father brought it home, years ago, properly framed. It is an action shot from one of his baseball games. Dad, not even a young adult yet, is soaring a foot or two above his target another baseball player from the opposing team, sliding in to first

base. It shows my father descending toward him, having caught the ball a mere splitsecond before the unnamed player is outed by him (Appendix A, Fig. 12).

I begin to suspect that there is more to this photo than I realize, so I go to investigate. Dad reveals to me that it was taken that very summer before grandpa died when he played with St. Anthony’s. He even looks to me like a Most Valuable Player.

28

Dearest Father

A few weeks pass. On a Monday morning, while commuting from Ravenswood, I happen upon a tweet by President Trump, accusing Senator Reid of a failed career midst Reid’s battle with pancreatic cancer. Our president has written: Former Senator Harry Reid (he got thrown out) is working hard to put a good spin on his failed career. He led through lies and deception, only to be replaced by another beauty, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer. Some things never change!29

My father’s intractable and corrosive dedication and loyalty to Republicanism inevitably comes to mind, along with a cocktail of negative emotion that this reminder almost always generates. For a time now, I have been aware of how this malevolent, twofold operation has been increasing since Trump took public office; his vile, antisocial tweets serve as a relentless reminder, not just of what’s happening in America, but of who my father is and has been to me. So, today, I feel a fiery eruption of unadulterated fury. Eugene Gu, MD replies to Trump’s tweet:

28 This is reference to Kafka’s letter to his father. See: Kafka, F. (2015). Letter to the father. New York, NY: Schocken Books. 29 Given that Trump’s Twitter account has been deactivated at the time of writing this, the tweet is not available online for citation. I have included a copy of it in the Appendices of this work (see Appendix B).

This is the lowest of low. Harry Reid retired from the Senate after a freak exercise accident where he injured his face and right eye. Later, he had an abnormal colonoscopy and follow up MRI that revealed a pancreatic tumor. He is dying of pancreatic cancer. Never have we had a president of the United States who is so unashamedly cruel.30

And stupid. And hypocritical. And repulsive with those ridiculous, beady eyes and his fish-shaped mouth. That frothy, pretentious frow. The comportment of a centaur and his bizarre, long red tie. Orange face. His horrifying, dismissing tone of voice. The absurdity of his large, overbearing body frame carrying protrusions of tiny, disproportionate appendages. And most of all oh, god, most of all the unfiltered presence of his fathers’ psychopathic, colonialist personality blasting unapologetically throughout his countenance and controlling his every act, word, and decision as if the diamond strings of a half-human puppet. Unfettered private servitude that is daily, wantonly, imposed upon the masses of the world. Without question or reflection on itself. Pure chaos. Pure destructive potential. A walking, ticking hydrogen bomb. It is as if everything I abjectly hate about human beings about anything, really has been chymified into a putrid mass of rancid animal shit and hurled onto the most important, valuable, and critical mantle of the modern world. And here I am, as if I’ve walked in on my father, naked, on the floor, with his asshole in the air, genuflecting, sucking eagerly on the bacteria-infested, ingrown toenails of this monster-in-chief.

I am startled out of my perverse reverie quick enough as the red line train docs at the Monroe station and I nearly miss it. As I walk the two-and-a-half blocks to Michigan

Avenue, my anger begins to recalibrate so that, by the time I arrive at my office, I am compelled to drop everything that feels important and record my thoughts in the form of a letter to my dad

I write: February 25, 2019 Dad, I feel overwhelmed today by your hypocrisy, and I wish that I could tell you that and it have some kind of catalytic effect on things between us that makes them different than they have been in the past that goes beyond your emotional collapses and refusal to hear it.

Do you remember the heartbreaking, terrifying scene from Schindler’s List, where the Nazis are slaughtering Jewish people in the ghettos before transporting what’s left of them to the death camps? You may not remember this, but mom took me to see the film in the theaters when it came out. During this scene, she could see that I was upset by what we were watching, and I think she wanted to help me through it; so, she asked me if I would like to leave. I said I needed to take a break I remember feeling outraged by the display of human arrogance that would produce this kind of cruelty. The horror of it broke me. I felt overwrought with terror, too, I think, from watching this gut-wrenching depiction of the depths of depravity and psychopathic violence of which human beings can be capable.

I feel that I learned to feel this way because of you. I think I learned this logic, and this type of emotional response to such things, because you have always expressed similar feelings around similar matters. I think that you have always hated human violence, and I don’t think that I had ever seen, up until this point in my life, such a ripened, abjectly raw depiction of how far it can go.

After fifteen minutes, mom and I returned to the theater and stood in the back of it to watch the rest of the film. I think we did this to provide some room for me to leave if I needed that again. I probably did, but we endured it until the end.

I am writing this to you because I am confused and furious. I feel anger. I feel sadness and disappointment. All of it comes together in a blend of emotions that abides as a dull, steadfast frenzy as I access it, haunting my mornings and nights and everything in between as I work to avoid encountering it more directly. It is remarkable how much I do to avoid having to find it still exists in some form or another, and I want it out of me. Sometimes, I’m successful at keeping my distance from it. Other times, like this morning, I can’t avoid it.

I don’t get you, Dad. I don’t get the walking contradiction that you are to me. I don’t get how you support, have always supported, this class of people who are engendering the type of violence I know you to deeply abhor. I hate I abjectly hate your hypocrisy. I can’t think of better words to express it, because it makes me hate you

You, who frightened me with violence into submission to conform to behaviors, actions, and feelings toward others that are the very opposite of those that are wantonly celebrated by the majority of the people in the party you have blindly supported and upheld since I can remember, before and during this age of Trump. You supported Raegan. You believed the utter bullshit of his trickle-down economics. You had the audacity to ridicule me for criticizing the idea whenever I attempted to do it. You drank the poison and let your soul rot from it, and then fought others so violently when they tried to pull you out of it. Why? What a paradox of a man you are to me, now, at the end of your life. Throughout all of my own, Dad, you are a frightful, dishonorable paradox.

How on earth could you justify your offense that I didn’t follow you in suit? What you thought was good for you, for me, for the world, then poisoned your personality your thoughts, feelings, the way you saw the world the blacks and whites you insisted on upholding as if the issues of the world were so easy, so categorial, so tidy and explainable, and so dichotomous. And the unbridled pressure that you saddled me with!

You told me to forage my own path when I was little. You told me you wouldn’t try to make my choices for me, but you forced me into submission to religious, social, and political ideals that you had to have known were disproportionately wrong for me. Yet, you did it anyway. Why Dad? I need an answer for this. I feel I can’t move forward in the most fundamental ways without one.

Now, I think on it and I can only reason that you did this because you were doing it to yourself, and the tendency hasn’t stopped. You had nowhere to lead me around these matters except to the corrosive swamps of your own self-hatred. You forced on me a religion and a politics I couldn’t escape and insisted that they were the only valid answers for navigating an existence that was entirely antithetical to its own. I never saw you ever Dad, for god’s sake ever question yourself never wonder reflectively about whether such dichotomous ideas and positions were the right ones beyond your own myopic lack of vision. I never saw you worry about this possibility. Never took in any indication that you cared that they were so destructive to those around you who needed you. Fucking needed you beyond the paycheck you provided. Nor have I seen evidence that you questioned if you were doing right by me in leading me to alligator-infested waters, coercing me to drink them, and mocking me for opposing the charge. You know, like parents are supposed to do.

How did I end up with you?

How on earth are you my father? For fuck’s sake.

Now, what’s left in the eleventh hour of your existence but two men struggling with the depressive, self-deprecating voices that your ventures could only produce. Your legacy, for me, are these muddy waters. Do you realize that? You bid me sleep on a bed of cockroaches and scorned me for struggling to free myself from them, pegging me with your shallow, misdirected categories.

You tore me to pieces when I attempted to dig you out of the muddy quagmire that you dug for both of us, with arrogant, cocky, onanistic sound bites you’d picked up from Limbaugh and Fox News As a child, you made me think you were smart that you knew something that I didn’t know and this made me defer to your judgment, even in matters that would become of life and death for me. In this, I learned, from watching you, what I think many academics or intellectuals do to prop up their narcissistic ventures, whatever they may be. They, like you, overdetermine their confidence in their ideas, making them too difficult to penetrate through the emotion of their assertions, rather than the content of their claims. With you, Dad, the certitude in that content is remarkably easy to at least weaken or even disprove, but you won’t let anyone do this. You are and always have been absolutely disinterested in whether or not your assertions are actually true. You’re only concerned if they can be penetrated or not, or if you will emerge from them a victor. Those manufactured victories are so very short-lived and they have always decimated relationship with the ones who love or could love you.

Thus, because you thought you knew me, and because what you thought you knew was inimical to what you thought was right, you set me up to become a receptacle for your borderline dichotomies, your active denial, your untethered aggression, your vitriolic self-hatred, and your unbridled conceit. And I could do nothing to squirm myself out of it, especially as a child. To do so always drew blood.

What remains seems to satisfy you, as well, in your darkest moments to see me struggle to claw my way out of a mess imposed by an aggressive, unempathic, rude, and selfish parent. Sometimes, I think I can see that it gives you delight that I struggle as you have struggled, perhaps because you don’t feel quite so lonely as you behold your own misery. Or, perhaps, it is a relief of abreacting the sorrows you are carrying. Was there ever, for you, another option?

Now, I think you are stuck, as you always have been, in your certainty, and it has successfully devoured the best aspects of your life and who you are to the point that, at the end of your life, it is very hard for me to see any other part of you. Why on earth would you prefer it? Who on earth does it connect you to that’s of any value? And how on earth do I eradicate from myself the putrid stench of it that you re-created for me, insisted I swallow up, and derided me for attempting to throw it out?

Dad, I don’t know why you had children. You had no business doing this. I often feel that I’m not supposed to be here to be alive because of how much I’m aware of how improper it was that you became a father. You weren’t ready to raise and caretake in proper ways. I suppose you tried, and it hurts to give you credit for this. It feels like I am being disloyal to something that’s rather serious for me.

I know you became a clinical psychologist, and perhaps this is central to why you did it. Maybe, it is the answer as to why you took this career, instead of baseball or something otherwise sports-related. I think

you hoped that it would teach you and help you to grow beyond those sorrows and sufferings you are carrying. And yet, one organic substrate of mental processing has again become the projective object for another, far earlier than it ever should have than it has had the capacity to bear. It is me for you, as you ordered it to be.

I came to you with the desire only a small boy knows, at least in its purest and undiluted form, with a type of love that could have healed your soul. I’ve always had that in me to give, and always felt so much pain because I have felt so abjectly wrong about attempting to share it. I think that’s because of you. I came to you with open arms, Dad, and rather than taking them in your own and letting them teach you the value of what it means to be a parent and to have a special bond with a child, you attempted to beat it out of me. You insisted that I conform to the weakminded principles that were rotting your own soul, and that you readily supported in your associations in your politics and your religion with people like Donald fucking Trump.

I can’t tell you how much I hate you for this

It is located in a cavernous fulmination of deep-seeded vitriol and resentment with which I don’t seem have a clue about what to do. Tell me, Dad, after beating me into sexual morality, whose “pussy” should I “grab?” After insisting on treating others with fairness and kindness, which “rapist” or “murderer” should I send back to Honduras? After saturating my mouth with hot sauce, which pathological lie should I

propagate to avoid a just punishment? After dragging me back to the

Circle K by my fingers and toes for stealing a candy bullet, which set of homely, small-town businesses should I usurp with psychopathic power, prestige, and money, just because I can, then gloat about it? After beating me bloody for not showing you enough respect, to which honorable authority should I hurl foolish epithets by wishing their deaths, even from cancer? Cancer, Dad. The disease that’s eating your fucking body inside out.

How can you not see the absurdity in your impoverished loyalties, or what has to be your own self-disgust the same I often witnessed you express for public acts of equal or less human indecency and not, at least, question it? Or do something about it? Or change it for yourself so that your beliefs, actions, and thoughts align? It must be exhausting to undergo the mental gymnastics that doing otherwise would require, especially, Dad, especially from the point of view of what I know about you, even beyond your ridiculous tendency to behave against your own core, moral principles.

Honestly, Dad, how on earth can I trust you or be proud of you you who so openly belongs to the filthy lucre of the very worst of modern humanity? You are a walking paradox of “do what I say, not what I do,” and I’m furious. I can’t remember a time when this was generally otherwise generally not the case.

I don’t even know how to sign this letter. Anything I might write seems absurd. So, I’ll just leave it at Devan

I print the letter out, but I don’t sign it. Instead, I place it in a manilla envelope and set it aside for a time that feels right to deliver it to him.

Things my father taught me (part two):

11. Always tell the truth to authority. This is the best way to protect yourself.

12. You must remain in a state of constant anxiety about matters of money. If you think you have it, you don’t.

13. What it means when a woman has her fallopian tubes “tied” (to explain what was keeping my mother in the hospital after Danny was born after a very difficult, life-threatening delivery).

14. Never freeze chicken meat after it has been thawed; if you do this, then cook and eat it, you’ll die.

15. Never jump the gap.

16. The world is a cruel, cruel place and if you’re not very, very careful, it will obliterate you. Best be afraid of it.

Excruciating pain. Beginning in high school, I started a tradition with my family of frosting almost all of my dinner entrees with homemade ranch dressing. Somehow, I had discovered the comprehensive benefits of using the beloved condiment as an alternative to your standard gravies and dipping sauces, which I then forced upon my unsuspecting family. This endures as one of the few influences of mine that seems to

have taken firm root in my family, of which I suppose I am rather proud. Soon, it replaced your standard beef gravy as the topping de jure for my father’s popular mashed potatoes. Your standard, all-American meal not drenched in homemade ranch dressing was no longer a meal at all. Even lasagna, spaghetti, enchilada casseroles, and the like, prepared properly with their own appropriate sauces, and so on, along with a favorite meat, could not escape this compelling, top-layer relish after it was cooked and served.

On the evening of Friday, April 5, 2019, 148 days before his death, Dad is preparing dinner for himself and Tracy, and while making homemade ranch dressing, the humerus bone in his left arm snaps right in half as if a dried-out, brittle twig (Appendix A, Fig. 13). The following morning, I receive a text message from Tracy informing me of the emergency, and I phone Dad immediately thereafter. When he picks up, I can hear the shaky, desperation in his voice, coupled with a sort of despair that startles me, as I have never heard it before from him.

“The lid to the mixing bottle was stuck and I was trying to use my thumbs to pry it open,” Dad explains. “I started to push open the little round spout topper to unhook the top of it, and within seconds my thumb slipped off the side of the bottle cap, my arm shot straight up in the air, and I heard a snap.”

“What do you mean you heard a snap?” I ask, showing shock and horror. My response appears to fuel Dad as he explains how he fell to his knees onto the kitchen floor, and nearly blacked out entirely from the shock and pain of it. He explains that he felt crushed by an agony that he had never experienced before “never in my life,” he says. He conveys the sense of helplessness he felt, as well as that of Tracy’s, who was immobilized for a moment by the traumatic shock of finding him there.

Dad then conveys that it took him some time to get to the hospital. Apparently, the first goal was to move him from the kitchen floor to the couch in the living room, but every movement of his body persisted in propelling it into spasms of the same type of pain, complicating any and all necessary journeys in his immediate purview, including to the hospital.

“We went once I could get myself together somehow,” Dad reports, “but I don’t remember how we did it.”

I ask him what happened at the hospital. He tells me that they gave him some pain medication, but that they didn’t keep him there. “I have come back,” he says, “wrapped up in a sling, but I am still immobilized.”

Hearing Dad’s report of this agitates some deep frustration, which I work to subdue. It is a kind of exasperation, it seems to me, that is generated in my fantasy that the post-capitalist, medical machine has failed to fix my father’s ailment properly. “They didn’t keep you there?!” I exclaim. “Why not?!” If it were a potential (legal) liability, I reason to myself, they would not have let him leave without repairing his arm God! What does he have to do, slice it open for them?!

Dad is quiet for a moment and I fear that my attempts to quell my frustration aren’t working well enough and that I am overwhelming him. He then reports, “We made the decision earlier this morning Dr. DeGreen, Tracy, and me we decided that any type of treatment for my cancer is no longer a viable option.”

I am getting sick of hearing that there are no viable options. Fix this, for god’s sake.

“So, what does that mean? What’s next?” I ask, again, working to subdue my anger. You know perfectly well what this means, Devan, I excoriate.

“I will now enter fulltime hospice care,” he states.

Now, I turned eleven in 1990; so, I can state with confidence that I am a child of the eighties and nineties, when “hospice” meant death, mainly for people with AIDS. In college, during a course of first-year Latin, I learned hospĕs is a third-declension, masculine noun that translates as “host,” “guest-friend,” or even “foreigner.” I connected the word to my initial encounter with the concept of a place where one goes to die, even though I recognized its root in other words like “hospitality.” It seemed absurd to me that the Latin root could be funneled into so many English variants describing such diverse human activities around one, simple core and connecting idea i.e., to provide a place of comfort and rest to another person, whether a guest from a foreign land or for the one facing his own forthcoming death.

Even so, in this instance, the concepts in purview Dad, hospice, impending death they are as real to me, they are felt about as deeply, as the frog in hot water. I don’t believe that Dad could say anything to me that would wake me up from my emotional slumber from what’s likely an unconscious need to play a role that safely protects me from a fuller realization of what it means that my dad is, in fact, going into hospice a place, the place, where people with terminal illnesses go to die.

“I could be there for a while,” Dad continues. “It’s where I’m to be from here on out, I think, because I’m not ”

And without warning, Dad shrieks out in distressing, harrowing pain. He has moved his body inadvertently and ever-so-slightly in degree, and this has, again,

synchronized what would otherwise be a random and inconsequential series of nerves and muscles to detonate a flood of agony that cascades throughout his body, originating from ground zero.

“Ouch! Aw, damn it!” he exclaims in despair. “All I did was talk!”

“Dad, what can we do to manage this pain?” I ask, growing more helpless and frustrated (but, mostly helpless).

He collects himself, struggling through to say, “They gave me Avastin, but it’s not really working. It’s not doing anything.”

“But, what can we do? I mean, this isn’t functional.”

“There’s nothing that can be done, Devan!” Dad bites “I’m checking in at the hospice center later today. They will do a full assessment and we’ll proceed from there.”

Dad’s strike affects me a bit, and my frustration-unto-rage begins to convert to sorrow and despair, perhaps building on the momentum of the helplessness I began to access just a moment earlier. It had seemed to me that, by now, Dad and I were growing to respect one another more deeply and fully, as though this were something I could begin to rely upon as an indication that the constitution of our relationship was changing. Yet, I am far less aware of these feelings than those that would show support, care, and appropriate attendance to Dad’s present condition, as well as the news that our lives are about to change, again, for the ne’er return.

“Is there anything we can do until then?” I ask, again, referring to the treatment of his pain.

“No, there isn’t anything that can be done. Like I said, none of the treatments are working.”

“Well, what if I come out there again for a few days to help you through the transition? Tracy and I can be there to make sure that everything at hospice gets off to a good start, yeah?”

“You can do that if you want ”

“ Would that be helpful?”

“ Yes,” he says. I am almost able to detect some gladness in him, upon which he, perhaps, dare not rely too much. He then adds, “But, hospice care isn’t here twentyfour-seven. So and you can’t stay here for the rest of your life.”

Dad shrieks in pain again “Ow! Ow! Ah, ah! Damn it!” He then states, almost in tears, “So, it’s your call, Devan. I don’t know what to tell you.”

I open a browser on my computer and begin searching options for the earliest, one-way ticket to Baltimore. Tracy joins the conversation and conveys her appreciation for my willingness to drop things in order to help. I can sense in her voice that she may, likewise, feel rather overwhelmed and exhausted by the events of the last twelve hours, and my heart goes out to her. “I’m going to catch a flight as soon as possible,” I advise, “because I want to be there for the discussions you both have with the hospice doctors, and we can then go from there.”

Dad doesn’t know it, I suspect, but I don’t trust that he will fight for himself enough to insist upon the best care possible, especially when it comes to the alleviation of his pain. There is an overwhelming absurdity to it, it seems, and I am not satisfied that all that could be done has been done. Dad tends to capitulate to doctors too easily, I reason, and the doctors and nurses at the hospice center don’t know him yet. If this process is going to be done right, I need to be there. On some level, I believe Dad would agree.

As I am packing a few light items in a carry-on bag to prepare for my flight to Baltimore, I think to bring the impassioned letter that I wrote to my father several months ago the very one that to share it with him seems dangerous and unthinkable, even absurd. Even still, I notice that I have it in mind, somewhere deep, I suppose: Maybe I will find a good time to share it with him. Maybe I can use it more as a reference in discussion with him to share my thoughts, rather than something I would actually give to him to read. Truth is, I am far more concerned that the depth and breadth of my anger toward my father will do more damage to our relationship than good, given our historical incapacity to survive such moments.

When I was a boy, living with him in Lakeside, I was angry with him for moving us there. I didn’t want him around. He seemed the catalyst to most of the toxic energy in our house, buzzing about almost continuously and generating hypervigilant anxiety about what new, unexpected, or unpredictable thing might set him off. This was the case, at least, for me; but, I feel rather certain that my siblings and my mother would agree. I should note that, to this day, I remain puzzled, even frustrated, by the idea that they remarried at all. Danny wouldn’t be here, I suppose, if they hadn’t, and I can’t imagine life without him in it. But, my parents were terrible for each other, and my father a terrible caretaker for us. His violent explosions of fury awakened our small neighborhood, bringing the police to our house at least once. Dad’s response to them: “I’m just providing some reasonable discipline to my kids.” The police did nothing (of which I am aware). Furthermore, Dad gave us no evidence that he’d ever reflected on whether he should tone it down, and brawls, when they were to occur after that, always began with closing the windows.

I can say that in moments like this, I didn’t have Ryan’s courage. He was known to accept Dad’s invitation to brawl about in resistance to Dad’s onslaughts, but they never went anywhere that I felt was ever of any use. Ryan has plenty of emotional battle scars to show for it, and I learned well from watching him work to ward Dad off of him. Dad usually gave us a very limited set of options in such moments, all of them devastating to me: one could either endure the emotional violence of his determined tantrums or fight against them. The first incurred less damage. Both left one feeling small, helpless, and frustrated.

One Saturday afternoon, while we were living in Lakeside, and before my parents divorced the second time, Dad and I were in our kitchen. He was going about in the manner I’ve endeavored to describe, berating me for something that I had or hadn’t done properly, which I don’t remember at the moment. Clinical language helps me put into words that I do remember him working to mobilize me as a receptacle for his toxic fury. Knowing my limited set of options, I discovered, however tenuous, a third. I knew that Dad understood the language of his professional field (and what is now our field), and I suspected that what I would say to him could subdue him enough to get him to actually back off from me without having to endure or fight him. So, I asked, as if I actually had the question in mind: “Why do you prefer Ryan over me?”

Dad looked shocked to hear me ask him this. His tone became less vehement, as he asked me: “What did you say?”

“I said, Dad, why do you love Ryan more than me?”

Dad’s comportment changed as he slumped into guilty despair (while I concealed my sigh of relief).

Please note that I don’t recall that I held anything close to this belief, given that Dad was far worse with Ryan in these contumacious operations than he was with me, but I had hoped my indicating as much would work to restrain him, and it did. Beyond this, I remember feeling rather guilty that I was making such an impression up, given that it suggested that I had cared about him and his opinion of me more than I remember caring or feeling. On some level, I can recognize that it is likely true of my experience of him that I do and have cared about his opinion and assessment of me, now and in the past; but, this more advanced or developed insight was far from my thoughts during the moment in question. I just wanted him off my back, and my method toward achieving this end had worked.

So, I place the manilla envelope with Dad’s letter in it carefully and inconspicuously in my bag along with my laptop, digital recorder, and a book for reading before I embark on another journey across the Midwest to Lancaster.

As I wait in the terminal for my flight from O’Hare to Baltimore, I use my phone to investigate the drug Dad referred to earlier called “Avastin.” I learn that it is not a pain medication, as I’d originally supposed, but a supplemental therapy that is designed to up the treatment ante by blocking the growth of new blood vessels, thus “starving” his carcinoma tumors.31 I then realize that Dad was not talking about pain medication, but rather of this failed treatment. He is wholly out of options.

Yet, my focus tarries as I contemplate the experience I had of beholding the shock of Dad’s pain. I had assumed, that is, that modern medicine could supply him with the

31 Retrieved from: https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/avastin. See references as: Heuristic. (n.d.).

kind of relief you’d expect one might require to minimize or halt the experience of these shooting, searing, and unpredictable spasms resulting from the untreated, severed bone in his left arm. I had assumed that doctors would have prescribed him something powerful enough to help him through this formidable, liminal period before his bone would finally be set back in place.

Waiting for my flight, caught in reverie, I am horrified that Dad was released from the hospital without any action taken to begin the process of healing the broken bone in his arm. I imagine with equal horror that hospital personnel are only willing to extend their efforts to care for my dad’s broken bone if there is a liability attached to their not doing so. I imagine that he and Tracy are given a prescription to subdue the pain, which doesn’t appear to be working and which is the vulgar equivalent to “take two of these and call me in the morning.” I never thought it could be possible to release someone from the emergency room of a hospital with a broken bone, snapped right in half, without fully treating it.

I then begin to think of the physiological horrors with which homo sapiens have had to struggle before the advancements of science and medicine. I begin to tap into a horrifying and gruesome reality from which most of my daily living is designed to distract me i.e., we aren’t meant to not suffer. Furthermore, it can get a lot worse than this.

Mount Joy.

Just before midnight on Saturday, April 6, Dad and Tracy are waiting for me at Mount Joy Hospice and Community Care Center in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. Tracy is fatigued, but in supportive spirits; Dad is glad to see me. After checking in with them, I

learn that he will spend at least a week there to undergo a full assessment for his pain and the management of both cancers to date. The team of doctors and nurses will teach Tracy and me how to help him move about when using the bathroom, bathe, sleep, and so on.

We also learn that he won’t be released until we have secured the proper twenty-fourseven support that he needs at home.

The goal has shifted from working to extend the time and quality of Dad’s life to facilitating an appropriate dying process. With this comes the ominous sense that I am about to learn a bit of what it’s like for my father to sit in the waiting room of the end of his life. I am determined to endure in my role, which remains albeit disconnected from the fuller awareness of what’s actually transpiring. I feel as if a classically-trained actor, selected to play the leading role in a film that’s bound for best picture. The fantasy delivers a hypomanic, idealized rapture that gives me the gumption I need to be emotionally supportive and physically present. This is the right person to be.

Tracy excuses herself, promising to return early tomorrow morning. Dad persuades me to stay with him.

Now, Dad’s room at Mount Joy is rather large and of good, middle-class quality. There’s a hospital bed perpendicular to the northern wall with a reclining chair next to it and a couch six feet away from the base of the bed against the opposite wall. It’s dark grey, faux leather reminds me of something I’d expect to see in the gaming room of a fraternity house. The bathroom is large and square, as you’d expect, adorned generously with handicap accessibilities throughout. A computer station is mounted in the cabinet by the sink, which the nurses use to update Dad’s record each time they check in with him.

At the base of the west wall, there is an alcove that features a table, two chairs, and a window facing the same direction with a narrow, seven-foot-long padded bench at its base. After surveying the space, I reason that it looks to be the most comfortable spot to nest for the night, mainly because it will create a little space between Dad and me I begin to settle in.

Dad remains sitting up in the chair by his bed, noting that he can’t lay down yet, given the pain it causes. He tells me that he hasn’t reclined since the attack, now over thirty-six hours ago. I’m horrified by this. I deal with it by preparing my bed at the base of the window.

“Do you need me to help you when you need to use the bathroom?” I ask “I have to call the nurse to do that,” Dad informs. I feel relief. Then, with childlike pride, he recounts, “I’ve learned how to get myself up without causing too much pain. See, if I position my feet flat on the ground like this and then use them to lift myself, I can ”

Dad works himself gradually so as to show me what he’s proud of having achieved since he arrived earlier today. He’s lost a great deal of muscle mass in his legs, especially in his calves, which also startles me to witness. Noticing this afresh, I wince as he wobbles, doubting that his legs will hold him well-enough throughout the process, even with his feet firmly planted on the ground, as he has described. But, my apprehension quickly converts to delightful astonishment, as he manages to get himself up successfully without triggering his body into spasms of electric bolts of fiery pain.

“I just have to put all the weight on my feet and legs,” he explains, “but once I get up, if I balance it right, it doesn’t hurt too bad.” I’m genuinely impressed that Dad has

been able to achieve this feat, given that the top half of his body is so disproportionately top heavy (e.g., see Appendix A, Fig. 16).

“Does it work to get on and off the toilet?” I ask.

“Well, I can get out of this chair pretty much by myself, but I need the nurse to help me with the toilet. It’s harder to maneuver.”

“Looks like maybe your days as an athlete have paid off, eh?”

“Nah, those days are over.”

It seems that Dad hasn’t caught what I meant to communicate, and I feel suddenly concerned that I have affected him in an arbitrarily harmful way.

“No, I meant that those skills are paying off,” I work to recover, “because you learned them and they probably come in handy now to help you balance and steer your body.” Dad nods. “I don’t mean to be grim.”

“I don’t know, Devan. This is all pretty surreal for me.”

“Me too.” I take a breath to recalibrate. Then, “Look, let’s get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll meet with the doctors and get a better sense of what needs to be done. The game isn’t over yet, right?”

But, neither of us get some rest. In what feels like every fifteen minutes or so, Dad and I are jolted out of our descent into sleep via the same disquieting reactions that result from the same sordid blasts of piercing pain that have been afflicting him since Friday night, caused by the same sordid series of ever-so-slight body movements that set each of them off. After an hour or two of this, I decide to begin cataloguing the time between each episode to provide more data to the medical professionals we’ll meet tomorrow or, later today. I assume, that is, that they must not comprehend enough

about what seems to me to be a severe situation so as to provide him with the right intervention for his condition. I open the clock app on my phone, find the stopwatch feature, start it, and leave it running, logging the intervals of time between each episode by pressing the app’s “lap” button at every moment that Dad and I are forced awake in this manner (Appendix A, Fig. 14).

What an absolute nightmare, I think.

At one point, I ponder on how well it seems Dad is at handling this terrible burden. Historically, he has never been very good at maneuvering through the small, micro-pains of his life, but good at the bigger ones, so long as he doesn’t couple the meaning of whatever is occurring with fantasies that surmise the bad stuff is due to his own lack of worth. I’ve come to learn that those moments are torrential indeed.

I am reminded of an incident in September of 1998. Heather and I were driving home after catching an evening viewing of the new Parent Trap (Shyer, 1998) with Lindsey Lohan. On the way, we began to fight about who should be driving the car, given that I had developed a noxious penchant for propelling it too aggressively around sharp corners and throwing the alignment out of whack. As we approached our driveway, I had grown rather overwhelmed. The method of arguing between my sister and me resembled too much for me the trivial brawls in which my parents too often engaged while we were growing up, and I was flooded with burdensome feelings of hate and rage, which then propelled me to open the door and leap compulsively from the vehicle she was driving while it was still moving.

As my feet made contact with the pavement, my ankles dislodged and I tumbled violently to the ground, striking my head against it. As Heather came around to collect

me, she’d later report, she was surprised to find me sitting on the asphalt with my legs spread out, staring mindlessly at the ground, and mumbling nonsensically about a witch. She bid me to stand and I obeyed her without resisting. My unchallenging compliance then triggered her sense of panic that something was especially wrong with the situation.

I have only a few, foggy flashes of what transpired next, but my life was in danger. My gait was uncoordinated, my speech was slurred and distorted, my eyes were dilated; I was vomiting (something purple, I recall), and slowly losing consciousness. Several days later, when I recovered consciousness in the hospital, my neurologist informed me that Heather’s instinct to keep me awake in those first few hours had saved my life.

Dad’s response to my care has always impressed me. Immediately following the incident, Heather called our father, and he came promptly to my aid. As he began to apprehend the nature of my condition, he quickly gathered me up (even though I resisted it fussing about), and rushed me to the emergency room of our local hospital in Cedar City. Simple CAT scans revealed I had suffered a concussion, and an intracranial hemorrhage was accumulating pressure in my right, temporal lobe. The only medical personnel qualified to assess whether I would need surgery to relieve this pressure were located in Salt Lake City; thus, I was medevacked the two-hundred-and-fifty miles north to LDS Hospital (incidentally, where my mother was born) for further tests, assessments, and necessary interventions. Dad remained dutifully at my side the entire time, navigating my care and making crucial decisions on my behalf at each step along the way.

I remember very little of anything after I hit my head, except for impressions of Dad taking strong, confident, direct, and capable charge of my care. I imagine his

paternal instincts around the abject terror of losing a loved one had awakened this instinct in him, and this has always warmed my soul. But, it has also left me somewhat burdened with an impression that Dad should behave more functionally in smaller, less outwardlysignificant moments of turmoil, especially when I was younger, more impressionable, and more sensitive than I am now. If Dad could keep his cool and effectively execute such key decisions when the stakes and threat levels were so high, why not in everyday matters?

Dad cries out in sharp, forceful pain as he’s jerked awake again, and I am startled by it. I ask him if he needs anything, but he doesn’t answer, likely because he can’t hear me or he’s not fully awake to comprehend my inquiry; so, I leave him be.

My contemplations tonight likewise take me further to the subject of my own mortality. I reflect on how I don’t believe I could tolerate his burdens of pain. If it were me, I would want out. In just a few days’ time, I feel I have become an ardent advocate for the human right to euthanasia. We put our animals down out of mercy when they are sick, and yet our laws are driven by these theocratic notions that God has a reason for every morsel of our suffering. It’s all bullshit. But, the people you love would be hurt.

The people I love would want me not to suffer. Even if there is meaning in this type of pain, what’s it for? Where does it go? To whom are the benefits learned passed along? What purpose would it serve? Abject pain is pain, after all, and the narratives we generate are designed to help us cope with it, but, for god’s sake for what?!

As if confronted with Dad’s disease as Dad, I feel a kind of stubborn refusal to remain alive. I want agency, autonomy, and choice over the matter of the nature of my

existence, over the slow and painful experience of my body breaking apart and breaking down, unit by unit and cell by cell. I don’t feel I could endure the existential horror of being engulfed by this disease and forced under its absolute control without losing my mind and nothing seems as inveterately onerous, gruesome, reprehensible, and deplorable to me than the voyage of cancerous tumors, eating one’s body away.

As morning breaks, and throughout the day that follows, Dad and I engage in multiple conversations with the nurses about his pain and further care. I am aware, as I meet each of them, of the diversity of their personalities. Perhaps, it is the lack of sleep and fatigue from travel that has made me more sensitive to these variations, but I notice myself less tolerant of them than I normally would be. Some of them have the type of social enthusiasm that I know my dad to have the sort that heralds “Mr. Roaring Spring” with gladness, and which can imbue situations like this with good-quality, lighthearted, all-American neighborliness and humor. Yet, other attendants feel as languid and cold to me as an icepick. No plan of action feels satisfactory enough to me than one that will bring an end to Dad’s pain.

“Well, you have to understand that we’re just starting this new regiment,” one nurse tells us. “It takes at least twenty-four hours to see if it’s effective. If the pain has gotten ahead of him, it’s gonna take us longer.”

Dad agrees, showing characteristic compliance. It is as if he’s working to assist me through the deliberative process that he and Tracy undertook in the window of time before I arrived last night. What seems clear to me, however, more than anything, is that Dad doesn’t want a can of worms to be opened, as if he is relenting to a fight he feels is not worth undertaking.

“And they’ve just increased it to ten milligrams,” she adds.

“Okay, well,” I concede, conflicted as I work to assess for my own potential unreasonableness. “As long as you guys understand that, you know, he’s in pain ”

Coping and adjusting.

The next few days are full of arranging details to get Dad established with fulltime hospice care at home. The most important question on the table is who it is that is going to serve as his primary caretaker.

At this point, I am beginning to adjust to a more realistic narrative regarding what to expect from our national healthcare system when someone is dying. Most of the doctors and nurses I have encountered so far at Dad’s treatment center, and now in hospice care, seem competent and aware enough of what families and patients must endure as they are facing the bleak realities of their mortality. They are empathic, kind, and experienced; most of them appear to enjoy their jobs. If they are dealing with any number of the natural challenges that beset our species, they have learned how to deal with these well enough that such challenges do not seem to affect their capacity to deliver optimal care. Now, I am beginning to see just how crucial these talents and capacities are. And yet, the larger system seems absurdly flawed and out of touch to me.

“Your dad is going to need around-the-clock care from now on,” a social worker informs me.

“Okay,” I respond. “That will likely be my sister Heather ”

“Can you tell me a little about her?” she asks.

“What is it you’d like to know?”

“Well, she needs to be qualified to look after your dad. We can’t let him leave until we have someone ready to help him around the clock, twenty-four-seven, with a specialized set of needs.” She then adds, “There’s a lot to consider.”

“Well, she has about twenty years of experience as a certified nurse’s assistant,” I respond. “She’s the best we’ve got at the moment.”

I begin to wonder what on earth it would be like if we didn’t happen to have Heather’s experience and availability at our disposal. Dad has no requisite savings for this. Insurance will not cover an around-the-clock caretaker. The expectation is that families, it seems, will have someone who is able to quit their work or take a break from it enough to tend to a terminal patient’s constant and complicated set of needs that they will have, not only the competence, but the convenience of accessibility.

I begin to wonder about my own, dubious future: If the effects of Trumpism don’t wipe me off the planet first, and I live to suffer this type of terminal illness, given that I don’t have children or family close by in any type of position to help, what would happen to me in such circumstances, without adult children able to do it? And, would I even have the ability to impose this upon them, even if they existed? I mean, could I request it of Joel? These thoughts bring on a sour cocktail of negative emotions, mainly of dread and despair; I feel completely, unequivocally, and altogether underprepared to face them as well as the thoughts that accompany them. For years, I had assumed, I admit rather naïvely, that the system would take care of situations like this. As Dad’s prognosis has deteriorated, I assumed Heather would step up, but it had never been explicitly arranged. I realize, now, how dangerous it was to have left such a crucial detail so compromised and overlooked.

My conversation with Heather is swift and effective. She tearfully agrees to jump on the chance of this appointment. I am relieved by this (and grateful), given the pressures of the injunction communicated earlier by the social worker that Dad cannot leave without a requisite caretaker in place

At the onset of our deliberations, Heather notes that she would rather drive to Pennsylvania than fly so that she can bring a small semblance of her life with her here from Montana, where she is currently living. As we plan, I feel a surge of energy that appears to be rewarding me for stepping up to the role I’m playing. Stationed at the makeshift desk in Dad’s hospice room, I spend the morning and afternoon working out the details (and working to catch any contingencies I might have missed) These include securing the right storage unit for her furniture, as well as reliable movers, cleaning services, insurance policies, and hotels along I-94 to break her thirty-hour voyage through North Dakota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania into reasonable segments. Later, Heather informs that our mother will accompany her on her journey; so, I begin arranging flights for mom to return to Montana shortly after they arrive.

At dinnertime, Dad sends me to Longhorn Steakhouse for takeout, which I feel delighted to do. When I return with our evening grub, which I’ve volunteered to include a festive, half-dozen order of rolls from Cinnabon, I see that Dad has visitors his sister, Sherma, and her husband David, along with friends who know him from his earlier years in the Mormon church. Dad loves it when people come to visit, I notice, but he feels a melancholy, too, even while they are here. I think this is because he knows it’s going to end. My heart goes out to him. The lingering portends of death seems to make it difficult for him to enjoy it.

I also notice that Dad looks good tonight. He’s finally been able to achieve some full night’s rest, even reclined on his gatch bed. His movement is less belabored by pain and instability. He’s learned how to use the bathroom by himself without the aid of a nurse. He won’t be able to shower, however, without help, and this will continue for the rest of his life.

As I depart for Chicago the next day now Tuesday, April 9 I become more aware of how difficult it is for me to be able to access the grief of what it means to say goodbye to my father, even my dying father. I feel like I have to be strong, but that I’m missing out on something because I struggle as much to let such a feeling with him be birthed. I know how difficult it is for Dad to say his goodbyes, as it tends to be for me, as well. I know that someone could easily ask me something like, ‘You must know how much you mean to your father, how much he values your company and presence?’ To which I would confirm that I know this, but only intellectually theoretically. I can’t let in the truth that seems more obvious now that I actually matter to him.

Truth is, Dad doesn’t know me well enough to know the anger I hold toward him. He doesn’t know what I need to say to him, and I, quite frankly, can’t begin to think about how I would even try to do it effectively. I don’t have the faith I need to have in order to assure myself that such an endeavor would actually be worth it, because my father and I have failed to set up, even by now, an assurance in each other’s ability to hold together the multitude of requisite thoughts and feelings that would inevitably accompany a discussion of that magnitude. He hasn’t dealt enough with the crashing disappointment he feels in himself, and nor I when I behold this occurring.

Early mornings, part two.

Thursday, April 16, 2019, 6:45am. Why am I in such a bad mood this morning? Why do I feel so angry? Almost every morning, when I wake up, whether I’ve had good sleep or bad, whether I feel rested or deprived, it doesn’t seem to matter. I came in yesterday morning just furious. Not a bone in my body wanted to do my work or even wanted to exist.

I feel angry often, but it’s sadness and anger.

I don’t like the feeling. I want it to be resolved.

I am repelled by my father’s anger, and his was the same as this the same as this.

I want to be like the people that I admire the men that I admire who aren’t angry, but filled with love and compassion The ones that have caught some kind of affection-bug and they can let go, who are part of a different echelon when it comes to the management of their moods and feelings. Not fragile, but strong. Maybe they are more forgiving and compassionate? Maybe they are more emotionally-secure? To others, I want to be able to say, when I’m angry, “It’s not about you; it’s about something you’ve triggered in me. It’s not as dangerous as you think that I feel angry.”

My instinct is to behave as if I sincerely believe that feelings of anger, rage, or even hatred, are ontologically evil. “For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another. Behold, this is not

my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.” 32

Dad’s Cancer Miracle

Over the next few months, Joel and I travel to Arizona to attend Ryan’s wedding to Rachel at the Snowflake Mormon temple, just a half-hour or so outside PinetopLakeside where we grew up. As part of Ryan’s recovery, last April (i.e., of 2018), he escaped a torrential life in Lancaster to embark on the four days’ journey back to our native soil. Shortly after his prodigal return, he met Rachel and they were engaged shortly thereafter. Now, just over a year later, on May 18th, the two exchange vows in traditional, Mormon fashion, settling into a new life together that both are eagerly building. Honestly, I couldn’t be prouder of him.

While there, I converse with my siblings about arranging a visit to Lancaster for Father’s Day. After some deliberation between us, everyone agrees to make it happen. Heather and I also work to prepare Ryan and Danny. Heather has been tending to Dad’s needs in Pennsylvania since the previous month; but, our brothers have not seen Dad since before he broke his arm since his latest and most serious decline to date. I confess the fact to everyone that time is growing short for us to address, with Dad, some crucial details regarding his end-of-life wishes and concerns. Dad has also agreed that this needs to be accomplished. We know that it will be painful to engage in such a conversation, each in our own way and for our own reasons. So, we agree to it, but reluctantly.

32 This is a passage from the Book of Mormon, which came to mind while I engaged in this free-writing exercise on the date in question. See: 3 Nephi: 11:29-30 (Book of Mormon, 1830/2000)

Now, it’s Sunday night on June 16, 2019 76 days before Dad’s death. Danny leaves tomorrow, and given that it’s the last chance we’ll have to dialogue with Dad, I gather us in his living room. Ryan, Danny, Heather, Dad, and I are all present (e.g., see Appendix A, Fig. 15). We have arranged ourselves in a semi-circle, Dad is to my left. I sit in the middle and open the conversation conveying details about what Dad has stipulated in his will for us regarding his house and his few major assets. Dad adds some notes of his own. The question arises about what he wants us to do with his house, once he’s passed away. Does he want us to keep it and use it for future gatherings? Should we sell it and divide the profits amongst us? As we deliberate around these options, Dad begins to weep, and each of us, in our own defined way, work to help him recover

“You kids are going to have some money in your pocket from me,” Dad struggles to say. “That’s the only thing I can tell you right now.”

“And, it’s a huge blessing anyway that it goes,” Ryan quickly adds.

Of all of us, Ryan appears to be the most uneasy about the conversation we’re having, and I can’t really blame him. It has never been a good sign when either of our parents, especially our father, begin to show strong emotion midst family dialogue

Ryan then begins to insist that all is well and all is right, which intensifies as he says, as if by positive wrap-up, “That’s what we’re here for. We’re here we’re here we’re here, and it’s going to be perfect. It couldn’t go any differently than it’s going. It’s going perfect.”

Yet, his assurance fails to achieve what is likely its intended result (i.e., either to wrap up the weighty conversation or, at least, to lighten it up incontrovertibly). Even

beyond him, I can feel the way that Dad’s elevated despair is feeding an alreadyexpanding cloud of concentrated anxiety about the room. I work up the courage to help alleviate this by speaking to Dad’s reaction head on. My role begins to modulate, as if I am playing the part of a group therapist. I ask, “Dad, what’s going on for you, right now? What’s upsetting you?”

Dad toils to articulate a response to my question. Heather helps by speaking for him, informing us that “he’s been really emotional lately,” to which Dad tearfully adjoins, “I’m scared.” “He’s very scared,” she emphasizes.

“And, I don’t ,” Dad tries to say; but, he is overcome.

“I think we’re bringing reality a little too home for him right now,” Ryan asserts “Yes, but, I think we need to be realistic as a family, too,” Heather reasons

“I do it , I do it to the , to the extent that I can ,” Dad attempts to clarify; but, again, he is overcome.

“What are you scared about, Daddy?” Heather asks. “Can you tell us?” Her tone and comportment remind me of our mother, who often works to console me in this manner when I have been upset. It is as if Heather is inviting Dad, instinctively, to take baby steps, as it were, toward putting his feelings to words. Dad is then able to collect himself enough to surmise, “I’ve spent my whole life frittering it away ”

“ No, you didn’t ,” Heather quickly interjects.

“ in meaningless, stupid pursuits that I can’t even articulate to you, but I have tried to. We’ve talked about how it might come out in the wash,” Dad conveys.

“Dad, you know what you taught me?” Ryan begins. “You have taught me to be better than you were.” For a moment, I am horrified, thinking that Dad will take issue

with Ryan’s wording, but I am surprised as Dad endorses his testimony with, “That’s all I want.”

Ryan continues, “That’s what we’re doing. We’re doing our best to be better than you were ”

“ To leave it better than you found it,” Dad encourages.

“ Right!” Ryan maintains. “If I would have died last year,” he then adds, referring to his meth addiction, “I would have come up a lot shorter.”

Indeed, there were several long periods of several concurrent days that the family was forced to endure the formidable question of whether Ryan would turn up dead or alive somewhere, following what we could only assume at the time that he was on the course of another drug-induced binge. These dark periods would inevitably begin with Dad’s reaching out to each of us, one at a time, to report that Ryan had gone missing that he was not answering his phone and was nowhere to be found. Each time this occurred, I repeated the harrowing truth to my family that we “need to prepare ourselves for the worst,” and each time Dad would follow this with a renewed, determined fervor that he has had enough and is entirely resigned to be finished with Ryan. I was never clear about what he meant by this, but I could only assume that Ryan would no longer be welcome to live in Dad’s basement. Asking Dad for specifics in these matters only drew more frustration out of him, which landed nowhere but on those in his vicinity; so, needless to say, the endeavor to understand Dad’s meaning was always futile.

Dad then addresses Danny, who has been relatively silent since our conversation began tonight. He states, “I want to hear from you. ”

“Hear what?” Danny asks, somewhat jolted.

“Well,” Dad continues, “you look like you want to talk and I want to hear from you.”

“No, I’m just listening,” he asserts.

I think that Danny would rather participate as a spectator than a contributor tonight, which makes me wonder if he feels he even has a place at the table to say anything at all. After all, Danny has always been saddled with the insurmountable task of self-defining amongst a family circle of older, very dominant and overbearing personalities.

“But, I want to hear what’s in your head,” Dad insists.

“I just don’t want you to be upset at anything we’re doing or saying,” Danny says, siding with Ryan’s conviction. “We just want to be with you and enjoy it. We want you to enjoy your time ”

“ That’s why I would never say ‘no’ to any of this,” Dad interjects. “I’d much rather have all of you here.”

“But, I’m talking about the conversation,” Danny clarifies. “I’d rather not have the conversation. I just want you to be happy and proud of what we’re doing.”

As Dad has collected himself, he works to assure everyone that he is feeling the type of grief that one might naturally expect to experience, given the nature of the talk we’re having and the nature of what we’re doing with it. I wonder if Dad can sense that everyone in the room is having an adverse reaction to the intensity of his display of emotion, but I think that we are also keenly aware that this is likely the last time we will see Dad alive. It’s the last time the four of us will be together with him.

Dad is now able to speak coherently as he asserts, “You guys are the most important thing in my life.”

“And you have told us that our whole lives, Dad,” Ryan quickly assures, before the dust of Dad’s comment can settle “You have lived a life of showing us that.” What? He has?

“Well, let him say it again,” I urge, showing frustration at Ryan’s determination to bring our conversation to what feels like, to me, a premature end.

“Sorry,” Ryan concedes, but then swiftly shifts to add, “No, I I stand by it. I can never think of a time in my life when Dad wasn’t there for me.” What on earth? ‘Never’?

In a quick second, I can intuit the rising panic in Ryan’s demeanor, and I recognize it as something with which we have both been forced to wrestle, likely for the same reasons. Fulfilling a role that has inadvertently fallen upon him, Ryan has become the manifest representative of something with which we are all avidly working to deal. He seems hypervigilant, that is, about the moment that Dad’s grief will erupt into something violent, as it has always been wont to do. This will activate what would inevitably become another unresolved, family brawl, linking each of us up with our own private versions of a most severe set of unresolvable paradoxes, traumas, and losses of our own, centralizing around our father and his gross destabilization of mood and emotion. Likewise, our lack of ability to cope with such things would (rightly) characterize our last and final conversation with Dad, together, while he is alive. We’d have to hold that as our final memory of him.

Each of us my siblings and I have learned to deal with these matters in our own ways, but I think Ryan fears that such a collapse will put him in touch with a type of anger and grief that would increase his need for “the enlivening object” (Director, 2009) of methamphetamine, thereby undoing his honorable efforts, over the past few years, to overcome his devastating addiction. The city of Lancaster, for him, is surely full of daunting triggers that could easily lead to this.

Dad then conveys to us that he has been keeping a daily journal since he entered hospice in April. He expresses that he wants us to read it and learn from it. “You’ll notice,” he informs, “as you read along in there that my struggles have been knowing that things are not functioning like they used to. So, I struggle to understand. I I struggle to and I pray to understand what’s going on around me and stay the course. But, when you’re in decline like this, from something that’s totally out of your control, it’s easy for the darker side of your soul to creep in, or the darker side of the world, or whatever it is. The deceit and the crap that goes on around the world I’m not able to process it. Heather and I do a lot of talking, and she’s incredibly helpful her and Tracy but, at two o’clock in the morning, when I’m thinking and writing, it’s just me and the universe.”

At some point in early adolescence, Ryan developed a penchant for using humor in attempt to mitigate anxious conversational moments, usually at dinnertime. When he has been unable to abreact the suffering of his concerns and apprehensions with comments designed to make everyone laugh, he learned to signal his need for this defense by producing a high-pitched, breathy sound with his voice that hovers above whatever is occurring, as if to beckon everyone to join him outside of the stressful

moment in question. The timbre of it is usually strong enough for everyone to perceive, but not so strong to be rude, interruptive, or blatantly obstreperous, even though this really does appear to be its intended purpose. I can’t say if it works; yet, in this moment, as Dad begins to speak, growing in the expression of his amplified grief, Ryan employs this very device with all the characteristics unvarying from what I’ve just described. I affectionately refer to this as the “hovering hound.”

“And I don’t always know what I’m writing,” Dad continues to say, “and I don’t always know how to interpret things that come to mind, but I do know I’ve been very, very blessed. Incredibly blessed. And I’m trying to focus on that, because that’s all that matters to me.”

“Dad,” I continue, “maybe one of the things that’s important to note, here, is that in those silent moments when it’s just you and the universe, and you’re writing in your journal, maybe,” I struggle to say, “maybe you’re ”

Heather then leaves her chair abruptly with her laptop in hand and sits next to Ryan. They begin to converse and I feel it distract me. I glean very little of what they are whispering to one another, but my previous frustration and disappointment grow into fury as I behold it I work to control this as I challenge them with, “You guys! Are we having this conversation or what?!”

“What?” Ryan asks.

“Am I talking ?” I protest.

“I’m listening,” Danny reassures.

“You’re fine, Dev,” Ryan guarantees. “Talk.”

“We’re we’re all very we’re distracted,” I state, continuing in the effort to control feelings of anger, grief, and disappointment.

“No, we’re not,” Ryan denies.

“There’s a lot of distraction, right now,” I insist.

“I don’t know why Heather got up,” Ryan says. “But, we’re good.”

I then sublimate a portion of the disappointment I feel as I insist upon challenging the high and intense levels of distractibility between us. I state, “It’s okay if we don’t want to have this conversation right now. I don’t I can’t force this ”

“I just think we just need to stop talking about what our futures are going to be like right now,” Ryan replies, “and let’s just enjoy our time with Dad.”

“Right,” I concede falsely as Heather releases a deep, exasperated sigh.

“There’s no conversation that needs to happen,” Ryan maintains.

“We’re not talking about our future right now,” Heather says, rejoining the conversation. “We’re talking about Dad and how he feels.”

“We’re talking about me,” Dad joins, “and I’m feeling very much more at peace.”

Dad’s reassurance appears to calm a portion of the anxiety in the room between us, and I am a bit surprised, even somewhat delighted, to witness it. I seize the moment to catch my breath, as Dad takes the conversational mantle.

“You know, you guys’ feelings are I told Devan when we, when I wanted to do this,” Dad says as he dries his swollen, wet face, “I have no secrets here and I have nothing that I need to cover up, nor do I expect any of you to soft soap me, you know. It’s more important for me and for us to maximize our understanding of each other, and I think we are I think these are I think we’re getting there. I’m not afraid that you’ll say

something like, you know, ‘back in 1987, when you did this thing, Dad, you were a real jerk.’ I’m not afraid of that.”

“ It was 1986, not 1987,” Ryan declares. His expression and tone communicate that he is utterly serious. What happened in 1986?

“What?” Dad asks, confused.

“It was 1986, but yeah ”

Whatever modicum of relief I had secured quickly begins to evaporate, and I plummet toward anxious fury once again, as I realize what Ryan is doing with his humorless charge. I then relay to Dad with strained patience, “He’s joking. ” Yet, Dad does not appear to be moved to frustration or anger by Ryan’s sarcasm, which surprises me, given that it usually (almost always) does.

Ryan compels some isolated laughter, as if to communicate, Come on guys! It’s funny! Yet, these efforts are to no avail for him. He appears alone in his quest to discontinue the conversation, appearing to have failed to garner enough support for this even from Danny. Perhaps, I’ve triumphed in my attempt to insist that we continue.

Whatever it is, I then take a few breaths while straining to hide them from my family so as not to escalate the anxious atmosphere about us, toiling for consolation, by showing my impatience too conspicuously. I work to harness an empathic tone of voice as I declare, “It’s okay if things are a little intense, you guys, right now. It’s not a bad thing. There’s a lot of things that might need to be said right now.”

“It’s a lot of emotions to deal with!” Ryan relents.

“I would rather deal with them while I’m alive instead of you guys having to speculate after I’m gone,” Dad says.

By now (and not just by this moment, but by now, in the course of my life), I have become consumed with the longing to facilitate a process that will effect a constitutional change in my family, which I have determined to be necessary, even crucial, for our emotional and mental health And I recognize in it a hunger that I’ve known for what feels like the ages of my life so far. My frustration and anxiety appear to be infused with the abject determination to procure it, as if the members of my family need to be saved and as if I have been appointed to the task of bringing this to pass. The desire to change what my father means to me has now become the desire to change the consequences of his contribution to our respective upbringings. I am driven to this end as if it is my duty, as if this is what brings my life purpose and meaning to heal my father by healing, not just myself, but what we have all come to mean to one another, both as internal investments of one another and independent and isolated subjects in the cosmic drama of the intrapsychic inheritances of our father.

I continue, “I think it’s important to say, you guys, that negative doesn’t mean bad. I mean, hard doesn’t mean bad ”

“ No, I agree,” Dad interjects.

“ Or a waste of time, you know?”

Ryan then, perhaps helplessly, returns to another performance of the hovering hound, working madly to imbue our dialogue with light-hearted humor. Heather asks, “Devan, is there something you need to get out?”

“Well, a moment ago,” I reply, “I was sensitive to the fact that and I don’t want to say that I have some kind of extra knowledge about how things are going but, I would suggest that when Dad is talking with us about this house or the estate or afterlife

issues or after-death issues, that he’s going to be very sensitive. He’s very likely going to be sensitive to the things that you’re anxious about.”

“Yes,” Ryan agrees

“And he’s going to try to make you feel better.”

“Yes,” he repeats.

“And so ,” I begin.

“ No question,” Dad declares, adding his own amen! “I’ve written about it,” he says, referring, again, to his journal.

“Right,” I continue. “So, what we have to be aware of is that the conversations that we have with Dad are much more likely to be about him trying to calm us, rather than giving us information about what he really wants.”

“It brings peace to both of us,” Dad assures. “It mends fences.”

“Well,” Ryan adds, “no matter what, it’ll work out.”

“Whatever we have to do ” Dad says.

“It’ll work out,” Ryan assures.

Then, Dad conveys, “You know, when you start reading my journal, you are going to see exactly where I am. It’s all there. You can pick it up and read it anytime.”

“So ,” I attempt to continue.

“ You want to make a ,” Dad petitions me.

“I think ,” Heather struggles to say.

“ a copy of it?” Dad asks me. Then, to everyone, “We’re gonna scan it so that you guys can all have a copy of it.”

I say, “Yeah, I can scan it and send them out ”

“Can I just say ?” Heather attempts again.

“Yes, you can,” Dad permits. “You can say anything you want.”

Heather then becomes very tearful, quiet, and vulnerable, exerting herself as she says, “I’m probably gonna need a lot of help from you guys.”

As Heather begins to feel her words, the anxiety barometer quickly spikes about the room in a way that I can only describe as a whole clusterfuck of fretful, jumpy energy. It is as if a poorly-designed dam has broken, and the water from it is now rapidly consuming the cracks and contours of the land beneath it. I move about in my chair to ground myself, taking mental note of how my body feels against it while gripping my armchairs with force. Heather’s comment sounds helpless, preoccupied, anxious, and bereft of self-confidence; I imagine that she has learned that she is ineffective in the enterprise of meeting her needs on her own, without communicating them in this fashion.

Ryan quickly begins to assure her with, “Yeah, you got your brothers. You ”

“ I think we’re closer today,” Dad interjects.

“Let’s ,” Ryan tries to say.

And I then intercept it all by reminding everyone, “Listen, let Heather speak, you guys. Let’s not there’s nothing you need to fix right now. Just let her talk.” Then, turning to Heather, “Please, just speak, Hatu.”

Heather takes a moment to catch her breath, which is useful for all of us, still laboring to find our own sources of coveted oxygen.

“I’m very likely going to fall apart about something else ,” Heather begins.

“ You mean emotional ?” Dad asks, before she is able to continue.

“My state of mind ,” she says.

“ you’re talking about emotionally you’re okay,” Dad assures.

“ My state of mind,” Heather works to say, “is such that I’m probably going to fall apart about something like my cat getting bit ”

“ you mean, over something trivial?” Ryan asks, adding to the barrage she’s now enduring, which prevents her from completing the very thoughts about which Dad and Ryan are inquiring.

“ And I won’t be able to handle it,” she presses on. Then, “So, I’m probably going to have to lean on you guys quite a bit.”

“We’ll all be leaning on each other,” Ryan quickly generalizes. “We should all know ”

“ But, I’m just trying to tell you,” Heather insists, “about what that looks like; because, for me, you guys are probably going to respond with something like, ‘Why the hell are you worried about your cat getting bit when Dad is dead?’ And just so you know, that’s what it looks like for me. I’ll be just fine about dealing with things, but then my brain will fall apart about something else something that you guys will likely see as rash or silly.”

“Well Heather, that’s normal ” Dad says “ I just want to let you know, for myself, what it looks like so we don’t get to the point where you guys are frustrated with me, and I’m trying to say that this is where I need help.”

“Okay.” Now, this response to Heather’s supplication enters our dialogue as if an echo from a distant, mythical land. Danny, that is, has ventured a conversational turn,

with potential to inject some welcomed variety into the present conversation; but, it doesn’t quite catch.

“It looks very weird coming out of me,” Heather continues

“Sure,” I remark

“But, that is what I need help with,” she surmises. “It’s the little things.”

“In my work, we talk about managing the fallout,” Dad interjects.

“And, I’m not just talking about in the future, either,” Heather adds. “I may be talking about right now.” Private conversations with Heather have yielded much of this same information, where it appears that she has become, as Dad’s primary caretaker, already quite burnt out.

“You’re holding things together really well, Hatu,” I encourage

“But then,” Heather confronts, as if she feels her point has not been communicated adequately, “I will fall apart about ”

“ Okay, but I mean, we all do that!” Danny exclaims, forcing his way in.

“I wonder ,” I begin to say.

“ That’s not an abnormal thing to do,” he presses.

“

I wonder, Heather ,” I proceed anyway, again failing to capture Danny’s bid. Dad then asserts, “Devan, let Danny finish!” and I obey.

Danny takes a breath as if to thank our father for opening a path for him to speak. He says, “It’s not we’re all dealing with grief in a different way right now. And it manifests itself with the other things. We’re expending a lot of emotional energy dealing with this, when, you know, for me it’s, you know, when Sonny gets a new rash. Then,

I’m out driving around and that’s all I’m thinking about. And now, I’m pulled over on the side of the road while at work. I’m supposed to be keeping traffic safe and I’m ”

Heather’s phone rings, tearing a hole in the fabric of vulnerability in Danny’s selfdisclosure. Her comportment quickly shifts from what it was before as she requests, as if compelled to oblige the titans of technology, “Please excuse me, they’ve called twice.” Then, leaving her chair with, “Hold on.”

Exasperated, I exclaim, “Oh, my goodness!” as she begins in conversation with whomever it is that has called. “Hello?” she says.

Having had enough of this type of distraction, I gather the courage to confront it again, eager to put it categorically to rest once and for all or, at least until we are finished. That is, I ask with riled inflection, “Are we having a goddamn conversation or not?!”

“Okay, okay,” she concedes.

“Turn it off!” I command.

“Got it,” she says, again, to whomever has called.

“Just turn it off!” I repeat.

Ryan, having been relieved of his turn in the volley about the room of representational anxiety, indicates to her, “Heather, he’s talking directly to you.” She releases another aggravated sigh of annoyance, as if evacuating herself of the guilt Ryan is sporting to lay upon her.

“I know. I’m listening, I’m listening,” she assures. “‘When Sonny gets a rash ’ I’m listening to every word.”

Danny’s comportment is now dry and emotionless, except for a wee, irked-out sigh that slips from him just so before pressing on, “Alls I’m saying is it manifests we understand that it manifests itself in different ways for everybody.”

“Okay,” Heather replies, dismissingly.

But, something shifts in Danny as he moves from a state of nothing to something. “I’ve learned ,” he struggles to continue. “I’ve learned a lot about grief over the miscarriage of two children. Everybody grieves differently, and we understand that. So "

“ Well, I ,” Heather anxiously interjects.

“ But it’s but, it’s okay,” Ryan swiftly assures.

“ I just I just ,” Heather responds.

“ Don’t let that panic you or worry you,” Ryan adds.

Through the tumult of this exchange, Danny then exclaims, “Guys, give me a minute without interruption!”

His command appears to have worked and the room settles quickly into startled compliance.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were done,” Ryan says.

“That’s just for the future that’s one thing that gets me going is interruption. I hate being interrupted.”

“I didn’t know you weren’t done,” Ryan repeats, now with amplified defense.

Danny collects his thoughts and reports to Heather, “We’re going to be there for you as much as we can, as well, because we gotta lean on each other. I have ”

“ We have to be there for each of us,” Dad interrupts, but Danny presses forward.

“Well, we’re going to be. So, Dad, don’t When you’re going through that time, let’s not I mean, we’re going to understand that. Because when we lost Tucker, there was nothing that, there was nothing that we, that I could we lost Brie’s grandpa, we lost Tucker, we found out that Dad had cancer, we had another miscarriage all in a year and a half. I saved a guy’s life with CPR and four years later, now, he’s dead because of cancer.”

“That’s a lot of loss, Danny,” I remark, thoughtfully, having put together something I didn’t fully understand in terms of the extent to what he and his wife have had to endure. Danny and his wife Briann lost Tucker, who was stillborn a few months before he was due to arrive. Dad and I took emergency flights that October to Wyoming to be with them for a few days during this crisis, and we got a full dose of the grief they were sustaining during this time. However, I hadn’t realized a second miscarriage had occurred shortly after this, nor had I realized Danny had recently lost a friend to cancer.

“Grief is it’s a bitch,” he asserts, speaking mainly to Heather. “But it’s not unmanageable and we’re here for you. And however that manifests itself, we’re going to understand that. So, I don’t want you to feel insecure about that, because it’s not something we haven’t been through before or, at least, it’s not something that I haven’t been through.”

The four of us, including our father, sit in stunned silence at Danny’s selfdisclosure, not sure what to say (and, perhaps, a little cautious not to interrupt him again).

Danny then signals that he’s ready to turn the conversation over, stating, quite simply, “I’m done.”

“Dad, do you is this okay that we talk about grief in front of you?” Ryan asks, with some hopeful desperation in his voice “Absolutely,” Dad replies, as if it is self-evident. “There’s nothing ”

“ Because I’m worried about it adding extra trauma for you.”

“Heaven’s no,” Dad assures. “This is life. I am a realist. I want to we all are going through what we’re going through, and we’re all doing it in different ways. My plea is that we rally around each other.”

“Yeah,” Ryan affirms, relieved.

“Let’s support each other, if it’s just doing what we’re doing,” Dad adds, laboring now, quite earnestly to pinpoint the right words. “I’m feeling two things, really: The miracles that have happened that I can’t deny and the fact that it doesn’t get any easier. You know, we still have to struggle to the last day, and because of that, I just want my family to be secure and happy.”

“Personally, Dad,” Ryan adds, “and I know I’m in a pink cloud because I’m alive, but I just can’t believe how good my life is going and how grateful I am for ”

“ We’re living a miracle in some ways in many ways,” Dad interjects “Personally,” Ryan continues, “it’s really easy to be thankful for everything. And the fact that we every second that I get to spend with you is a miracle and a blessing. That’s what I’m focusing on.”

“You remember when I said, months ago,” Dad recalls, excited with insight, “when Dr. DeGreen gave me the diagnosis of the kidney cancer, I started to realize that I

had had it for twenty-five years, and we’re only dealing with it now. I said that I’ve already had the cancer miracle.”

“What do you mean, Dad?” I ask him. I haven’t heard this story yet.

“Twenty-five years of extra life that the literature now says I should never have had,” Dad reports. “Only six people in the world have experienced what I’ve experienced.”

“What do you mean?!” I repeat. This is new to me.

“That’s amazing! That’s actually phenomenal!” Ryan exclaims, as it appears this fact is sinking in for him, as well.

Referring to the renal carcinoma, Dad reports, “That little pill sat there for twentyfive years. And the literature today says that this should never have happened. I should have got I should have gotten a recurrence of the kidney cancer within seven to ten years of the operation I had in 1994, and then I should have been dealing with it then I should have been dealing with what I’m dealing with now, then. And look, I went all that time not even knowing I had it!”

“You’re referring to your carcinoma, Dad?” I ask. “Why did you say, ‘within seven to ten years’ just now?”

“Because, at the time, back in 1994, they said I was cured when they removed my kidney, when I had the nephrectomy.”

“Right, that’s what I have understood.”

“But, the literature on it now says that I should have been dead within seven to ten years of diagnosis.” Dad is consumed again with melancholic grief. He then adds ruefully, “And, I squandered it.”

“What?!” Ryan exclaims. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. I squandered it,” he insists.

At this point, it is difficult to let in Dad’s grief, because it is equally difficult to understand exactly what he feels he’s squandered. I ask him, albeit rather cautiously, as it seems I am the only one not comprehending the fullness of Dad’s meaning: “Dad, listen, can we back up for a moment? You said that you should have been dead years ago. What do you mean? I’m still not I’m still not catching this.”

“Here, I’ll get it,” Heather says, stepping up with confidence. The room becomes uncharacteristically quiet as she recovers an academic paper from a stash of others on Dad’s desk in the nearby sunroom. She then returns within moments to reveal a print of a short, three-page study covered with highlights, presumably from when Tracy and Dad had initially studied it.

As I skim through the abstract of the paper, I learn what Dad is referring to. In the fall of 2017, a team of scientists from Southampton University in the UK (Tamburrini et al., 2017) published findings that reveal that patients who are initially diagnosed with renal-cell carcinoma (or RCC) present with reoccurrences of the cancer in the lungs within five years of the removal of it, and that this happens up to 95% of the time. “The possibility of a lung metastasis should be taken into account in patients with history of RCC,” I read on the first page to myself, “who present with pulmonary nodules, even decades after treatment of the primary neoplasm.”

“Dad, this says 5 years, not 7 to 10,” I inform. “Does this mean that you should have died let’s see, in 1994 by 1999?”

“It means that I should have seen the cancer beginning to develop in my lungs within five years of the nephrectomy that I had, and that I should have had about two or three years of treatment before I would have died.”

“So ,” I begin.

“ I should have been dead just around the year 2000 or 2001.”

“Oh, wow!” I exclaim.

“And, I squandered it,” he reiterates.

“Dad, I wish you’d stop saying that,” Ryan asserts. “You haven’t squandered your life!”

Dad is overcome in much the same way that he was at the beginning of our conversation tonight. I take a moment to adjust to this newfound, newly-realized bit of extraordinary news quickly enough to process the echo of Dad’s earlier assertion. I ask him, “Dad, why do you say that?”

“If you think of it, I had an extra fifteen to twenty years given to me,” he says, working to collect himself. “You know, that’s what this is all about the miracle I was given. And, if I had known that it was a miracle that was being handed to me, I would have been different. I know I would have been a different person.”

“Oh gosh,” I say.

“Instead, I thought, ‘Oh, they took the kidney and I’m cured,’ you know? That is how they said it,” Dad remembers, referring to his doctors.

Years ago, when I studied philosophy at the University of Utah and at Yale, I had the chance to delve into Kant’s moral philosophy, something we revisited often throughout both programs, whether embedded in a discourse of law, ethics, or theology.

One of Kant’s categorical imperatives is that we should never lie, no matter what the circumstances may be (Kant, 1930/1963). He argues that the greater moral value rests on the ability for one to employ one’s faculty of reason. This is stripped away when one is fed a lie, however, because one’s choices will be based upon a falsehood, and this, to Kant, robs one of what makes one human i.e., the ability to build the decisions of one’s life on rational principles, which is impossible to do without the truth.

Now, to whomever reads this, I can’t tell you how I have been affected personally by lies, especially those that have shaped perceptions of myself, my desirability, my usefulness, or my capacity to love. Lies have destroyed me, nearly killed me, even ones that were ignorantly or perhaps even innocently-imparted. Lies from mostly-straight men, the Church, social media and, of course, my father.

So, I think, now, on the idea that Dad feels regret over the time he’s lost how he’s built his life on a lie that he received albeit, ignorantly that led him to believe that his life would be extended indefinitely.

“Had I known,” Dad rehearses in despair, “I would have made so many different choices. I would have experienced my life so differently.”

As Dad is conveying this bit of existential wisdom, I begin to piece together some insight that I believe might enrich the content of our group dialogue. “You know, Dad,” I note with enlightened enthusiasm, “there’s also another piece to this that’s kind of important, I think.”

Ryan and Danny are growing impatient with the length of our discussion again, and they withdraw into a private, indiscernible conversation. I grow annoyed, again, as I

find myself distracted by this. So, again, I confront them as I ask (without interest in the answer), “You guys all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Danny replies, meeting my challenge Ryan seizes the chance to take another conversational turn, exclaiming, “Hey, I have an idea!”

I proceed as if I haven’t heard either of them, hoping to not lose grip on the logic of my insight. “There’s another piece to this, as well, Dad, about the window of time that you’re speaking of ” But, the expression on Ryan’s face is showing that he is too eager for me to continue with my reflection. I inquire, addressing Ryan, again, with characteristic passive-aggression: “Yeah, what’s wrong?”

“Well, when you’re done, I wanted to I want to say something really quick. It’s something that I forgot to mention, and I think it’s good timing to do that now.”

Undeterred, I begin again to address Dad, “The window of time, though, that’s even more relevant since your hospice experience ”

Dad clarifies, “It’s time. But, this period and that period ”

“ Right, but let me finish.” I feel I’m losing traction. “What’s really important about this is that you’re talking about a window of time that includes what you could have had if you would have known. But, you have that now, right, since you came home from hospice?”

“Right,” Dad replies, but I’m not sure he understands what I am trying to say.

“So then, who knows when that would have happened,” I add.

Ryan then exhales a rather strikingly conspicuous presentation of the hovering hound, as if to remind us that he is eagerly awaiting the chance to speak.

“Dr. Fisher came into my room,” Dad rehearses. “It was right after the surgery literally the next day and he says to me, ‘You had stage two renal carcinoma. It had not metastasized, because it doesn’t do that until stage three. So, you’re cured.’”

“I actually think I remember you telling us that all those years ago,” I say.

“Yes, and today’s document says you don’t get cured from renal-cell carcinoma,” he repeats. “So, I went twenty-five years thinking that I was a normal human being ”

“Right,” I remark, “I know that Dad. I understand you.”

“You thought you’d beat it,” Ryan rejoins.

“Yes, that I had beat it. That I was a cancer survivor.”

“But, you did,” Ryan affirms with more positive wrap-up. “You did beat it!”

“I didn’t think I would have to worry about it anymore,” Dad recalls. “I thought I could just move on.”

“There is no cure for renal-cell?” Danny asks.

“No, it’s terminal,” Dad says, “You’re supposed to be dead within ten years.”

It seems that we are all, in our own way, struggling to let the reality of this factor register. At the turn of the millennium, I was in the middle of fulfilling my missionary service for the Mormon Church in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. Ryan was married to his first wife, Sam. Except for myself, everyone lived in southern Utah, including Danny and our mother. Danny was just thirteen, and Heather a few years out of high school. Our lives were liminal, and we were grossly underprepared for what it would mean for Dad to become, more than we realized he already was, terminally-ill. I would have been pressured to remain in service, as missionaries typically do not return home for funerals, even for close family members. How would I have handled that? Scott Bailey’s Dad died

of cancer while we were on the mission. Everyone praised him for his “courage” at sticking with the mission rather than leaving to attend his father’s funeral. These thoughts bring feelings of dread.

“And it goes back to something one of my doctors said,” Dad remembers. “He made an off-the-cuff comment to me that I didn’t understand at the time, but now I do.

He said that he knew people who had gone ten years with renal carcinoma and been just fine. This was before 2004, so he was telling me this, I think, to be encouraging. But, I’ve been thinking about that comment recently, and wondering why he didn’t tell me explicitly that I didn’t have the time I thought I had. The experts weren’t telling me this. So, here I am merrily thank goodness going along thinking that I’ve beaten it.”

“That could have had a lot to do with why it stayed so long without it doing anything,” Ryan speculates, referring, it seems, to the power of positive thinking.

As I reenter the game of our dialogue, I continue to feel driven to present to Dad an insight about this window of time this miracle to which Dad is referring, and which Dad reasons he has squandered. I begin to say, “Listen, Dad, the reason that I was bringing up that whole piece before before we move too far away from it is that I am trying to say ”

“ Wait, before we do that,” Ryan interrupts, “I have an interjection to make ”

Until now, I feel I have been remarkably good at controlling my exasperation in this evening’s anxiety games, primarily to avoid contributing to the increase of untoward emotion that would eventually catalyze a traumatic collapse of the space between us. Instead, I make my annoyance clear with a sigh of frustration that is just a pitch or two above what it has been tonight, and this immediately stirs some powerful guilt for me in

the enterprise. Ryan picks up on the dynamics of this drama and assures me with, “We can go back to the conversation.” But, the ensuing guilt I feel has got the best of me, and I relent with, “All right. What is it?”

“It’s eight o’clock,” Ryan announces, “and I had forgotten about this, but it might be a good night for it, because it’s our last night together. Rachel gave us a thirty-dollar gift certificate to Olive Garden that we could use for dinner if you guys want. We could order it and I could go pick it up. It closes at ten, but that might be something fun for us to do. We could continue our conversation after that.”

“That was sweet of her,” Dad adds. “Tell her thank you, please.”

Heather, who has remained rather silent for the past while, then encourages me to continue

“So um we were talking about Dad’s experience with hospice care, right?”

“Yes,” Dad says.

I then proceed: “So, what I’m trying to say is that you hit the wall of that pivotal moment then, not in 2016 when you were diagnosed with mantle-cell lymphoma. You knew you had a shorter window of time on your life even back then, but you hadn’t had the realization you have been communicating about this miracle of extra time, that is until recently, after hospice. So, the kind of thing you wish that you could’ve had more of I’m not sure that you could have had that, even if you would have known, because you kind of have to hit that wall first. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“You mean,” Dad struggles to clarify, “that is the miracle that I avoided ?”

“Well, the part I think I am responding to that we’re all responding to is the grief that you feel over the lost time, which is so normal. But, it’s also inevitable, because

you have to hit certain walls to get into the frame of mind that you’re in right now the sort that helps you appreciate that time more, right? So, how would you have gotten that except that you’re in this situation, right now, which is a situation that you’re in after having to face the fact that you’re in hospice. If someone would have told you something like, ‘even though the literature reveals that you will only live until 2001, you’ll actually live at least fifteen years beyond that,’ I don’t know if it would have mattered to you, because you hadn’t been propelled into the reality of well, of your own mortality quite yet. Hospice care seems to stimulate this, with all the signifiers attached to it as this monstrous symbol of what’s, you know what’s to come. And if you had, then you’d be in the same situation you’re in now. You see? It’s just the way that it goes. We don’t realize how precious our lives are until they are just about to be lost. It is a sick, perverse irony, but that’s the way it is. That’s the way it seems to be.”

The room finally settles. The storm of anxiety relaxes and quiets again, and we begin to relish some much-needed relief. Dad sits back in his chair, his arms folded on his chest and his eyes closed, as if working to take in my point, and I feel grateful and honored.

After a few moments, he then remarks, “Maybe that’s from the original prayer of mine that I wrote in my journal: ‘God, lead me, and help me to understand and interpret. Help me to figure out where I go from here.’ Maybe, that was the catalyst that got me through these past few months.”

“Right. I don’t think that people experience this reality much, except that they are in this situation. Part of the reason that I’m saying it is because I think that you are carrying unnecessary guilt about what you’ve lost, even though I understand why you feel

it, because it’s a normal and existential issue, but it’s also reserved for after one hits this wall this wall that you’ve hit. In 1994, in 2016, you simply weren’t in this situation that you’re in now. You wouldn’t ”

“ I wouldn’t have known ”

“ Yes, precisely.”

“None of this would have come before,” Dad reflects. “And I never would have had Heather here to be my aid.”

Dad swells up again with mournful grief, and this time, it appears that we are able to tolerate it better as we witness it. He continues, referring to his reflection about Heather, saying: “She’s the perfect person to do it for me. Our relationship has grown on several levels, and I’m so grateful for her.”

“I love you, Daddy,” Heather conveys, now growing weepy herself as she joins him, sitting on the arm of his chair. She rests her head on his shoulder and releases a cathartic and ebullient load of her own grief, as Dad comforts her with his remaining, functional arm.

“You know, when I told Bishop Hume about the twenty-year miracle,” he says, clearing his throat of debris (and speaking of the local, Mormon leader who visits with Dad weekly, now), “he fully understood, and we talked about that for a while. Then, he finally said and it wasn’t just him, there were some others, too Heather, you might have said this to me but, it was ‘nobody says you can only have one miracle.’”33

33 Mormon hierarchy can be confusing. A “Bishop” is akin to a Catholic “Father.” Mormon Bishops, always men, oversee congregations of about three- to six-hundred congregants that constitute what’s called a “Ward” of the Church. Several “Wards” make up a “Stake” (as in a “stake in Zion”), with a “Stake President” at its helm, and the hierarchy goes upward from there. For a detailed illustration of this, see

Heather pulls back, dries her eyes and nose, and says, “Tracy said that.”

“Was it Tracy?” Dad clarifies.

“Yes,” she confirms.

Ryan then interjects, his face confessing some sober reflection, saying: “When I look at my blessings I can’t it’s just, it goes on and on. It’s amazing to me.” Then, referring to the newest arrival to our family, Ryan remarks, “Danny’s baby boy is a miracle.”

“I don’t think that there’s any question ,” Dad begins, but he can’t finish.

“Why do you say that?” Danny asks, referring to Ryan’s comment.

“I just consider him a miracle baby after all that you guys went through with everything over the past few years,” Ryan clarifies. “He came now. He didn’t come later. He didn’t come afterwards, you know?” Then, speaking to our father, he proceeds, “And I look at meeting Rachel right now and that you got to meet her. I think that I put you through so much bull-crap that you finally get to see my trajectory. You get to see that it looks pretty bright at this point. It wouldn’t have been believable if you didn’t see it it’s just been blessing after blessing.”

Ryan pulls back in his seat and takes a needed breath. Heather finds a nearby tissue to wipe her saturated face dry. Danny remains quiet and reflective, while I begin to notice a deep, depressive mood overwhelming my heart and mind. Tonight has been an evening of representations, and I feel this is mine the bearer of what it seems we have all been working so hard to avoid.

www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2012/11/lds_leadership_chart_how_the_mormon_hierarch y_is_organized.html

“Look,” Ryan adds, “we’ve said a lot tonight, but I need to I need to stop, I can’t process anymore. My cup runneth full! Is it okay if we just lighten things up for the night? Who’s up for Olive Garden?”

Madness in the morning.

I wake up the next morning feeling emotionally-unstable, even kind of sick, as if I need to stay in bed to recover or as if I want to retreat. The sensation is not new to me, but it feels amplified lately. The fan is on, which provides a modicum of comfort, drowning out much of the sound from outside my room. I slept deeply last night consumed by dreams. As I wake, I don’t remember the content of them, except for one: Cristina (my sister-in-law, of sorts) is being pursued by drug lords and we find a random, Middle-Eastern doctor who is a neurologist. He gives the whole family protection.

Outside my room, I can hear that Ryan is busy conversing with my mom by phone or Facetime He’s going to interrupt me at any moment, I think to myself. I’m sure of it. I hear enough of what he’s saying to conclude that he’s in a hyper-activated state, which I suppose shouldn’t surprise me, given that he’s been in one for the most part of the time he’s been back in Lancaster. He’s frustrated this morning because his computer isn’t working, which makes sense to me, but certainly adds to the already fragile climate around the home. Preoccupied attachment is characterized by one making one’s separation anxieties too conspicuous to be ignored by one’s caretaking environment, I recall

Danny has left to return to Wyoming. I envy him for departing the scene earlier than the rest of us earlier than me, I should say. I feel a bit of regret that I organized this reunion and sad about the complicated nature of our discussion yesterday, even if this

type of regret is unreasonable. I feel the desire, once again, to be back in the world that I have created for myself in Chicago the world that I love with the people I love coupled with the wish that I didn’t feel so affected by the atmospheric climate of the home, where the talons of Death feel to be lurking in every nook and corner of the house.

My thoughts run wild with mournful ruminations: I wish Dad’s emotional softness wasn’t due to his pain medications. I wish everything were different. I wish my family were more skilled at handling emotion.

I wish this were all over.

These thoughts convey a sense of a disappointment, which I can keenly recognize. I inadvertently turn them, rather cruelly, against myself as if a reflection of my belief that I am a bad person for having these thoughts, feelings, and desires I’m probably deidealizing, I reckon, somewhat avoidantly. That must be it.

I then feel an overpowering aching for body contact with someone that I love, who isn’t the object of this frustration and disappointment. I know that I have grown so much since I’ve been here, part of this family, from my youth; but, everything I am thinking and feeling right now appears to be so very wrong. I seem stupid to myself and then terribly embarrassed at having the idea. This humiliation comes as I fantasize that someone might become aware of my mood I shouldn’t be this way. I should be better

I feel I’ve hit an emotional brick wall a dangerous impasse that can go nowhere but into nebulous depths. To counter or stabilize it, I attempt to meditate for a short while, but this doesn’t appear to help. Nothing really does.

I then feel the urge to eat something even though I’m probably not in need of it as if eating is the only activity I could take to help soothe all of this. I could go exercise, I

reason, but this doesn’t seem a viable option. Even if it were, I probably would resist taking it, anyway, go my depressive contemplations. I want to nap; I want to cry; but, even the catharsis this would afford doesn’t seem an option for me. I don’t deserve it.

I have the urge to I kind of want to hit something really, really hard with a baseball bat over and over, like a pillow, the trunk of a solid but forgotten tree, or a ball

a large soccer ball over and over again, so hard that it flies out of the park despite its customary weight. I imagine the ball breaking into thousands of pieces, littering the park with debris, as I hit another one, and another, until the whole of it is covered as if by snow. But even realistic variations of this wouldn’t work. I’d just damage a tree and get nowhere. Attempts to mitigate this sense of suffering is futile. Existence is futile. Noticing the nature and content of my thoughts drives the jab in deeper, as I spiral, flatline, break apart, and quagmire about.

The single hit It’s a Sin by the Pet Shop Boys (Lowe and Tennant, 1987) then pops up in my head, and I begin to recall the catharsis it and songs like it from this era typically provide. I find my headphones, locate the song on my phone, and begin to listen to it.

It starts with four impressive, tectonic beats that break the song open, followed by a doleful church chorus, and Neil Tennant’s tinny, British, melancholic voice singing: When I look back upon my life, it’s always with a sense of shame. I’ve always been the one to blame for everything I long to do, no matter when or where or who, has one thing in common, too It’s a sin. Everything I’ve ever done, everything I ever do, every place I’ve ever been, everywhere I’m going to It’s a sin

I listen to the song not once or twice, but several times with my eyes closed. I take in the beat and the simple, Bachian chord progressions that music from the eighties seems to have reified, and a rudimental cocktail of emotion that transports me to a time in my early life where I had established a perpetual way of being that allowed me to forget the sorrows of losing whatever life I had with my father whatever hopes and dreams that were constituted in our relationship before I turned five, before my parents divorced for the first time in 1984, and before my mom removed us from Utah to live closer to her family.

Father, forgive me. I tried not to do it. Turned over a new leaf, then tore right through it.

Whatever you taught me, I didn’t believe it.

Father you fought me because I didn’t care and I still don’t understand!

It’s a sin.

Later that night, Ryan and Heather introduce me to the Iron Man franchise (Arad and Feige, 2008; Feige, 2010). Dad is back in his room. Before the film marathon begins before the corn is popped, the ice cream doled out, the pillows and blankets arranged on the sofa and lazy chairs (it’s a backdrop that reminds me a bit of a sleepover from my youth) I think to invite Dad to join us. As I approach his room to do this, his door is slightly ajar I can hear that his television is on full volume. It sits directly across from his gatch bed, and the standard echoes of sports journalism resonate throughout the space.

I realize that Dad is grumbling about something, and I hesitate to enter. At one point, he uses the n word, directed at what I can only assume is one of the Black commentators with whom Dad must be disagreeing: “What the fuck do you know, you

stupid nigger!?” I hear him say, and I am mortified with embarrassment and even hatred for him.

In June of 1998, just a month before I would turn 19, I had withdrawn to Dad’s room upstairs in his townhouse on 350 South in Cedar City, Utah. It was months before I would leap from my mother’s van to escape the untenable brawl with Heather, and just six before I would depart to Boston full of dreams to pursue a career in vocal performance and theater at Berklee College of Music. The 52nd annual Tony Awards were broadcast that night, and Julie Taymor was up for a number of awards for her groundbreaking work in The Lion King (John, 1994). Like small, Christian children with visions of sugarplums on Christmas Eve, I had been pining for a chance to learn and apply this sort of craft for years now. Watching the awards brought me joy, while altogether fortifying a reason to exist.

Before a midpoint commercial break, the awards showcased a quick teaser of what was to come after it a live performance of the innovative opening number from the Broadway hit about which I was so enthused. Mom was over for a visit, as I could hear the incoherent reverberations of my dad and her conversing below. I gathered myself and hurried downstairs to the living room so that I could share the performance with them Maybe this was due to the fact that I needed them to see what it was that I wanted to be able to produce someday, or to invite them to share with me in the process of refining my identity or sense of self. I may have merely wanted to watch the performance on a larger screen. Regardless, I moved quickly so as not to miss it.

As I made my way downstairs, I grew more cautious as I began to catch the nature of their conversation. Dad was angry about something, likely political (this was,

after all, the era of Bill Clinton), and the two of them were discussing it with moderate tension. They weren’t fighting, I recall, because if they would have been, I would not have proceeded with my idea

As I joined them downstairs, I asked, “Do you guys mind if I show you something?”

“Sure honey,” mom replied.

Now, Rosie O’Donnell was hosting the Awards that year, and apparently, by this time, she had inaugurated her career-destroying reputation as an American liberal. It would be a few years later before Rosie would come out, but her standing in support of left-wing politics was stout and robust enough that when she appeared to welcome us back, my father bellowed with added, vitriolic rage, “Get that bitch off my television!”

It’s the same feeling, you see mortified and embarrassed.

Another memory comes to mind while situated outside Dad’s doorway tonight, struggling to work through my horror over his contemptuous use of the ethnic slur. In 1987, for the short while that Dad lived with us in Mesa, Arizona before he removed us to Lakeside, I came home one day full of energy from playing with my friends. I admit that, generally, we seemed always up to no good to Dad, if he were much paying attention; but, it seems to me, in hindsight, that we were mostly about finding a bit of harmless fun. We had adopted a mischievous game where we’d knock on someone’s door, then run as quickly as we could away from it before its inhabitants at home came to answer it. I don’t recall that we even waited say, by hiding in the bushes to witness their confused reaction as they discovered that no one was there. This was as sociopathic as it got for me as a child.

I didn’t know what a “nigger” was at the time, anymore than I understood the concept of a “faggot.” I’m not sure my friends did either, but we had carelessly labelled the game “nigger knocking.” I can’t tell you the terror that poisoned my veins as Dad’s demeanor began to change at the moment I reported to him, full of naïve viridity, the given name for this game.

“What have you been doing?!” Dad asked me, mortified to hear it.

“It’s called ‘nigger knocking.’ It’s when you knock on someone’s door and then run away before they answer it.”

“Whose houses, Devan?!”

“Just the neighbors.”

“Are they Black people? Are you going to the houses of Black people and harassing them?!”

“What?! No. It’s just what the game is called, I guess.” My eyes began to water with callow, desperate tears, as I was genuinely confused as to why Dad would bring up the racial characteristics of our “victims.” I said to him, “We just knock on the door and then run.”

“Well, stop doing it!” Dad hollered These were not simple expressions of exasperation or frustration. Dad meant, it seemed to me, to draw blood.

I scurried away to my room with little at my disposal to reason through what exactly my recrimination was beyond some combination of knocking on people’s doors and the few people of color in our neighborhood, most with whom I was already good friends. Prank calls, knock-and-runs, or any other form of such illicit, deviant, BartSimpson-esque activity desisted from that point onward.

Now, standing in Dad’s doorway just minutes before what would become our siblings-only, Marvel-party, I decide not to invite our father to join us. He wouldn’t accept anyway, I reason. I can count on one hand the amount of times that Dad has joined us for a family movie, and they each involve holidays and include guests from his family. Instead, I returned to the party, watched the first two installments in the Marvel franchise, and head to bed.

The following morning, I wake up around eight feeling rested. The house is quiet. I decide to treat myself to some morning sugar-bomb cereal before everyone awakes and we begin to prepare a more fitting breakfast. Dad is laying in one of his reclining chairs fast asleep in the living room. His head is tilted back and to the side, which looks uncomfortable to me. I work to contain my movement so as not to wake him, going so far as to bring all of the ingredients i.e., the box of cereal, my bowl, spoon, and a glass of milk with me to my room before preparing and finishing my salacious appetizer Not two minutes into this, however, I learn that my endeavors have been in vain. I can hear Dad calling from the living room.

“Hello?” he is beckoning. Then, more loudly, “hello?!”

Now, I have also unwittingly left the floor fan on, which I use every night in all seasons of the year to muffle outside noise. This helps me to sleep. It doesn’t matter where I am that is, in Chicago, Lancaster, or Puerto Vallarta on vacation without the motion of the sounds a floor fan generates, it takes a bit of something powerful to get me to get to sleep and stay under to achieve a full night’s rest. So, Dad’s summons is initially imperceptible to me, until it is able to break through the noise I have installed to block any of it out. As I begin to hear him, I set my bowl down and go to his aid.

“Can no one hear me?!” Dad pleads in desperation.

“Yes, Dad, I can hear you. I’m coming,” I assure him.

As I reach the living room, I see him in full, helpless tears, dazed and confused. “Why is no one coming?!” he’s saying. “I need help! Why is no one coming?!”

The shock of seeing Dad in such a decompensated mental and emotional state startles me a great deal, and my mind goes foggy even dissociative. Thus, all I can think to do is ask, “Do you need something? Is something wrong? Should I get Heather?”

Dad nods, and I quickly go to find her, but I have little luck at first. I think to use my cell phone, and in doing so, I discover that she is downstairs with the laundry, making all manner of commotion. Her activities are deadening, now for herself, any outside noises from the floors in the house above.

“Heather, something is wrong with Dad. Can you come up here?”

“Okay, I’m coming,” she replies, almost too patiently for comfort.

What remains of the household, by now, has awakened. Ryan exits the bathroom as I meet Heather at the landing on the floor above the basement and accompany her to Dad’s side.

“What’s going on?” Ryan asks. Dad’s storm has not abated, and he continues to bemoan over again, “Can no one hear me?! Why is no one coming?!”

Heather promptly begins to comfort him by placing her hand on his arm. “We’re here, Daddy. We’re here. What is it you need?”

“I am going to start making breakfast,” I say, leaving Heather to her work with him.

The day before, I had ventured by myself to take a much-needed and opportune break to Dad’s nearby grocery store to garner organic items for this morning’s meal, given that it will be our last together before Ryan and I depart later today. It is our traditional breakfast of French toast, eggs and bacon, cheese, fruit, and orange juice with extra pulp, just as Dad prefers.

Ryan joins me in the kitchen, asking, “What’s wrong with him?”

“I’m not sure,” I reply, “but, Heather is taking care of it.” I then signal him to help me. “Will you reach up there and get Dad’s griddle for me?”

But, Ryan doesn’t register my request. Rather preoccupied, he makes his way to the entryway between the kitchen and living room to investigate the events as they are unfolding there “Heather, what’s wrong?” he asks, and I can hear her response from afar: “Nothing,” she assures. “He just needs me to help him get adjusted.” Then, “You guys just keep making breakfast. He’s hungry.”

Heather’s attempts to comfort Dad have yielded little success, and Dad continues to weep. “It’s okay, Daddy,” I hear her say to him. “We’re here now.” At one point, she ventures to the kitchen with us to collect Dad’s pill container, adding a single dose of Ativan to this morning’s treatment cocktail, which includes other prescribed, C2-level medications that Dad takes every morning, midday, and night.

Breakfast is on its way, now, and I turn toward the fridge to locate more of the items I need. Ryan is there. His face reveals shock and horror, and it is something with which I can quickly connect. This also alleviates some of my own anxiety and sorrow, as well as embarrassment and disappointment in myself for my utter and outright lack of

emotional and logistical preparation for such things. I have sat in hundreds of cumulative hours of class discussion, in thousands upon thousands with patients in various levels of duress, but nothing has prepared me well enough to encounter Dad in this way.

“Devan, is this what happens?” Ryan asks, holding his horror and despair. “You become like a child?”

“It is when you’re not emotionally-prepared for it, yes.” But, my response is purely theoretical.

Ryan wipes his face with his hands a few times with moderate violence. I ask, “Why don’t you help me make breakfast?”

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

“Will you get the eggs out of the fridge and help me scramble them up?”

Ryan complies. He then recalls for me a rather serious fight he had gotten himself into with Dad back in 2014, shortly after Ryan had moved to Lancaster to begin another treatment for his meth addiction. Nothing had worked for him out west, up to this point, and Dad had invited Ryan to live with him for this purpose. Ryan now conveys the details of this savage brawl between them, and I note how I have never had the guts to challenge Dad the way Ryan always could, however fruitless the outcome would be.

Horrors are revealed in combat with Dad, one of which is Dad’s confession that he was molested, perhaps even raped, as a young adolescent boy by a predatory, male substitute teacher. At one point in the terror of this confrontation, Dad asked Ryan to beat him until dead. Ryan, of course, refused. Eventually, an exhausting (albeit calmer) fourhour discussion followed, which Ryan believes went “absolutely nowhere.” And toward the end of it, he confronted Dad on his impassioned request of Ryan to kill him.

“I said something like, ‘Dad, why haven’t you gotten the proper help for this yet?,’ and you know what he said to me?”

“No, but I can tell I don’t want to hear it.”

“Devan,” he continues in a whisper, “he said he would never deal with it. He said those words, ‘Ryan, I will never deal with this.’”

I take a few deep breaths and hold back the temptation to pretend I feel shocked to hear this as Ryan continues: “I asked him, you know, ‘but, you’re a psychologist. Aren’t you supposed to do that?’ and he said ”

“ Yeah,” I sigh.

“ he said, ‘I will not. I will never do it. I will never deal with it.’ And that was the end of it.”

Ryan pauses, it seems to gauge my response to this revelation, but I am undeterred. “Can you believe that?!” he asks me.

“It sounds just awful, Ry, and I’m genuinely very sorry that you had to go through that with him.”

“I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“Well,” I begin to say, preparing a milk-and-egg batter for the French toast, which one should always cook last, “don’t make the same mistake.”

Reparation

Tuesday, June 18, 2019. Before I begin my journey back to Chicago, I skim through the pages of Dad’s journal so that it can be available for everyone to read, including myself. He has written it by hand with dark ink on loose-leaf, neon-colored pages of orange and yellow. They are collated and secured in a white, three-ring binder.

As I flip through them, I begin to identify the content of Dad’s early-hour moods and cogitations. The first entry begins on April 7, showing that this project of his began within the first thirty-six hours after he was admitted to Mount Joy. He has made a list and titled it, “Random Thoughts.” Yet, it doesn’t appear that this is merely such a list, but rather bits of wisdom to remember and by which he wants to live maxims that appear to be of value to him.

I recall that Dad has explained to me a little something about these midnight, sudden strokes of insight. They were likely stimulated under that initial regimen of pain medications. Doctors and nurses had not yet found the right groove, but Dad’s mind appears to have been quickened by them, nonetheless. This is confirmed as I begin to recognize and intuit the psychoactive tone of Dad’s writing, even in recent entries It’s a capacity for deeper insight, spiritual vastitude, and guidance.

I take a moment to explore what Dad has written, skimming over various passages, and, at times, struggling to decipher some of Dad’s scribblings “If you’re forced through hell, keep walking,” he writes, “because hell does not have a locked back door.”34 Dad specifies that this maxim is, for him, a matter of “choice versus victimhood.”

Choice versus victimhood, I ponder. Dad is aware that he often makes himself into a victim of things, and he wants to feel like he has more choice in his life.

He has also written, “I’m not suffering I’m just in pain! and Tracy, my angel, I love you!” “My nest,” he continues, “where I’m learning to fly!”

34 In a later conversation with Dad, I learned that he was quoting a country-western song by Rodney Atkins titled If You’re Going Through Hell (Atkins, 2006).

I assume that Dad is writing about what he’s learning from Tracy’s love, but I also wonder if he’s referring to his present condition to Mount Joy, cancer, even facing death as a “nest” that’s teaching him how to “fly.” Both seem reasonable, but I know Dad enough to figure he means to refer to his relationship with her

On the next page, he has included a printout of a poem written by Antwone Fisher titled Who Will Cry for the Little Boy? 35 In the margins, I see that the print was made on October 21, 2018, at 10:24 a.m. There’s no writing on it that might indicate what the poem means to him, but that he’s worked to include it impresses me, even having printed this out several months ago. The poem reads as follows:

Who will cry for the little boy?

Lost and all alone. Who will cry for the little boy?

Abandoned without his own.

Who will cry for the little boy?

He cried himself to sleep. Who will cry for the little boy?

He never had for keeps.

Who will cry for the little boy?

He walks the burning sand.

35 Dad had printed this poem from off the internet. It can be found in Fisher, A. (2003). Who will cry for the little boy?: Poems. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Who will cry for the little boy?

The boy inside the man.

Who will cry for the little boy?

Who knows well hurt and pain.

Who will cry for the little boy?

He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?

A good boy he tried to be.

Who will cry for the little boy?

Who cries inside of me?

I can recall how moved Dad was by the film Antwone Fisher (Black, Haines, and Washington, 2002). Several themes from it come to mind childhood abuse, orphanages and foster care, living on the south side in poverty, pining for family connections and love. I think of Antwone’s childhood fantasy of sitting at the head of a large, oblong table. The fantasy is featured throughout the film, showing the young Fisher surrounded by a welcoming, devoted, and loyal family. There are pancakes with globs of syrup and butter, along with an assortment of other merry-making thrills. The fantasy captures the essence of a child’s, especially an orphan child’s, deepest hopes and needs.

Did Dad feel like an orphan after grandpa died?

This film is one from a remarkably short list of DVDs that have endured on Dad’s shelf for many years. Until now, in recent days, you have to understand, I never saw my

father weep but twice, and both incidents of this involved the rare occasion of watching a movie together. The first occurred at the end of The Journey of Natty Gann (Lobell, 1985), whereby Natty’s arduous voyage is finally complete when reunited in the arms of her father; the second, was the ending of Antwone Fisher, where his childhood fantasy materializes into reality. Does he relate to Antwone? Knowing Dad, his unusual love for the film is likely due to the cathartic response it affords him to see the man finally, ultimately, reunited with his long-lost, paternal family.

May 15, he writes: “Baseball/sports; I took it way too seriously growing up, but it was my positive identity and the way I connected to my most meaningful relationships and friendships Pop/Dad; Dad/Me, me and my boys, even Heather played ball one summer I had fun.” In fact, I notice that Dad often writes about the friendships he has made through is beloved sport. They are those that have endured over time. At first glance, several passages appear to reveal this.

In other moments, Dad has recorded his prayers, anxieties, last hopes and wishes. He is toiling to find greater meaning to trust in God and to understand: “It has been a process, one that I knew I would face, but did not know exactly how, he writes. I must talk with Devan further about this. I am still working through this pathway, but I’m sure this is what heavenly father wants me to follow.”

For the first time in my life, I begin to see Dad as deferential to me, and I am overcome Never have I had this sense before, that I can remember, of Dad acknowledging the merit of my thoughts and opinions in any noteworthy or significant manner. Two days later, he has written: “The act of engaging pen to paper seems to

trigger more thoughts than the distractions that accompany recording, but Devan and I both think I should do both methods.”

When I write that I feel “overcome,” I do not mean to imply that it is with joy. The sensation is quite the opposite. I am beset, that is, with a cocktail of emotion that includes annoyance, discomfort (or uneasiness), and the pressure of a newfound burden of responsibility, as if something within, part of an earlier sedimentation, works to caution me: You must not betray him by abusing the power he’s giving you. Nevertheless, I feel I can coerce myself to be up for the challenge whenever it is needed to do so and hopeful, even, that it might serve to help me break through the obstinance of my tendency to devalue my father. It’s just very new, I assure myself, for Dad to behave this way. You tell your patients all the time that there’s nothing the human mind is repelled by more than “new.” So, allow yourself to grow into it.

I unlatch the rings of Dad’s binder and remove all of its pages. I then fit them in the receptacle of my high-speed scanner and direct the machine to create digital copies of each page. I feel a sudden thrill over the marvels of modern technology, affording us the chance to transform Dad’s journal so effortlessly into something relatively immortal. My reverie, however, is short-lived, as I notice the copy of my paper on dead fathers, the one I gave to him in February. It rests in the back-cover pocket of the binder, now worn down, perhaps from so much handling.

I extract it from its place and glance over it. Almost immediately, I notice the many markings and highlights that Dad has so generously supplied it, implying altogether that he has spent a great deal of energy contemplating what I have written about him and about the effects of his father’s death on his life on our life.

In the paper, I have recorded, for the first time, my meditations around the conversation that Dad and I had surrounding the events of grandpa’s death, and the possible effects that it had on our relationship. I write about my experience of how I pined after a stronger bond with him, as a child and teen, and of how this felt foreclosed upon because of his melancholic need to preserve the relationship with his dead father. These are my speculations, at any rate, and they seem to resonate for Dad.

Several stars and asterisks appear in the margins beside passages that it seems Dad would like to remember or that press in upon him. He even shows pride in my reflections and enthusiasm about discussing them with me even further. He writes in the margins, “We are on to something here, son!” Then, at one point in the paper, I interpret Dad’s depressive character by rooting it in his loss of grandpa, and regarding this, he writes in big, red letters, “You’re brilliant, Son!”

Again, I am overcome, yet I can’t seem to appreciate what is signified here or trust it. Not yet. Not even his open reception to my insight a few nights back would do the trick, or resting upon the coattails of almost nine months of regular dialogue between us. Dad’s praise of my ability to think feels almost awkward for me to accept, such that the joy of it is so quiet, muted, and tamed that it is barely perceptible, if it even exists at all. No. Rather than take what is for a son, between a son and his father so crucial, so central, so absolutely imperative in the process of developing a strong, secure, and robust sense of self I rather doubt, censure, and criticize it with feelings of, again, annoyance and fear masked in sensible caution. It’s too late Dad, I seem to think. But, how I wish it weren’t.

Then, beside a passage I have written about Dad’s idealized characterization of his relationship with grandpa, I see that he has indicated that this need was the result of condemning his mother. He has written, “I blamed her my whole life for my inability to sustain my fragile relationship with grandpa, because I lost the connection with him from age 13 to 18. He was dead before I could repair it.”

I realize that Dad is referring to the guilt of his double-bind, which he has carried since he chose under pressure to join the Mormon Church with his mother, rather than remain with his father with the Methodists. Suddenly, Field of Dreams makes sense. Baseball makes sense. His furious dedication to following the sport, as it has been embedded firmly in our patriarchal order, begins to make more sense. Dad’s lamentations help me to make the connection between the sources of his suffering, which were reproduced in my relationship with him. Every noisy game, that is the commentators, the sounds of the crowd, the scorekeeping, and all the isolation they have characteristically entailed signify his attempts not just to preserve his relationship with grandpa, but to mitigate the awful guilt he has felt toward him, his now dead father.

I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m so sorry. Everything I’ve ever done. Everything I ever do. Every place I’ve ever been. Everywhere I’m going to it’s a sin

Cursed

But then, I recall my dad on his bed, in the torrential last weeks of his life.

He’s coughing up blood and soiling himself, and there’s nothing he cannot not hide.

I wake to his groans one Sunday at five, his robe has peeled away.

And like Ham of old, I see him there, laying naked as I hover;

and horrified, I leave him bare, without a single cover.

Primary Caretaking

After scanning Dad’s journal onto a flash drive, I pack up my things and depart for Baltimore. My flight leaves at the break of dawn, so I have decided to sleepover at a hotel near the airport to avoid driving from Lancaster in the middle of the night.

My departure, as usual, affords some timely relief, but this sensation also generates some guilt. Heather is stuck there, I think to myself, and I’m concerned that the pressure of Dad’s decline will have a deleterious effect on her mental and emotional health. It would on me if our situations were reversed, I realize.

Before departing this afternoon, I ordered four, trusty baby monitors to help curtail further incidents of the type of mental collapse we witnessed this morning. My decision to do this was decisive, even aggressive. Until now, Heather and Dad have communicated by use of their phones when such needs materialized and Heather was not within ear’s reach, but this has clearly become an ineffective system. The baby monitors, I reason, will help Heather to hear Dad in vivo as he calls for her, whenever and however his need to do so arises. Yet, I feel haunted on her behalf and guilty for increasing her burden. I imagine with trepidation what it will be like for her as she is compelled to carry it for our family.

When I first moved to Chicago not a decade ago, given the requirements of that first year of clinical coursework and the practicum experience coupled with it, I felt an explicit increase in my need to ensure a clear and solid boundary between the world atlarge, with all its aggressions and requirements of me, and the home I was working to

create for myself. I came to rely on this boundary a great deal. I had always enjoyed living on my own, having garnered a rich appreciation for the pleasures and freedoms that doing so affords, and I believe it helped to nurture a deeper connection to who I am

Within the mental and emotional space of this boundary that I felt so compelled to set for myself within its walls as well as in holding the knowledge of its existence I could breathe and recalibrate via the simple act of closing the door to my apartment and locking it immediately thereafter with a dead bolt. In this way, I could let go. From something nebulous yet dreadfully invincible, existing outside of me, I could retake or recapture aspects of myself that I had felt compelled to give. I took reassurance in the force of my imposed demand of it: You belong out there and I belong in here.

Now, Heather must make herself available to be on-call morning and night, twenty-four-seven. She must do this for Dad, for the most part by herself, as he inevitably continues to descend into deeper dimensions of his formidable decline. There’s no door she can close and bolt up not one of necessary significance, at any rate, for she is tightly bound to the lair of misfortune itself. If I have learned anything from this trip, it is the reality of what it really can mean to fulfill such a role, with the general, protracted and unyielding burden or threat of impingement hanging above one’s head like the sword of Damocles. This isn’t sustainable, I realize. We have to get Heather some support

The next morning, after a very short rest, I arrive at BWI to return my rental car It’s 4:30am. My flight is set to leave in 90 minutes. Still somewhat in between states of consciousness, I am shaken a bit when the attendant receiving the vehicle notes that there are several, conspicuous scratches on the front of it. I explain that the car had remained stationary in my father’s driveway for the duration of my visit with him, but this excuse

doesn’t satisfy her. I’m not sure how or why it should, though, given that I would not be able to produce evidence of this, nor is there any assurance in the idea that nothing could have happened to the vehicle while it was there. Even still, I feel the urge to fight for my interests as I provide the name to her of the attendant who approved the release of the car a few nights back. I explain that he had inspected it before I left the lot, and that I am confident he will be a decent person and vouch for me. As I leave the car with her, I feel stress as I anticipate the red tape to work this out.

I take my receipt and proceed to the location of the stop for the shuttle that will transport me to my terminal. I feel ambivalent anxious to see Joel again, yet wary of flying with Spirit Airlines to get back to him. I chuckle as the lyrics “I would walk 500 miles” pop in my mind (Reid, 1987). It’s anything to get home, and I feel it.

The shuttle is delayed and no one seems to know why. I observe with increasing dread as a small crowd becomes a horde, now gathered at the stop. I begin to wonder if the bus will be able to accommodate all of us. How will they decide who gets to board it in the triage of this?, I think to myself, all the while growing more aware of the threat I feel over the prospect of ending up a victim of exclusion a sensation I haven’t endured since the seventh grade.

Time ticks away and I begin to fear that I will miss my flight; but, the shuttle arrives, and I am able to secure a spot standing in the isle packed against others who are also hustling to make their early flights. As I reach the terminal, my heart sinks. It is packed to the brim with families, tourists, businesspeople, and folks like me just trying to get home. The line to the kiosk, where I would print off my boarding pass, extends ten or so yards even around the corner to an alcove that leads to the public bathrooms.

Thinking quickly, I work to locate an image of the pass via my phone, which I can do, given that I checked in to the flight yesterday just a few hours within the 24-hour window. As I find the link and pull it up, I discover that the PDF image of it is distorted and won’t do. The time is 5:15am. In 20 minutes, I note to myself, my flight will begin boarding. What can I do?

The stress of this deepens as I realize that the line at security will be equally grueling and laborious. I begin to berate myself for getting up too late. For filling the gas tank in the car this morning rather than last night. For insisting on a quick breakfast you stupid piece of shit. For the rental car issue, the late shuttle, and for September 11. It’s fury at humanity’s greed, God’s distance, death, and human crisis all rolled into one, striking bolts of energy that can’t find an object, except to reverse trajectory and plant itself in the heart and center of my soul, castigating me for a total lack of omnipotent control.

Everything begins to point toward surrender, but something within me will not allow me to yield. With equal fervor, my thoughts begin to construct a plan of attack that will ensure I can get out of this predicament. My chest cavity floods with what feels like a wave of adrenaline, and I feel determined not to let my circumstances get the best of me. It is as if I am in a momentous battle with a formidable nemesis, and I must either contain or annihilate it.

I realize that if I remain in this line, I will not make my flight. To leave it, therefore, will cost me nothing. So, I go in search of someone who can help me. Yet, as I survey the area, I recognize that all of the agents in view are preoccupied with helping others with predicaments similar to my own. To insist on my needs right now would be

inexcusably rude, but I don’t actually know if my fellow passengers are working to get on a flight that’s about to board. So, give it a shot.

“Is there anyone that can help me?” I blurt into a crowd of them. “I’m trying to get on the flight to Chicago that’s leaving in 30 minutes!” Then, after a few moments: “Anyone? … please?!”

A nearby agent acknowledges my request with a standard gesture of her index finger that is meant to signal that I should wait until she is finished helping another customer. It is almost as if she has been dealing with people like me all morning, and it’s not even six yet. Still, I am glad to be acknowledged; so, I oblige.

As she and I work to resolve my dilemma, I learn that I can purchase a “shortcut security” boarding pass that will allow me to access the front of the line with TSA. I pay the 30 dollars and scurry through, all the while blocking guilt for supporting a system that is designed to discriminate against others on the basis of their financial resources. The whole affair disgusts me, but I feel relief as I make it to the gate for my flight in enough time to catch it.

As I pass over southwestern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and northern Indiana at thirtythousand feet, still in a state of recalibration, I begin to reflect on the hustle and bustle of my morning. Most significant are my contemplations around the consequences of making proactive choices. I begin to think about how my actions compare to similar and equallyunavoidable adventures in my history of travelling with my family, especially in my youth. These kinds of situations were always hell in a handbasket for everyone. Mom and Dad would fight, and Dad’s fury would overwhelm everything. Efficiency was out the window.

“Your dad was very impressed by how efficiently you got Heather to Pennsylvania,” I recall Sherma, Dad’s sister, conveying to me several days ago.

“He was?” I remarked with delight.

“Yes,” she conveyed, “he said, ‘I would never have been able to pull it off like that.’”

I begin to wonder if Dad’s recognition of my effort should mitigate some of the anger I feel as I conjure a sense of injustice over how desperately powerless he was around navigating everyday, chaotic moments. My thoughts inspire me. I dig out my laptop, open it, and begin to write in my journal:

Wednesday, June 19, 2019, 6:30am. My trip this morning from Baltimore was nutty. I’m thinking on the differences between the way I handled it and how my father has historically handled similar situations. Sherma tells me that Dad was impressed by the efficient way I arranged the details of Heather’s move from Montana to Pennsylvania in April. I was touched to hear this, but it’s mixed. I am convinced that the efficiency that Dad and Sherma are referring to has developed in large part because I am determined not to fall into pieces like my father in such moments. I am aware that Dad and I are not so dissimilar. I’m aware that I have it in me to be like him if I’m not careful. He takes moments like this personally, as if he feels punished by them, and I recognize that impulse in myself. I think I know it well.

When I return to Chicago, Joel is there to greet me and I am comforted by this. I convey the details of my adventures over breakfast of the mess of travelling, my

impressions of Dad’s decline, and the pressures placed on Heather. Part way through my exposition, I become more aware of my gratitude for Joel in my life. He stabilizes me, I reflect.

Before we are finished with breakfast, I suggest that he and I return to Pennsylvania, together this time, perhaps toward the end of next month “maybe over my birthday,” I suggest, which is July 22. “Dad doesn’t have much time left, and there’s so much more I’d like to ask him.” Joel agrees to consider the prospect of accompanying me, and we leave it at that for now.

Time passes. I enjoy a cathartic and jubilant Independence Day with Joel and his family, which involves a welcoming spread of delicious Mexican and American foods off the barbeque. Joel’s younger brother, Alfredo, has provided the humble space of his backyard for the occasion. Present is a colorful and spritely crew of party guests, namely, Joel’s parents, six siblings, their spouses (including me), and his four nieces and nephews. Alfredo has even purchased a generous bounty of various consumer fireworks, which we set off throughout the evening. The city around us is immersed in smoke, ash, and the smell of burnt gunpowder perhaps a normal summer evening for Chicago but, I can’t help feel a sense of pride and gratitude for the stabilizing effects of good, quality relationships with family The whole of the evening feels magical to me, unlocking regressive pockets of childhood delight to which I hadn’t felt connected in years.

A week later, Joel and I celebrate his birthday with Brazilian BBQ, followed by catching a showing of the latest version of Les Misérables downtown. I also gift him with a pair of green, “indestructible” shoes, which I hope will complement his appreciation for

utility. The whole of the evening is added to a handful of others that make existence for us rather worthwhile.

Within the following week, I am on my way to visit Dad and Heather once more, this time with Joel accompanying me. Our trip, again via Spirit Airlines, is arduous and uncomfortable, and our flight is late. Having grown accustomed to the journey by now, I am able to hurry us through the process of collecting our rental car and driving the two hours north to Lancaster. When we arrive, it is nearly two, and both Heather and Dad are awake to greet us, along with Tracy’s long-haired, adorable little dachshund, Mickey.

Dad is annoyed, even angry, that we “took so long to get there.” I am taken by the subsequent effort I make to relieve him of his agitation. This doesn’t work and I assure him that we can talk about it in the morning. I further notice that Dad’s cheeks are swollen as if he is sporting a cosplay of the Godfather slurred, gargled speech and all. This is where my thoughts take me, at any rate, which startles me. Their contents seem disrespectful to me. I feel mortified that Dad, or even Heather, might pick up on my thoughts, or know them, as they spin around in the containers of my mind like the Sophoclean Furies.

As Joel and I prepare our room for the night, Heather helps Dad get comfortable so that he will be able to fall back asleep. Shortly thereafter, she joins us in our room.

“Do you guys have everything you’ll need?” she asks. I am surprised that she appears to be so wide awake, as we inch deeper and deeper into the early hours of the morning.

“Yes, I think so. Thank you, Hatu.”

“Great. Well, I’m going to bed. He’ll likely be up tomorrow around six or seven.”

There is something comforting to me about the fact that Heather knows this that she knows Dad’s schedule so effortlessly. It gives me confidence somehow that she’s got things under control.

Heather then turns to leave, but before she follows through with this, I ask her about what has happened to Dad’s face.

“You mean why it looks so bloated?”

“Yes and why he’s slurring his speech.”

“There’s an infection in his mouth and it won’t heal. I don’t know how he got it, but we’ve had the nurse look at it. He gave Dad some antibiotics; we’ll see if they work. But, he’s been eating these coconut popsicles that help to soothe it.”

“It’s hard for him to speak?”

“Yes.”

“All the time?”

“Yeah, pretty much. But, there’s only so much you can do.”

The force of adrenaline Heather must have been feeling since around the time we arrived begins wearing off, and I witness a glimpse of pure, raw, and unadulterated exhaustion seize her body and soul. It is as if she could find a full night’s rest just standing right there before us, given a proper buttress to hold her body up for it.

“Well, Hatu, go get some sleep,” I order. “And, don’t let me stay asleep if you need me tomorrow morning.”

“You guys sleep well,” she charges, but I’m not sure she has processed my invitation. Regardless, I reach to give her a full-bodied hug. She accepts this, and as I pull her close, I notice that her short, corpulent, and stout frame fits perfectly within mine, as

it always has. Straight, thin, soft clumps of hair from atop her scalp begin to accumulate under my chin as I rest it on her head. She then relaxes her arms with a forceful drop of them to her sides, perhaps to playfully perform her fatigue for us. I also figure that she is signaling that I have held her too long, so I set her free.

“Good night, Hatu. Thank you for doing what you’re doing.”

“Yep!” she utters. “G’nite boys.”

The next morning Monday morning, July 22, 2019 just 40 years and nine hours (give or take) from the day I was born I wake into chaos. Heather’s cat has not returned for several days now and she is in a panic. Rather than work to calm her, I enjoin: “Hatu, you can’t let your cat outside any longer if there’s the risk that something like this is going to happen. There’s too much on your plate to have to worry about it!”

Her face confesses that she believes I have a point, but more pronounced is the burden it discloses she is holding. I begin to worry, mostly about the prospect of how this is going to affect her and her ability to continue to stabilize the household. Meanwhile, I can hear Dad in his room. He’s frustrated because his electronics aren’t working properly. His behavior suggests to me that he’s accessed the fantasy, again, that moments like these are due to some personal failure on his part. He imagines that he’s too old to understand Apple’s complicated software program, which disgusts him; or, he’s frustrated via preoccupied projections of deeper fears and resentments that are connected, inevitably, to his anxieties of abandonment the abject terror of feeling separated, now and forever, from his attachment bases.

Everything feels like it’s about to fall apart (if it hasn’t already), and I wish that I could find humor in it I recall images of Michael Keaton as Mr. Mom (Loring, Shuler,

and Spelling, 1983) toiling desperately to manage three kids, an appliance repair worker, an electrician, and a vacuum cleaner from hell, sucking “woobies” into oblivion. At once, I pray for Mary Poppins to float out of heaven with her magical umbrella and teach us how to fly kites together (Disney, 1964) Heather needs help.

I begin to make breakfast for the household. Dad’s kitchen is a stone’s throw away from his bedroom, putting me into closer touch with whatever is going on in there. I pull eggs, cheese, tortillas, jalapenos, beans, and some ham from the fridge to make everyone a breakfast burrito. Joel is awake, now, and he helps me prepare it. Halfway into this, however, I note an eerie silence, particularly from Dad’s room, and I leave Joel and investigate.

His door is partially open, but I knock on it anyway.

“Dad?” I say, but he doesn’t answer back; so, I peek in. “Is everything okay?”

As I enter his room, I think he hasn’t seen or heard me yet. He is carefully getting himself up off a portable commode, new to his room and placed just beside his gatch bed and wheelchair. He is naked and there are several stripes of pooh that have fallen onto the calf of his leg. The scent of his excrement swallows up the room, and I feel ashamed of my disgust. Yet, even so, this is not what startles me not ultimately. Dad’s legs are emaciated, now, withered down into two bony stumps that extend from his waist like twigs off the trunk of an old tree. The skin on them is thin, pale, translucent, and freckled with discolored blotches. I have never seen him like this before, and I fear that they will not be able to hold him up as he wrestles to raise himself from off the commode with his remaining, working arm.

I confess I panic a bit as I ask him: “Dad, do you need help?”

“No, just get Heather,” he says, nonplussed, as though he was all-along aware of my presence there. I comply, then return to Joel in the kitchen where he remains working to prepare breakfast. As I assist him in this enterprise, most of my attention lingers with the situation in Dad’s room, to which Heather is now attending. I am soothed as I can hear her applying her caretaking skills so artfully.

After breakfast, Joel and Heather leave with errands to run. Dad sleeps peacefully in his room. Shortly after lunchtime, I strap Mickey up and take him on a short, proximal walk through Dad’s front yard. The whole of it looks doused in deep, verdant shades of green from the summer foliage. I have always been rather impressed by the tallness of the trees that cover the rocky hills, valleys, and neighborhoods of the Mid-Atlantic, and this neighborhood is no exception. Yet, my meditation affords little comfort, mainly because I am not paying much attention to it. The morning’s episode remains on my mind, and I feel consumed by feelings of dread and guilt.

I activate my handy, digital recorder to process some of my thoughts: I don’t want my father’s body, I say. I want to be healthier and I want to celebrate what my body can do. I am forty now. I’m showing signs of it. I ache, at times, in ways that stick around for much longer than before I think about the sporty way I taught myself to flip, climb, and tumble as a child. I think about holding a type of youthful confidence that I could become or accomplish anything that I wanted. Grown-ups used to say to me all the time that that feeling that comported assurance will not last. That I will inevitably become one of them, as if a remaining survivor amongst the body-snatchers from outer space, no matter how fast or long I might endeavor to run from it. I want my body to become a temple for the remainder of my life, but I fear what is for all of us the very worst. I fear that I am

beyond the point of no return. I fear that I am starting on a journey downward that shall be constant until I become what Dad has become.

Recognizing the sleek despair in my thought patterns, I inadvertently work to convert them: Still, I can try. You’re not dying yet not so directly, at any rate. Dad sinks into what he feels are his inevitabilities; I want to try to work my way out of them. Somehow, I have the inner vitality to do that that’s required to do that.

Yet, this resolve does not hold for long. Maybe, it is the disconsolate nature of my depressive constitution, or perhaps my incapacity to have garnered enough positive, selfobject functionality. Whatever it is, it occurs to me that there is nothing unusual about my thoughts and feelings today that nothing will come to save me from them, and that the certainties in question are locked in place until the end of my life until I, too, am ushered into the waiting room of its final chapter. Forty is merely a milestone in the glacial pace of the tick-tick-boom that is indivisibly bound toward death, just one oxidizing breath at a time. Each one cycle of it going inward and outward costs a digit or two on the half-life of my existence, until I have sowed a debt so deep that life itself will inevitably be reaped for payment. This feeling is a fucker to fight.

Moments later, I find myself sitting on the stairs of Dad’s front porch, facing West View Drive It feels like no one is around, which brings me comfort. To go back inside my father’s house feels like a chore, and I’m not quite ready for it yet, even with him asleep.

My feet are tucked against my body and held in position with my arms clasped together in fist-in-hand fashion. The stairs on Dad’s porch are proportioned and placed just right so that the position of my body does not require too much effort to hold my legs

in place. Mickey now sits beside me, facing the street as I relax my forehead against the knuckles of my left hand. A baby monitor is set to my right, and I can hear that Dad remains asleep and unbothered.

“The summer sun feels pretty good, doesn’t it Mickey?” I say. I am touched, even envious, of the innocence and curiosity in his face as he turns to catch my gaze. “Don’t you just love that?” He sneezes and yawns, then gets himself up while stretching his slender, floofy body. His face has perked up, suggesting that he’s expecting me to give him a command. “I’m forty today. Did you know that, sweetheart? And Joel and Heather are out and about getting groceries so that we can have a lovely barbeque with Dad. Maybe they’ll even have a cake! Who knows.” I then add: “You can have some of the meat, but not the cake. It’ll kill you.”

As if he can perceive the despair in my voice, Mickey turns his body toward me so that he is facing me, while resting on his hind legs. He extends one of his paws and I open myself so that he can climb onto my lap, which he does. I am touched by this. I kiss his furry, inviting forehead, catching a whiff of doggy breath and puppy fir while he struggles to return his affection for me properly. I feel love and acceptance with him. I bury my head on his body, all the while cooing with delight: “Thank you for being my friend, you sweet, sweet doggy.”

After a moment of this, I lift my head up so that I’m looking into his face, while I continue to convey: “It’s hard for me to see my dad like this. I think it’s hard for you, too, but for different reasons than me. All of this could have the power to bring us some peace, but it feels like it’s too late for that. And I I want this to be over.”

Mickey’s expression confesses that he is likely feeling overwhelmed and confused because he doesn’t know what I want from him. I pull away to give him some calibrational breathing space, meanwhile conveying: “I don’t suspect that you feel the same way, but you don’t have the history with him that I do. You came into his life much later than I did. He didn’t even want you, at first, but I can see how he’s grown to love you because Tracy wanted you, and that was enough for him. But, I don’t think that Dad wanted me, either, even though I think he’s grown to love me, too. He says it more. He never used to say it; but, he says it now. I think he’s trying to show it more. But, all I can feel is anger. Can you imagine that, Mickey? Daddy is dying and all I feel is anger.”

I can’t stop thinking about seeing him naked and frail. Nor can I seem to get the feeling, mood, disposition, or whatever this is, to change or convert over from one of disgust and guilt to love and acceptance acceptance that would be of him and his humanity. I know that the latter disposition is one that I should have and own, but I can’t get to it; I feel embarrassed about that. I feel disgusted with myself that I can’t force myself to be a better, more ideal human being. In many ways, I think to myself, I suppose I have become what Dad told me I was a rather selfēēsh person

As Heather was helping Dad to his bed this morning, after working with him to help get him cleaned up, he was still naked. He tumbled onto his bed, and I saw his shriveled penis hidden in a plume of dark, aged pubic hair just an inch or two below a mass of belly fat that I always remember consuming the bottom half of his torso. At that point, Heather worked with Dad to wrap him up tightly in an adult diaper, put his sweat pants on, pull the blankets up to his arms, and bring him his breakfast.

I then contemplate the fact that Mickey, an inevitable hostage to his natural ignorance, has no capacity to feel the type of shame or guilt in my present reverie. A penis has no greater significance or meaning to him than his paw or ear. He can’t contemplate what it would mean to lose these, nor can he contemplate the dread or horror of the idea that his body might, over a period of time, begin to fail him systematically.

The only depressive mood he feels is, at best, anaclitic. The only anxiety he knows is from separation. Neither garner meaning for him. He is forever engulfed in the remembered present (Edelman and Tononi, 2000; Edelman, 2004), and realizing this, I am overcome with a cocktail of envy that is smothered over by despair. How will I ever get to where I need to get in order to make peace with Dad?

A few hours later, Dad is awake. Joel and Heather remain out and about. I hear him coughing in his room, so I go to investigate.

“Is everything okay, Dad?” I ask, as I arrive at his bedside.

He is sitting up with a fistful of tissues in his hands, which he’s holding against his mouth. The intensity of his struggle escalates as he hacks and gasps for air. I grow concerned that he might be choking to death.

“Dad?! What can I do?”

He signals that everything is okay that he needs a moment to complete the birthing of whatever monstrosity is working its way out of his chest cavity. At any moment, I fantasize, a baby xenomorph will protrude from Dad’s chest.

As the deed is done, Dad examines the contents in his tissues.

“You are still a man of medicine,” he says, as if to both state and inquire at the same time.

“I’m a man of medicine?”

“What do you think of this?”

I struggle to perceive if Dad is making a joke or expressing concern by asking for my opinion as he shares the visual with me of what’s been excavated from his lungs.

“Is that blood?” I ask, working to hold (or even suppress) my horror.

“I just scarfed that up out of my lungs.”

“That’s a big glob of ” “ and it’s sinewy. It’s very stiff.”

“Ugh!”

“It’s almost like a clot,” he declares with delight.

As I inspect it more closely, I am horrified to see red, yellow, green, and even purple coloring in slimy strings of tissue. Yet, it appears synthetic to me, as if produced experimentally by a film student working as an intern on a shoddy, B-rated horror film.

“I do that about once a week, you know,” he informs.

“That’s a lot, Dad. That’s a lot of something.”

“Well, I had to do a treatment and that loosens things up so they come out fairly easily, but ”

“That was fairly easy?”

“ I don’t know if I should give it to DeGreen or not.”

“Well, I doubt that he’d be able to ”

“What’s the difference, anyway?”

“Right.”

“I mean, what would he be able to get out of it?”

Resigned, Dad rolls the mess up in a few extra, clean squares of Kleenex to secure it, and then throws it away into a bin beside his bed, now quite full. I suspect that he thinks he has just coughed up chunks of the tumors in his lungs, perhaps with the hope that this could indicate that he might be getting better still have a chance at more life.

“Regardless,” he continues, “you know what that does?”

“What’s that?”

“Automatically, it makes me feel better. Fifteen percent better.”

“I bet. It’s like getting shit out of your skull.” Just stay with Dad’s thoughts and feelings, and be supportive.

I then notice Dad’s white binder full of neon-colored pages that has been serving as his makeshift journal. He has laid it beside his bed, and I can see a ballpoint pen jutting out from the top of it, likely serving as a bookmark. I pick it up and open it, as Dad aspirates with delight: “See, I’m breathing very nicely, now.”

“That’s good, Dad,” I say, as I flip through its pages. Then, I remark: “It looks like you’ve added more entries to this.”

“Yeah, I write in it almost every night,” he says. I look up to see his face. Our eyes meet. His face seems to confess that he is feeling shame mine, a kind of corresponding concern. He then adds, “I’ve been having trouble concentrating lately.”

“Whatever you write, Dad, is solid gold for us,” I encourage, adding, “for me, I mean.” I then convey to him: “It doesn’t have to all make sense.”

Dad breaks his gaze with me, but I hold my own as if to encourage him to continue speaking about whatever it is that’s on his mind. He then confesses, “I’m concerned that as you read it, you’ll think I have a personality disorder.”

“Why?” I ask, growing more anxious by the intimacy that’s building between us.

“In your paper,” Dad begins to say, “I think that you felt that I abandoned you.”

“You do?”

“And rightly so, Devan. I was off chasing my career, trying to keep up with those doctors in Whiteriver.” Dad is referring to his work with the Apaches in the White Mountains of Arizona.

“Well, sure,” I respond. “But, the paper is about how I think you foreclosed on our relationship because you hadn’t mourned grandpa’s death enough.”

“Yeah,” he conveys with regret. “I think you’re right.”

Dad looks dejected to me, and I work to rescue him from it “But, my experience of feeling abandoned went beyond that, I think. The kind of emotional force that’s behind it is indicative of something like preoedipal abandonment, you know, in my earliest years. And the reason that I suspect that’s the case is, in large part, due to mom getting sick and needing to leave for a few months when I was about nine months old. Do you remember that?”

“Yes. That would have been the fall of ” “ 1980.”

“Was it 1980?”

“Yes. And, it’s no fault of hers, of course, but the infant’s mind doesn’t know that; so, it experiences it as abandonment, which causes a narcissistic injury.”

“But, don’t you have to have a, a personality base of narcissism to experience a narcissistic injury?”

“Maybe, theoretically.”

“So, that’s what I’m getting at. I’m wondering if I am being seen as selfish.”

“Do you mean to ask if I think you have a narcissistic personality?”

“Yes.”

Dad’s eyes water with a complicated cocktail of desperate, but even somewhat hopeful tears. It is hope, I think, that I might dispel the fury of what he has long suspected about himself. Truth is, I have speculated for some time now, even before Dad got sick, that his level of emotional and mental disturbance indicates that he meets the criteria for a personality disorder, but at the borderline level. Yet, my heart breaks at the prospect of revealing this to him, especially now. What on earth can he do about it, I think to myself, even if it were true?

“No, I don’t think that you have a narcissistic personality,” I affirm.

“Because, I do feel that we have had some serious personality disorders in our family,” he adds.

“Yes, I know that.”

“And I don’t care if you go there.”

“Listen, it seems right to say that I don’t tend to think this way in my clinical work. I think these categories have become too medicalized, and they limit our ability to explore ourselves.”

“I agree. I agree.”

“I’ve had my own analysis, Dad an intensive one that lasted about four years, four days a week, and I found it extremely helpful precisely because I didn’t feel my analyst was interested in categorizing me. And I think I accessed some pretty serious, rather regressive stuff during that time that was very difficult to face. I think I appeared,

you know, at times, rather borderline, narcissistic, obsessive, manic-depressive even masochistic or hysteric. The whole gambit, you know, of various disturbances that I would otherwise like to have kept locked up and forgotten about. But, he was good at meeting me where I was at in those moments of our work. He helped me to grow beyond them, just a little bit more than I was before, and this has made a difference, you see?”

“Yes,” he asserts.

“I see my job as a clinician not to irradicate a disease, but to help my patients relax the defenses that they no longer need. That’s it.”

“That’s beautiful, Devan,” he declares, taking in another welcomed breath of fresh, purifying air. “I wish I had been trained to think of it that way.”

“Well, you had ”

“ I wish that I would have had the experiences that you’re having. I wish I would have worked some of this shit out before it was too late, but I don’t want to think about that now. I don’t suppose there’s any use in it.”

“Dad, your life has been hard, and I think” what the hell “I think you have done well with what you have been given.”

“That’s all I want, Devan. That’s all I could hope for.”

“And you can rest in peace. You can rest knowing that you’ve done your best, and no one has the right to judge you for what you’ve gone through, including me. When I’m communicating otherwise, it’s because I’m it’s because I’m trying to work it out for myself.”

“Well, that’s what I’ve been trying to recognize about your work. Use it, Devan, to work it out for yourself. Say whatever you need to say until you do. You have my blessing.”

I am lost for words. Not only has Dad recognized the soundness and cogency of my thoughts and ideas, but he has granted me ownership of those aspects of them that are or have been directly influenced by him. I don’t (or can’t) understand entirely why it is so necessary that Dad has granted me this license or afforded me such unalloyed credibility, but something deep within my soul seems free, now, to take a purifying breath of my own.

Dad reaches over and gestures for the white binder in my lap. He then conveys, “I’ve written everyone a letter, even your mother. Some of them, I recorded on the recorder you gave me, so you’ll have to be sure to download that and store it somewhere safe.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to be sure and give copies of them to everyone, along with copies of the journal. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes,” I assure. “Of course.”

“And be sure to read the one that I wrote to you. There’s some things, Devan, that I want you to know.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want to talk about it now. But, I I want you to know them.

The following day, Joel and I prepare to return to Chicago. We’ve packed our things, cleaned the room, and helped with meals. I have carefully downloaded Dad’s

letters to each of us onto both my computer and a separate flash drive. I figure that this will provide a useful backup should something go wrong with either device. Just after lunchtime, Joel and I say goodbye to Dad

I don’t like goodbyes. Sometimes, they appear to force intimacy between people, which makes me uncomfortable. At other times, I feel limited in my capacity to express my love as it is haunted by the despair with which it is coupled the despair of the goodbye itself. I would rather just leave quietly, inconspicuously, without fanfare, avowals, or even confessions. The sort that want to make everything all right. That want to excuse the violence of departure. That insist on passing over of disavowing the horrors contained in the symbols of death, dying, and ultimate loss. And this is, of course, especially true as I stand next to Dad’s bed Dad’s deathbed and say to him, perhaps for the last time, “goodbye.”

“I love you, Dad,” I say, taking his hand. “I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

Just then, my father bursts into tears. They are messy, melancholic, and brutal. His voice cracks as he struggles to impart, to both Joel and me, “goodbye my sons.”

“We’ll be back soon, Dad,” I work to console. “In just a few weeks no more than a month from now.”

“Okay,” he works to say, but my attempts to console him are unsuccessful. Heather, standing on the opposite side of his bed, facing us, then declares, “He’s afraid that he’s not going to see you again.”

I hope that it is clear by now that of all the emotions I have been feeling throughout this terrible, formidable journey of Dad’s last year of life on earth, I have felt the gambit of them except grief. I have felt anger, relief, joy, disappointment, love and

hate. I have felt both glad and furious at the prospect of feeling compelled to help. I have worked to contain my frustration with the historical, cumulative effects of feeling impinged upon of feeling the need to vigorously protect my boundaries. I have felt humor, disgust, guilt, and greed. But, I have not felt grief.

So, I am startled by my body and mind’s capacity to feel it now this grief over the prospect that Dad’s fears are real. I immediately begin to assume that he is referring to Joel. He’s afraid that he won’t see Joel again. He’s not suggesting it’s me, my fantasies insist. He can’t possibly be referring to me when he says this.

“I love you, Dad,” I repeat. “Be strong, okay?”

Heather walks us to the door. We hug with a bit more urgency and enthusiasm. “Please be careful,” she says, to which I enjoin, “Yes, you too,” and “Don’t hesitate to call me.”

“I won’t,” she says, releasing our embrace.

As Joel and I approach our rental car, I ask him if he wouldn’t mind driving, to which he agrees. I wait until our menial set of baggage is carefully stowed away in the trunk. I wait until we’ve worked out the GPS on my phone that will take us to the car rental lot at BWI. I wait until we’re strapped in our seats until we’ve positioned the mirrors, unlocked the security brake, and ignited the engine. I wait until we’ve passed the driveway of Dad’s house onto West View Drive as we pass his neighbors’ houses, and the set of intersections that will lead to highway 30. I wait until there are miles between my father and I, until I’ve crossed the Susquehanna River, until we are halfway to Maryland. I wait until it is no longer possible to stop waiting to stop trying to stop avoiding to stop disavowing, before I can finally, irrevocably, release myself from the

pressures of my anger and accept my feelings around the realization that Dad, indeed, is going to die and most significantly, that I care about that.

My heart explodes with a bittersweet combination of welcomed catharsis and deep sadness that I can no longer contain Waves of it glide through my body as if on a cycle of systematic and elongated beats. They begin in my chest and protrude through the cavity into my arms, neck, and face. Before long, I am flushed as I begin to weep, perhaps for the first time the first time for him. The first time, perhaps, that it is not about him.

The anger that I have felt for some time now (perhaps most of my life) converts to compassion. Dad is no longer the failed superhero I had always considered him to be. He’s Dad. Weak at times, strong at times, fragile at times, Republican, Limbaugh-loving, human Dad. And I feel encouraged by this, because the thoughts and feelings that guide me feed hope in something that can be, but isn’t quite, yet. My grief is coupled with hope that at some point, this insight will dominate my experience of him, and I will finally be able to put him soundly to rest.

Joel’s steady hand at the wheel keeps us firmly on track to arrive at the airport and make our flight back to Chicago. The only thing that feels certain to me is that Dad will be at peace soon. That Heather needs assistance in helping Dad through that inevitable process. I think of the duties that Dad has given me to perform on his behalf. I think of all the bills that need to be paid, institutions that need to be contacted, lawyers that need to be consulted, siblings that need to be kept abreast. The weight of the burden of carrying out Dad’s wishes begins to consume me almost the moment we land at O’Hare. Before me is now the work of endeavoring to understand just what all of this means and has

meant to me. To sort it out, make sense of it, learn something from it, and report it as such. As Dad’s life fades from this to whatever is next, I feel a weight of responsibility begin to consume my thoughts and feelings of a determined sense that it is up to me to keep it together to hold it together from now on. To be something of the figure of Dad that he left us, holding a mantle that seems in need of some tidying up. I wonder if I will be able to do it. I fear that I won’t. I fear that, even beyond the grave, Dad will haunt me with thoughts, feelings, and impressions with pressures that constellate in what he and I have always meant to one another, one internalized shell of existence at a time. Dad’s hope becomes my hope to be something to build on something that exists in the space between what’s been and what could finally be. I hope that I can live up to it.

Epilogue: Life After Life

Dad died on August 31, 2019, at 1pm. The six weeks leading up to it were a nightmare, especially for me. The end of his life became a concentration of the whole of it, as if the qualities and characteristics that made this life so burdensome for both him and those who loved him were amplified, compressed into these final weeks like crumbs on the kitchen floor now swept into a neat pile at the center of it. The forces of nature have scooped those contents up into its own and whisked them away without apology or consequence for itself. From dust to dust.

I didn’t make it back to Lancaster in time to be there with him as he died. Heather informs me that his final words were “something is wrong.” She and Tracy sat with him at Mount Joy, singing to him and holding him. That these were his last words seems to indicate to me that Dad wasn’t aware that this body was giving out that he was finally dying. He thought, I think, that something was wrong physiologically, and he was asking

Heather or Tracy to get a nurse or doctor. But, within minutes of this, he expired his last breath and died. I had read somewhere that when Steve Jobs passed away of pancreatic cancer, his last words were, “Oh wow! Is this what happens?!” I feel anger as I recall this, but mostly on behalf of my father. Steve Jobs a corporate genius, to be sure, but also the embodiment of a corporate nightmare got to enjoy his passing from this life into whatever is next. My dad had no inkling of the sort, it seems, and he’s left me with as little assurance about death as he did about life.

Even still, I attend to my duties obediently. I arrange the details of Dad’s funeral and burial. I prepare his estate for the market. Over the course of several remaining visits from Chicago to Lancaster and back to Chicago, I work with Dad’s attorney, follow Dad’s instructions, and carry out the responsibilities that he conferred. By April of the following year, his home is sold and everything that remained of him and his life is now gone or distributed between my siblings and Tracy.

There is an absurdity to this reality that I don’t believe anyone has been able to describe adequately enough, but it continues to haunt me.

Several weeks go by; during this time, I discover a discolored purple-and-darkblue spot on my lower tummy, which I have biopsied. I learn that it is a spitz nervus, and that it is, indeed, a pre-cancerous, perhaps portends of what might lay ahead in my future. It is then dug out of me as if a skin-scoop of meringue, leaving a rather horrid, vertical scar tailoring the left side of my belly-button. In three years, I realize, I will be the same age that Dad was when he was first diagnosed with carcinoma before his nephrectomy, before he inherited that gruesome battle-scar, and before he entered into his twenty-five year “miracle.”

Contemplating these difficult truths burdens my capacity to honor my father’s life, even though I have come to feel greater depths of love and compassion for him, especially since his death. In a way, perhaps more sordid than I care to admit, I have needed my father’s life to be over. I have needed him to be dead. That may sound atrocious, but I believe I hold it because I still have an abiding faith in an afterlife that is characterized by continued growth and progression, and that’s thoroughly endowed with the resources to make that happen. I find, now that he has passed, that I am presented with a choice that is entirely, absolutely, completely, and unequivocally my own to make. And I must continue to make it every day, as it is presented to me as a constant. It is a choice that I must make outside of or despite the intensified pressures of the shadows of my father, always operative within me, yet no more a part of him than they were a decade or two before he died, before they became a mere whisper of my mind, before Dad grew beyond whatever it was that happened to initially constitute them. It is a choice that he faced as well after his father died, and it is one that I must face, now, in the years of my life without him: I may hold to the anger I feel at what was left unsaid and unresolved, or I may forgive the tragic and wretched nature of so much of his life, especially as they were capitulated in the symbols of his death, and most especially as they were enacted in the space between us. Both my anger and compassion are true and necessary, but I have yet to land on solid enough ground to lay the tension of his many paradoxes to rest. It is comforting to imagine that Dad has been reunited with his fathers. That he’s been shown the truth of who he is and what his life has meant to those he loved from a perspective that is holistic, multivalent, balanced, and thorough but this is incomprehensible to me Still, I can imagine that he is finally able to feel the type of guilt

and love that motivates one to improve. I can imagine that he can finally be the father I have needed him to be, even if just for me, and that this is accomplished can only be accomplished in a metaphysical state that exists beyond him and me

Dad’s letter to me. As part of fulfilling my duties to Dad, I converted his letters, both handwritten and verbalized, into type-faced print, and then sent them to each of us according to his instructions. What follows is Dad’s letter to me.

May 21, 2019

Devan, I was sleeping out here on the high back chair after numerous other locations that I tried to sleep, and it was very difficult for me to get to see this every night. But Tracy came out to wake me up and let me know she was headed to Philadelphia for work, which is a routine every morning. And I don’t get to see much of her. So, when I had my ten minutes last night, the night before to talk to her, we spent just laying next to each other in bed talking for a few minutes, and I got so restless. I had to get up. And then in the course of the evening, I was running around the house looking for different places to put my butt, and I mean that literally, so that I could do it without hurting.

I ended up early in the next morning, yesterday morning, in that high back chair, which I probably slept a little bit there, and when Tracy came out to wake me up, it kind of woke me in a startle a little bit, not that she woke me in a startle, just when I wake up my brain capacity is foggy and not always sharp. And so, I stood straight up, tried to stand straight up

so I could give her a hug and two minutes of ‘see you later, hope you have a nice day,’ not ideal, but that’s where I was at. But I couldn’t get up. I was out of balance as soon as I got up off the chair, and first thing you know I’m stumbling across the living room floor here towards the leather chair that’s adjacent to the chair I was sitting in, and I knew in that split second that I was going to crash.

Anytime I feel out of control in terms of my motor function and my balance, I get scared because any soft landing or hard landing fall could be disastrous. So, I saw the leather chair on the other side of the throw rug there, and I headed for it. Out of balance, when I got to it, I just turned my right shoulder, and I just let myself fall into that chair headfirst. I guess my brains were working there, because I didn’t hurt anything and I didn’t jam anything. At that moment, both Tracy and I were a little bit horrified, as anything could have happened. I could have rebroke the arm. Lots of things could have gone wrong right there.

I’ve been praying, of course, for protection, and as I have been writing and talking about that it is definitely a new experience for me to do that, but it’s a necessary one and I’m trying to increase my relationship with my father in heaven and take a little advice from him as well as ask for guidance. I think he helped me into that chair just nicely, and I’m grateful for that.

Once I got up and dusted myself off, I was able to sit down and relax a minute. And then I finally, after a few minutes, went in and laid

down on the bed as Tracy was packing to go. And I slept for a couple of hours, didn’t do too badly. I’m finding that this exercise is a daily routine that I try to do I have to work at. It’s not something I can solve today, and tomorrow is all solved. I’ve got to work at it. I suppose I should have been ‘working at it’ my entire life, but maybe I’d be further down the pike.

But nevertheless, I will reiterate, Devan, that this exercise that we’re doing to try to get as much down on paper as possible for you to do with as you see fit from a family point of view, from a therapist’s point of view, from a father-son point of view, any way that you want to look at it, any way that you want to interpret, it is what I want you to do. I have nothing to hide here, as I said before. And you are going to be my voice to make sure that my family knows me when I’m gone. Not just the new renaissance me, whatever this is, but as much of me as they could possibly understand in a short period of time because I want them to know, and I want you to know how special my family is to me.

I can honestly say that throughout my entire adult life, I have always loved you kids. I didn’t always succeed at it very well as a father. It wasn’t always a great father. I sure had all of you in my head, and in my mind, and in my heart all the time. It would break my heart as the years went by of how difficult it was for me to establish close relationships with you, all of you, but particularly, in this case, you. With all the distractions and all the anguish that was going on in our family, it was to say, at least in the journey, I never lost focus of the fact that I was responsible for you

children. I took that responsibility because I loved you. And hopefully, in this letter I’ll be able to express to you, and all the kids, all that was going on in my heart at that time, so you know me I think even somewhere down deep inside in my failures, because that’s when I failed a lot, my failure, my responsibility, my failure, nonetheless.

And I never lost hope that someday we all would connect in some way that was meaningful, that you all will be able to come to know my heart as I quietly, in many cases and not so quietly in others, gathered my memories and worked out my situation, so I could be a better father. That was my intent, and that’s what I think I am trying to achieve. I think I am achieving now because my relationships mean everything to me with you guys. You’ve been so special to me, Devan, throughout your life.

I’ve always been amazed and I’ve always admired you, whether you knew it or not. I’m sure you didn’t when you were young. What a good young man you’ve always been. The integrity, the honesty, the talent, the love that I could see in your eyes, the desire to be a gift to the world rather than a taker of the world, even though sometimes it seemed a little selfish to me I know how hard you were working on yourself.

The evidence of that, and one of the first encounters that I was able to tune in to when you were young was that stretch of time when you were at Blue Ridge, if I remember correctly, from fifth grade through summer into seventh grade. I think the first summer there when you were coming home and handing me letters from the athletic department, physical

education department wanting to sign up for sports. I think that was your sixth-grade summer going into seventh grade. I didn’t understand it at the time. I should have figured it out supposedly being a smart person, as a psychologist, but nevertheless, you came to me and you wanted to play some sports. The first thing you attempted was to play soccer in that summer soccer league. I think they were bright green or bright pink, I think. I can’t remember, they were a wild color jersey. And you went and tried out. We went over to that big field over in the other side of town. And you had a great coach. I think about him once in a while because he was a State Trooper, who lost his life to a drunk Indian an accident that was caused by an intoxicated native American. His son was on your team. That was one of my earlier adult disappointments in life. Nevertheless, it was a good team, good people to be around, caring and accepting to you, and you went out for the soccer team and progressed. You didn’t just take up space, you wanted to be active, you wanted to be a contributor. You didn’t just want to take up space and say, “Hey, I did that.” That’s the thing that I’ve always admired about you Devan. You were always looking for ways to fit in, to do well, to compete. I don’t mean sports competition, I mean, just being able to stand up to people and be assertive. But, I’d never seen an eleven-year-old boy struggle so hard to find his way amongst what ended up being some very hostile situations at times because you were different.

However, you were above and beyond in maturity and in social skill, and many, many other ways than those people that you wanted to show that you were equally talented, and good at things that you hadn’t ever tried or ever You were doing things that you never tried before. You were stepping outside the box. It’s been your whole life what can I do to step outside the box and make myself a better person? That’s you, Devan. You still do that today. And I can tell you the people that you’re going to touch in your life are uncountable. You’re going to have an impact on people you never thought or knew you were going to. And the only thing that’s going to matter to you, because of your integrity and your honesty, is that somebody benefits from that.

If that doesn’t fit neatly, tightly into the theme of my last three years of wanting to be a better person, and having cancer be the catalyst to get me out of my funk that was holding me back for so many years it was inspired by you, Devan. Oftentimes music was the vehicle, but every time, you were the catalyst. Thank you.

I want you to know I’ve said this before recently but, I just want you to know that I want Joel in our family for the rest of our lives. He, too, has stepped into our family with the same integrity, and the same honesty, and the same sweetness that you have displayed throughout your life. And what a match. What a wonderful, wonderful match for us. I pray for him and I pray for the two of you. Please, always be there, Joel. I know

things change over time. There are things that happen, life goes on. But you’re important to us, and you’re important to me.

So, you spent that summer and subsequent next summer or so each year choosing to do something different. By the end of that summer, you wanted to play football. You had the football athleticism. You were always an athletic kid. You were big, and muscular, and strong, and I’d have no doubt that if you would have chosen that field to go into, you’d have excelled. And I certainly wanted you to do that. I’m a selfish, old, beat-up athlete myself, who lives through his children. But as you continued to prove to these guys at school, through the teasing and through the bullying, you got stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and they became weaker, and weaker, and weaker. And I didn’t hope that, I wasn’t hoping that they would become weaker. I wasn’t hoping for you to hurt them in any way, but I was cheering for you.

And, man, did you pull it off. A twelve-year-old boy played that football season. By the middle of the season, you weren’t a first stringer, but you were playing, and you were contributing, and you were doing something that every one of those other kids were doing, in some cases better, in some cases not as well, but you would fit into any football team. And who knew? Who knew? But, I want to thank you for what you did. You taught me, an eleven- and twelve-year-old boy, way out of his element, taught me about life.

I’m not sure of the sequence of events, Devan, but that evening that I’ve been telling about, when you were playing the piano, and I was laying on the couch, and I thought it was your mother who was playing. She’s an incredible musician, and so whenever there was good music on the piano, I knew it was either your grandfather (and he wasn’t there) or I knew that it was your mother. That night I had no idea that a self-taught, twelve-year-old boy had such talent inside him, and that you were willing to let the Lord bless you to share it at that level. And then, later on, I looked forward to every time you sat down at the piano, every time you decided to sing, but you didn’t know that because I wasn’t a very good communicator with all the distractions.

However, as time went on, we got into a conversation in the kitchen, and that conversation was regarding your I can’t even believe I let this happen your thoughts and belief that I liked Ryan better as a son because he was the thrilling athlete that I was. On the basketball floor Ryan was the star; on the baseball field, and to some degree on the football field, I was the star. That’s how I got my ego stroked. It was to play sports and do something thrilling hit a home run, pitch a great game, win a championship. Ryan did all those things in basketball. So naturally, I can understand why you would’ve thought going to those ballgames and seeing how thrilled I was with Ryan that you would think, as a twelve-year-old, that I cared about him more than I did to you. You had no idea.

I think as it came out that evening in the kitchen I wish I could remember exactly the conversation we had because my feelings didn’t match what you were saying was happening. I was a little bit shocked that you felt that way, because, Devan, I had already established in my thought patterns, in my own psychological makeup, that the truth was Ryan thrilled me with his sports, and that your music blew me away and inspired me. Not only could I find joy in the music you were producing, but how young you were, how self-taught you were. I know your mother helped you a lot, and I’m grateful that she did. I know there were other people that helped you. Nobody goes through life in a vacuum and all of a sudden comes out the other end the genius. Maybe some do, maybe Mozart did, I don’t know. But, I don’t care to think of it that way. What I care to think about is what integrity and honesty you had in pursuing these things. And that didn’t get missed on me.

I was absolutely inspired by your music from an early, early age. And one of the first songs that you would perform back then, you did it at a couple of talent shows at school was Les Miserables, all those songs. The theater end of it, productions that you guys put together at school, talent shows were all absolutely amazing to me. But, whenever you would start singing Bring Him Home, the rapture of music that was permeating my soul was not understandable to somebody who doesn’t understand music like me, except that I knew it was real, and I knew it was touching me deeply, and I knew it was our connection. Please keep doing music.

You’re going to be a great psychotherapist. You already are. Thrills me that you’re doing that, but don’t stop playing music. I bought that piano for you because I wanted you to have that vehicle to continue to fill your soul and the souls of Joel and anybody else who understand music. Share that talent with people because you inspire people with it.

Thank you for doing that. I hope that piano stays in our family for well beyond the time we’re all here. Maybe gets passed down to family members, so the legacy, there’s always going to be creativity and music in our family. And that might be a way to remember me, and remember you and I, just to keep handing that piano down. It’s your piano, you can do what you want with it, but it’s a nice thought.

Anyway, Devan, when all this started in 1994, and I had that first bout with kidney cancer, and they took the kidney, and you know the rest, I thought I was done with cancer; I thought I was moving on. Twenty-five years later, having been diagnosed with lymphoma, I find out I also have, always had the kidney cancer there with me, which last summer reared its ugly head and presented itself. And at the time that happened, Devan, I knew that that wasn’t going to be curable.

I think if all I had was the mantle-cell lymphoma, I’d be around for a while. It was a little easier cancer to put in remission, and keep there, and be healthier longer. It’s not as aggressive. But when I heard renal-cell carcinoma, I knew what I was up against. And even though I tried to deny it, it was apparent that I was in my last stages. A little bit scary, a little bit

frustrating, because I’ve always I think I’ve been like you a lot. I like to keep moving forward. I keep doing things, building things, creating things in my way, and I had plans to do that. But, my focus changed I was able to look outside the box I was able to think differently when I broke my arm, with the help of Tracy and her sweetness.

I’m an infant, I’m a child. I’m learning, I’m still learning. I have to keep in my focus, and I want my children to do the same to keep in focus that the only important thing is our family and our relationship with God. Wherever we’re at on that continuum, we’ve got to keep plugging away.

I have found no joy and happiness in being angry or hostile. I burned a lot of bridges in my life because of it. I never intended to do that; it was never me, but that’s what I did. And now I’m focused on fixing that not for me, I’m going to be honest about that. I want to live this way, but for all of you, because I want my family to be happy. I want my family to experience joy all the time, as much as possible, even though that’s not possible. So, this represents that. I write this in order to evidence that, and I’m so grateful to you for being able to want to be able to put it into the formats that we’re working on.

As I said before, my only agenda is a better relationship with my father in heaven, one that is guided by him, and my relationship with you, and with the children, and my grandchildren, that goes beyond the grave. Wherever that goes, we’ll have to define that and see what happens as we

go. I’m not looking to be a general authority, and I don’t mean that in a facetious way. The song says, ‘Bring Him Home, ’ that’s what I want for all of us, to be brought home. And I can tell you, at the front row center seat of guiding me in that way, after I consider where this journey is, what path this journey has put me on is you sitting there, ‘Go, Dad, go, Dad.

You can do it.’ I may fail sometimes now in my attempt to do that, but not ultimately. Thank you.

Those are gifts that I have received from you. They are precious to me. I hope they’re precious to you, and I hope they’re precious to your wonderful companion. I’d love to have a grandchild from the two of you or two. I’d love to be able to live long enough to see it. And I have a feeling that’s not going to happen that way. But, whatever transpires between now and the time that I pass, I’m going to make it the best I can for you, and for the kids. Whatever my capacity is, beyond this, beyond the grave to continue to support my family, I will do it.

I’m sure that there are many other things that I could talk about today, Devan, but the important thing is that you’ve got to see me, and you get to hear me talk to you about how hard it is for me not to be able to remember my father’s voice. I was always heartbroken by that. I can’t wait for a time when I could mend my wounds with him, ask his forgiveness and that of my mother, because in so many ways in my life I just bumbled through. But, I’m so grateful because they were there. They tried their best. They did what they could with what they had. I can’t ask

any more out of a parent than that. But, you darn well better be sure you thank them.

And so, I’m thanking you, Devan. And, I’ll wrap this letter up for now. I’m sure that there’ll be other recordings that fit this letter. But for now, I’m getting a little fatigued. It’s 25 minutes to four-o’clock, and I need to rest. But thank you, Devan. Thank you for being my son. A father could not ever have asked for a better son than you. Thank you.

Chapter V

The Self-Analysis

Introduction

Autoethnography requires that we observe ourselves observing, that we interrogate what we think and believe, and that we challenge our own assumptions, asking over and over if we have penetrated as many layers of our own defenses, fears, and insecurities as our project requires (Jones, Adams, and Ellis, 2016, p. 10)

I have chosen to focus the core of this analysis on the concept I presented in Chapter II from Irwin Hoffman’s (1979) very influential paper, where he explicitly writes about the decathexis of anticipatory grief as one of working to change the quality of investment with the dying loved one. Evidence that this was a core ambition of mine surfaces even in the first, introductory section of the story, which I titled “Fatherland Museum.” There, I am contemplating both my family history and what it will mean to converse with Dad about it during that first, September visit.

At that time (i.e., September 2018), I was unaware of Hoffman’s paper, and unaware of what it was that was moving and shaking my desire to dialogue with Dad, intentionally, around what felt like random topics that concerned our history together (e.g., his formidable anger). My clinical work, education, and especially the work of this project, have deepened my faith in the idea that talk can change things, especially if it

carries with it certain features, namely curiosity and empathy. Nevertheless, if I would have been pressed that fall, I suppose, I could have offered a definition of what I felt it was, exactly, that I wanted to change with him. I likely would have pulled from discourses in object relations theory, or perhaps from self-psychology, to communicate the need that I had for him as an internalized, selfobject function to become and be remembered as mostly “good” to me. I would also have likely used religious language from my upbringing to speak of the need to forgive my failure to see Dad as anything more than just an angry, inept man who could never quite grow enough beyond his own losses and traumas to serve as the kind of Dad (the kind of “You”) which I was and had been, throughout our lives together so eager for, lustful after, and even envious of. This rather intensified desire to make use of conversation, as an act of working to change the quality of investment with Dad, also contained another element of something from my religious upbringing. That is, I felt “called” to it. I felt there to be nothing more important for me in my life, at that time, than to engage with him in the project of collecting stories from his past in order to help me understand him better and grow more into a realization of who he is and what he has meant to me. This began in October of the previous year (i.e., 2017), when I felt the internal aspiration to visit with Doris and her son, Barry, in Roaring Spring. I am convinced, now, that all of this even the sense of “calling” that I am endorsing is best interpreted as the motivation to change, again, the quality of the type of internal investment that I had with my father. It is a mental operation that theorists and researchers, from Freud to Rando, have contemplated in terms of “decathecting” from the lost or, in this case, the about-to-be lost object. My personal, cathectic investment with Dad, in other words, was far less about

disconnecting from the introjected representation of him and redistributing the energy of that investment into other, internalized objects, but more about working to convert both the meaning and affectional worth of what Dad had always meant to me vis-à-vis incurring new and enhanced experience of him. Again, I didn’t have this language for it at the time, but I felt confident that dialogues with my father would supply something like this, and, indeed, I believe they did overall.

I indicated in Chapter II that therein I would present a review of the literature that I would apply to my analysis of Chapter IV in what follows, here, in Chapter V. For the sake of working to communicate clearly and plainly, I have divided this chapter into two, foundational sections, each dealing with the first three primary research questions that I presented in the first and third chapters 36 I will respond to the fourth research question in Chapter VI, where I draw conclusions and present actionable recommendations for the study as a whole (Bloomberg et al., 2016, pp. 269-278).

The first section of this chapter responds to the first and second research questions i.e., regarding (a) how my experience of anticipatory mourning affected me personally and the ambivalent relationship that I had with my father before he died, and (b) what I feel are the most significant and noteworthy ways in which my life was disrupted or disordered in the course of Dad’s final year This section focuses primarily on applying core concepts and categories from the works of Therese A. Rando (1986, 2000). I should note that I have combined these under one, general section, because responses to one greatly implicate those I would offer to the other in such a way that they are almost wholly interchangeable. This is an expression of my belief that my ambivalent

36 On this method for composing Chapter V, see Bloomberg et al., 2016, p. 246.

relationship with my father governed or determined the ways in which my life felt disrupted and/or disordered in the process of anticipatory mourning one that I am ultimately arguing I traversed in a state of manic “madness.”

In the second general section of what follows, I analyze the impact that I feel the reflexive conversations between my father and I had on my experience of working through the ambivalences in our relationship. The interpretations of this section are integrated around the psychoanalytic theories of grief, loss, and mania that I showcased in Chapter II.

I should also note, as I proceed, that the self-analysis that follows in this chapter is meant to represent a “narrative-under-analysis,” which I described in Chapter III as one that seeks to reduce the autoethnographic account to its content. I will present what I have found in terms of the larger categories, themes, and patterns that emerged, for me, in the language of it both as I wrote it and in terms of what I have found as I have subsequently reflected on it. But, I want to recognize, at the outset, that I believe the story that I have written can (and should) stand on its own sufficiently enough as a “narrative analysis” one that theorizes in itself.

What follows is the best representation I can afford in my own words of what I think my narrative is about, but I do not claim to have the last word regarding its meanings, as I believe that themes equally relevant, but, nevertheless, unspoken will emerge for members of my family and others who might read and evaluate it. This is bound to be the case, and it very well should be, given the limitations of this medium. In short, I agree with Art Bochner and Carolyn Ellis who conveyed in a way that convinced

me that the type of analysis I am providing, here in this chapter, should not be privileged above stories, adequately (even preferably) theoretical in themselves.

One final, general note before diving in. As I proceed again, in a sort of “coddiwompling” manner I hope to observe the exhortation in Bollas’s lamentation from the following quote. In Shadow of the Object, he writes:

For I think we have failed to allow ourselves the full development of a psychoanalytic sensibility, which means the inclusion of ourselves as animated objects within the field of the analysable [sic]. We have lost pleasure in being bewildering to ourselves and in using a state of mind to sustain a capacity that Freud developed when he began his self-analysis (Bollas, 1987, p. 238)

The type of self-analysis that Bollas exhorts a psychoanalyst to develop is not the sort that I am endeavoring in this chapter; yet, I believe his sentiments work, nevertheless. As I aim to explain what I believe this story is about or expressing, I am endeavoring to generate, for myself, a kind of intrapsychic “pleasure,” not in ascertaining certainty, but in the project of becoming rather “bewildering” to and about myself. I believe this is possible as I practice conditioning a creative and emboldened state of mind that is comparable to the sort that Freud developed in the process of producing his own selfanalysis. Furthermore, I suppose part of this ambition is an expression of my hunger for a panacea an exercise, as if like the one I abandoned when I officially departed from Mormonism one that, when observed properly, I have thought, would resolve all my ills, foibles, and conflicts. I have learned throughout this challenging process that if such a thing were attainable, it is only so by complicating what seems to be so very certain.

The Intensification of Mourning Introduction.

Recall that I reviewed a paper by Mardi J. Horowitz (1990) in Chapter II, where he compares “normal responses” and the “pathological intensifications” of those responses in each phase of dying and death, including predeath. For example, he writes that normal responses to the dying phase should include “emotional expression” and “immediate coping with the dying process” (p. 302). Pathological intensifications of this involve avoidance, feeling overwhelmed or dazed/confused, self-punition, and inappropriate hostility. Horowitz notes that some of the intensifications involved in these phases of grief include counterphobic frenzies, feeling flooded with negative images and emotions, night terrors, and even reactive psychoses.

“Pathological grief is often a highly intense and out-of-control experience,” Horowitz writes, “of the kind of ideas and feelings normally found during mourning” (p. 300-01). He does not discuss anticipatory grief in any meaningful way, except that he links Lindemann’s work to his own as he clarifies how these intensifications appear. Thus, we can assume that he means to argue that the anticipatory grief (and/or mourning) is, categorically, a pathological intensification of those processes otherwise considered “normal.”

Horowitz’s paper was published in 1990; Therese Rando edited the first anthology dealing with anticipatory grief in 1986, which means that Horowitz would likely have been aware of the works therein, including Rando’s impressive review of the discourse to date on the topic. Rando and others who contributed to this anthology would surely have taken issue with his generic categorization of anticipatory grief/mourning as

pathological, if this is his intent. Yet, they would agree with the connection he makes between his definition of pathological intensification of grief to Lindemann’s case example of a problematic, premature decathexis. The latter likely reflects Horowitz’s intent.

I submit, herein, that my experience did not merely yield an intensification of mourning following a grief response that stimulated it, corresponding to the news of my father’s terminal illness. Rather, I underwent an intensification of the ambivalences in my relationship with my father that were ongoing prior to that point in time. In 1917, Freud suggested that the quality of the relationship that one has with the lost object can predict melancholia. Horowitz adds to this that preexisting ambivalence in a relationship between one and one’s lost object predisposes the former “to both more intense and turbulent affects and more extensive and regressive defenses” (p. 301). In this general section, I will demonstrate this by providing examples around moments in the story of (a) repeated frustrations, (b) graphic reminders of disease and death, (c) in violations of what’s called my “assumptive world,” and (d) the process of moving closer to and simultaneously away from the dying loved one, my father.

Repeated frustrations.

When Rando instituted a set of general descriptors for anticipatory grief in her summary of the phenomenon in 1986, she wrote, “All of the processes here imply continued involvement with the dying patient, with some actually serving to intensify the attachment and improve the relationship as compared to what existed before the awareness of limited time” (p. 32, emphasis mine). This principle holds in her latest treatise on the subject, as well. Now, Rando argues that “some” of these involvements

will be affected, but it is difficult for me to imagine my experience within this theoretical confine. That is, most (if not all) of the moments that involved my father and me, during the period of time under investigation, were intensified, and this contributed to the weighty nature of the transactional processes leading to my father’s death and the relief I felt once that had finally transpired.

I argue, as a point central to the thesis of this analysis, that the greatest threat to the earnest and wishful, even naïve, enterprise on my part (perhaps even “our” part i.e., mine and my father’s) to change the quality of the internal investment with him before he passed away materialized, unequivocally, in the intensification of those factors from our relational history that are (or were) of significant, even post-traumatic, quality. These represent not only the intensification of the heartbreaks involved in the growing realization throughout that year that Dad would never be able to become the person, the father, I needed him to be for me, but also of post-traumatic remembrances (i.e., triggers) of what has, more or less, made that decidedly so.

Rando also argues that the processes of anticipatory grief necessarily lead to an improvement in the relationship between the dying and bereaved one “as compared to what existed before the awareness of limited time” (p. 32). I submit that my relationship with my father actually did improve throughout the course of that year, even as it compares to what existed before I learned about the terminal nature of his condition, but the process of “mourning” the loss of him began far earlier than July of 2016, when I learned he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (or even in February of 2019 when we learned the carcinoma tumors in his lungs were bigger and that we were nearly out of treatment options). Mourning the loss of Dad became a serious matter for

me as early as three years old, while we still lived in Orem, Utah, even prior to my parent’s first divorce.

As Rando writes about the “three time-foci” of anticipatory grief or mourning, she notes that the condition is stimulated by “losses that have already occurred in the past” (Rando, 1986, p. 15, 31; see also Rando, 2000, pp. 54-55). In 1986, she says it best, which I will quote at length here:

Even in the face of an ongoing terminal illness, there are losses that have already occurred which must be mourned. For example, in nursing her husband through his final bout with cancer, it is not uncommon for a wife to grieve over the vibrant and healthy man she has already lost to cancer and to mourn their altered relationship, lifestyle, and their dreams for the future that will never be realized. It will not be unusual for her to remember the activities they shared when he was well; to recall how, in contrast to how he currently is, he was strong and independent; to grieve over the fact that so many limitations have been placed on their lives and interfered with their plans; and to mourn for all that has already been taken away by the illness. (p. 15, emphasis mine)

She then goes on to contend, “This is what is meant by anticipatory grief entailing mourning over losses in the past” (p. 15). These may be “recent, as in the case of the altered lifestyle, or in the more distant past, as in the lost opportunities that are regretted in light of the limited time left” (p. 15).

I have noted that the story begins showing me as I am contemplating my family history and sorting out questions that I might use to engage my father in dialogue,

inspired by my desire to have a good-enough experience of him that would have integrated “good Dad” contents with the “bad” ones on which I was and had been for so long fixated. All I know at the beginning of the story, however, is that I want to learn more, as if to serve as a kind of family historian or an ethnographer of our history. To some extent, I was aware of the desire to improve our relationship, but I considered this more a lovely, potential byproduct of the effort. I do not expound on this in the story, but my ambition was sponsored almost entirely by the playful, even somewhat grandiose, fantasy that I might produce a work that my father and his extended family would consider of great value a self-published book, perhaps, for and about the Hites that looks at our history, values, traditions, beliefs, and even relational dynamics, so up close and personal that I was bound to earn favor and praise by him and them. I wanted to make a journalistic splash, while also impressing them by showing how I am able to think on paper.

Hundreds of pages of notes and information gathered from this endeavor did not make it into the story, given its irrelevance toward what it later became. Dad and I talked about a myriad of other topics of note, including details regarding his education and career, his parent’s relationship, his history with the Mormon Church, both of his marriages and divorces with my mom, memories of me as a child, and his politics. He spoke extensively about visiting Pop and Marie in Roaring Spring as a child. He communicated stories from our family lore of aunts and great-aunts, uncles and greatuncles. He added to the details imparted by Doris and recalled memories of his mother’s youth in southern Utah and Nevada. We talked about coming out, his experience of sexual abuse, and conflicts with my siblings that continued to burden him. He provided

great and many details regarding the opportunities gained and lost for him, my grandfather, and Pop in baseball and other sports. He opened himself up to me, gradually and especially toward the end, and I worked to do the same for him. Because of this, I am convinced, our relationship improved before he died I am convinced that I came to respect him more, because I got to know him better. This ultimately made it easier for me to forgive him of what I had been, for so many years, holding against him.

Dad, at the very least, gave me the narrative content to allow him to begin to become something more or of greater holistic value to me, especially as I have mourned him after his death. Yet and I hope to have made this clear by now the sort of mourning that Rando characterizes above (i.e., of the wife nursing her dying husband) does not seem to fit the sort of mourning of losses that occur in my narrative In other words, before the story even begins, I have found clear and compelling evidence, after close readings of the psychoanalytic literature I apply to this case below, that I had been about mourning the losses of my dad to such a comprehensive extent that, for the most part, our period together of terminal illness unto death merely amplified the mental and emotional operations that were already established in this enterprise. My relationship with Dad, to be precise, was and always had been characterized by nothing more than comprehensive and ongoing mourning of him since my earliest memories Thus, that period i.e., from July 2016 or September 2018 until Dad’s death did not stimulate it.

Central to those operations was, for me, my tendency to devalue or disparage my father or better, to disavow the notion and sentiment that I cared about my relationship with him. Most of my early youth, adolescence, and early adulthood (i.e., until about the

age of thirty) was spent vigorously pining for alterations in our relationship vis-à-vis displaced measures. It seems that this began as early, for me, as eighteen months old. Shortly thereafter, I believe I gave up on Dad, especially around the time of my parent’s first divorce. Yet, evidence that devaluation characterized my attitude regarding my actual father seems to be indicated in the rather forceful nature of my interior phantasies, pining for a “You” of Dad that would never be him. This left me persistently frustrated, even to the point that my phrasing, here, seems grossly understated. This frustration, that is, aggregated my sense of despair and hopelessness over time, building upon whatever content was left from previous episodes until my despair made life feel not worth living at all Therefore, in essence, it is true that my year of anticipatory mourning entailed the loss of dreams for my future with Dad, but these were not new to our relationship when that period began. Again, they were merely intensified, if not already reawakened.

My sense is that my father and I enjoyed a semblance of an ideal father-son bond in my earliest, even preoedipal years, but that conflicts between him and my mother, as well as those between us via his angry volatility and physical abuse, quickly broke my faith that such a bond could sustain. I was simply too young for the mind to comprehend any other scenario, and it held to that with tremendous force such that it eventually catalyzed a rather serious plummet into an abiding state of deep and unrelenting mourning at as early as three years old. This is when I began to transfer the hope and desire for the father that I must have, at some point, known but could not recapture onto images in stories to which I was exposed at the time (e.g., Robin Hood, Superman, then John Book, and the like). Evidence that I was mourning a serious loss (for me) is revealed in the manner in which I felt, by at least six years old, rather torn apart by separation

narratives like that of the Velveteen Rabbit (cited earlier) or the story of the Fox and the Hound (Miller, Reitherman, and Stevens, 1981). My reaction to these types of stories and there are many seems to reveal my childhood wish that specific and deep bonds of love might endure, especially between two male subjects.

To sum, the sort of contingent losses that Rando details in her vignette above (and elsewhere, for that matter, throughout her treatises) were central to my experience of Dad decades before I learned that he had either terminal illness. Our relationship, therefore, was characterized by the “fait accompli” that she links to the final stages of life. This fact, in my view, complicates applications of the theory regarding the phenomenon in question, even in a general sense.

To her credit, in her 2000 paper, Rando writes: Loss and its ensuing grief and mourning, and trauma and its resulting in traumatic stress, are fundamental experiences to which the anticipatory mourner is significantly and repeatedly exposed and with which he or she must contend. These two experiences alone, in combination, and in their sequelae are the major origins of the adaptational demands placed on the anticipatory mourner. They shape the context within which anticipatory mourning takes place. (pp. 59-60, emphasis mine) So, we know that Rando is clear to say that continued involvement with one’s dying loved one will intensify the attachment between the two and serve as the impetus toward improving their relationship. So far, I hope to have shown that the decidedlyambivalent “attachment” with my father did intensify, for me, after I learned of his terminal diagnosis, but that this “intensification” was not of the sort that is characterized

throughout Rando’s works. Given the content of Rando’s (et al.) examples and vignettes, like the sort I have shown above, by “attachment” Rando likely means to communicate something like a “bond” rather than an “attachment” proper (a distinction that attachment theory has established throughout its discourse e.g., see Zeifman & Hazan, 2016). This seems also likely given that it’s the thing that will, according to this literature, “improve” with continued involvement.

The literature regarding these factors sorely overlooks the complexity of ambivalent relationships. It loads or invests its discussion almost entirely on the side of showing how these processes will improve the relational bond between the dying one and the subject in anticipatory mourning; it does not face, write about, and theorize at all about the depressive intensifications that occur when someone, like myself, is facing the death of a loved one that one also hates. Yes, the quality of the attachment between the dying one and the one mourning them is intensified, but the literature on anticipatory mourning fails to investigate the intensification of underlying, historical issues between mourners, especially as they are represented symbolically in the death and dying process.

Much of what I gleaned about the relationship with my father became more obvious to me during this period, because the “bad Dad” aspects of the ambivalence were simply too hard to ignore. They were revealed and shown so brightly and conspicuously in his decline that, to a point, had I not had the clinical language to understand what I was experiencing, I would have likely dismissed the ordeal, without knowing it, into the chasms of unconscious process, and they would have been intensified there, causing significantly more damage for me and likely others as the energies involved in this filtrated into thoughts and behaviors that may or may not seem connected to it, but are,

nonetheless, direct byproducts of unmourned, disavowed grief. This is, at any rate, what likely occurred for my father in the post-death experience of mourning (or failing to mourn) his father’s death.

Graphic reminders.

So, what are some examples of these intensifications of the ambivalence that I experienced, and how did they find expression in the dying process? Rando (1986) writes about “graphic reminders” of what’s to come in the course of facing the declines of terminal illness in anticipatory mourning (pp. 5-6). These are vivid warnings that ominously regard the incontrovertible certitude of both bodily degeneration and death. What is important, in terms of what follows, is how these reminders became the vehicle for exposing the effects of deep pains and traumas that have existed in my relationship with my father, again, generally and over time.

When my father’s arm broke in April of 2019, I could not fathom the pain he was experiencing, and I initially blocked realization of it (i.e., that such pain existed) with displaced anger at the medical establishment. I felt they had failed to treat his injury properly. I believe that there is a valid, moral argument, here, making the presentation of my defense more “neurotic” (as in, grounded in reality; see McWilliams, 2011, p. 57). Regardless, in the story, during my first night with Dad in hospice care, I began to contemplate my own mortality. This contemplation, if I remembered it rightly, was spontaneous and cathartic. On p. 211, I write, “In just a few days’ time, I feel I have become an ardent advocate for the human right to euthanasia.”37 My thoughts show me

37 Throughout this analysis, I quote myself from (mainly) Chapter IV quite a bit. I was unable to locate instructions on how to do this from the APA Publication Manual (i.e., what it means to quote oneself from the same work). Furthermore, I want to make it easily accessible to the readers of this

pondering common, philosophical questions regarding the purpose of pain and, ultimately, existence. I speak of the desire to have full agency, autonomy, and choice over the manner of my own death. I express horror over what cancer can do to the body, and I convey that nothing seems more gruesome to me than being forced into submission by it.

I was deeply affected by, not just the symbols of disease and death, but cancer’s astonishing, warped way of compelling one into state after state of abject defeat and humiliation. I found myself relating to the source of Dad’s terminal illness as a violent, archetypal perpetrator of crimes against the human body. I want to be clear that I don’t mean to communicate that I felt this to have been merely metaphoric As I witnessed what cancer does to the body, I recalled feelings I have had when distraught by images that portray any type of violent, lethal aggression directed at someone by someone else usually rape or a stabbing. I abhor these images. I take them personally. I feel indignant when I have seen them represented in the news or media, especially for entertainment value. Furthermore, no matter how many times I have had the experience, it takes me by surprise, delivering a rather sharp, emotional cocktail of despair and fury. I am repelled by the psychopathic audacity of the perpetrator and horrified by the victimization of those who are forced into perverted submission to them. I don’t suppose that this is terribly abnormal. I hope that most of us feel the same way. Yet, for me, the response seems a bit overdetermined, based upon my observation of others when beholding the same content.

work to locate the passages to which I’m referring in this analysis. Therefore, I’ve made mention of where one can find each respective passage in relevant moments in the prose that follows.

In what follows, I want to present a handful of moments from the story that help to clarify my point and support it with nuance. I confess that, at first glance, these moments may not appear to be connected by a central theme; but, I will show how the “graphic reminders” of Dad’s steady decline activated a set of fantasies that are connected to the type of amplification process that I discussed above.

In the story, I write about an incident with my sister where I take manic, impulsive flight from a vehicle that she is driving, which leads to events that place me in the hospital for a few days after suffering traumatic brain injury (see pp. 209-211). There, I present the vignette to clarify how I felt confident in Dad’s ability to be there for me when things got serious. The fact that I am contemplating the event on that first night in hospice is, I believe, an indication of how I feel compelled to return the favor to Dad as part of a larger role I felt I was playing. I will go into more detail about this “role” below, but I consider this explanation to reveal the manifest content of the vignette.

Yet, the incident is also an illustration of an abiding, characterological attitude that I have carried for decades now that is, it is a specimen of how deeply I feel that I would rather perish (my hyperbolic instinct is to say, “fucking die”) than feel compelled to endure something that I feel is (even) emotionally violent, especially if I have not consented to the circumstances of it In the story, I associate to the memory while contemplating Dad’s decline one to which he was compelled to submit and that was beyond his control. I write of how I admire the way he is able to do this, likely given his lack of choice in the matter, and when comparing myself, hypothetically, to the same process, I don’t believe I could muster it.

I also associate to “God” during this reverie in the story. I believe its content is also critical to understanding what I am accessing. Recall, on p. 211, that my thoughts render: “Our laws are driven by these theocratic notions that God has a reason for every morsel of our suffering. It’s all bullshit ” Now, if the theologian in me, made from the six years of graduate work I undertook in the field, were pressed to confess it, I would not hold categorically to the philosophical nihilism characterizing this meditation. I do believe, in other words, that our suffering can have meaning, and that this meaning can even serve us by giving us a purpose for living for enduring the pain and suffering of the dying process (e.g., I have Viktor Frankl’s (1959/2006) work on the search for meaning in mind as I write this)

What I believe I’m accessing in these thoughts, nonetheless, are the depressive operations of the mind that occur when projections of my father work to empty my soul of fear- and anger-based affects by setting up the attitudes, beliefs, and demands of God in this way. This serves as another example of the intensification of “bad Dad” internalizations rising to consciousness as I am exposed to the graphic reminders of cancer’s debilitating pogrom. Dad’s rules, like the demands (etc.) of God, felt draconian, pitiless, and tyrannical to me as a child, because failure to adhere to them, even when unpredictable or unknowable, ended in violence, and sometimes it was bloody. Dad’s laws felt inflexible and determined to destroy me. They didn’t seem to care anywise about how they were (or could be) affecting me, and I hated him for the case of them (generally) and for the ominous sense of lurking betrayal they produced.

I believe that Dad was, to some extent, made to feel a victim of these misadventures, as well. Recall that I also write that I feel I am confronting the realities of

this disease as if I am Dad. Thus, I believe that my mind is making a connection to an intergenerational phenomenon that is difficult to label between fathers and their sons i.e., of something between me and my own “bad” Dad and my dad’s experience of his 38

The story does not capture this as much as it could; but, before he got sick, Dad was very forceful in his violence, especially of the most common, verbal sort. Almost immediately following his terminal diagnosis in 2016, Dad relaxed these qualities of his personality as much as I believe he felt he could in consciousness. For example, he made an active effort to avoid discussing politics, especially with me. If I am right, it would have been one of his great successes for the two of us if Dad was, indeed, able to curb his right-wing fury in order to avoid scorching the improvement in our relationship that was beginning to bud between us Dad was never really known for curbing these sentiments, especially in a way that is socially-appropriate.

Parenthetically, the wanton nature that Dad would assert his conservative political views represents another means by which I believe he was working to find his father.

That is, I believe that he believed, in large part, that the Republican party would “bring back” an American way of life that he reasoned would sponsor the type of goodness, neighborliness, and wholesomeness he experienced in Roaring Spring as a child There is a great irony to this, given that Dad pined after something that looked decidedly more

38 A notable example comes to mind. I was not able to find room for this in the story, but my sister, Heather, conveyed to me one morning, as we were discussing my father’s emotional and mental decline into psychotic frenzies, that he was exhibiting a recurring, waking set of ideas of reference. While watching his games, that is, he believed that images of him, laying helplessly in bed, were being projected onto the jumbotron of the arena, and that the horde of fans, there, were laughing at and scorning him. In later, more lucid moments, Dad was able to recall that our grandfather would punish my Dad corporally, when he was a small child, the morning after a night of my father’s nocturnal enuresis. Heather made the connection between these events for me, which we worked to process together.

socialist than Republican, especially given the economic advantages made available to the middle class following the second world war.

That being said, historically, when Dad thought that I should know something, I was pigeonholed into hearing about it, especially as a younger child, no matter how much I thought the content of it was founded on misguided or blatantly incorrect assumptions about me or the world. There was no convincing him otherwise. Nothing seemed to effect the squirm away from him that I wrestled to achieve in these moments. In later childhood, perhaps because I had learned a lesson by then, I didn’t even feel this was an option. If it were “my way or the highway,” the highway, with Dad, was physical violence followed by a formidable encounter of his own depressive guilt that actually felt worse than the emotional and physical violence we’d originally encountered As I work to show in the story, in such moments, I lost my father in a twofold manner first to his brutality, and then to the resolute, unforgiving shame of his own against himself that followed.

Now, as a character in the narrative, I inadvertently conflated the unyielding, tireless, and mulish nature of a terminal cancer to the hostile aspect of the “bad Dad” impression of my father, which, by then, had become reified over time in a relational medium between us. The essence of the “graphic reminders” of what was to come felt as if it were the essence of the “graphic reminders” of what had already transpired between us to such a degree that my mind had few outlets to abreact the intense frustration that these dynamics prompted than to project them into the corporal processes of Dad’s disease. My perception of cancer’s nefarious “attitude,” as it was imagined in my psyche, paralleled an oppressive sort that I felt subject (and victim) to throughout my life,

especially as a child especially as my father’s son one from which I largely want/ed to be set free.

I would like to be clear that I am not arguing that what I endured by my father is equivalent to rape, murder, genocide, or even death by terminal cancer. I hope this is obvious. I am arguing that my mind connected to the helplessness of feeling subdued by powers much greater than my own vis-à-vis such images of death as I encountered the very actual experience of my father’s body randomly breaking down by the effects of the latter. This connection is especially true in terms of what was activated and intensified as I witnessed his decline (e.g., his broken arm) as a regressive experience of my own. I indicate in the story that my contemplations that first night in hospice felt, to me, as if proceeding from the phantoms of the early life of a little, toddler-aged boy, feeling helpless and victimized by the overwhelming and hyperstimulating nature of his father’s unpredictable aggression. To that child, it is conceivable to me that such aggression was felt to be as if from a perpetrator of potential homicide. The graphic reminders of Dad’s disease made it difficult, even impossible, for me to suppress the reality that such infantile terrors remained and were still endeavoring to work themselves out.

Intensifications of this sort also occurred for me as I witnessed Dad’s emotional, regressive collapses (e.g., the sort I conveyed in the story in the subsection I titled, “Madness in the morning.”) I have learned, from the literature, that exposure to death/dying can stimulate regressions to earlier states of emotional development (Harris, 2016). This may be due to the existential terrors of dying (Sofka, 2007), perhaps even of death anxiety, or it is due to the mere fact that tumors have developed in the brain, effecting psychotic episodes (Madhusoodanan, Ting, Farah, & Ugur, 2015) When this

began to occur with my father, his doctors surmised that it was due to the latter vis-à-vis the final stages of the metastatic spread of his carcinoma. Dad was in hospice, no treatments were left at his disposal, so there was no need to take him through the series of tests that would be necessary to determine this.

The idea that Dad’s psychotic moments were attributable to metastatic spread would have been easier to accept sui generis had these emotional collapses not been characteristic of his behavior prior to this period of his life. In other words, I never knew Dad to not collapse in the ways I witnessed prior to his death. These collapses were, in an emotional and mental sense, merely more extreme, vivid, unrestrained and uninhibited, and even more difficult to soothe than before (i.e., for both him and me). Furthermore, in those final months, they were not followed by periods of Dad’s guilt and self-flagellation He rarely remembered that they had occurred at all in the final months of his life, but this was not the case prior to this.

These moments were exceptionally trying, because my desire to help was overshadowed by heightened responses of my own. The latter of the two, as is characteristic of such responses, clouded my ability to think, reason, and stabilize on solid ground so that I could do whatever needed to be done to help. Most of Dad’s emergencies were not as dire as their presentation initially suggested to me. When Dad awoke that morning to my subtle noise in the kitchen (see p. 249), and he began to call out to me with such formidable desperation, I was surprised to learn, eventually, that he had not hurt himself or had incurred some type of serious, physical pain (e.g., another broken bone). In the narrative, I hurry to locate my sister, who I had reasoned was more

qualified than I to assess and assuage the problem. Yet, the truth is, all I needed to do was ask Dad what he needed.

My flight to Heather was also a trick to avoid confronting my father in a degenerative state. The reality of whatever his condition was (or could have been), that is, felt too painful and burdensome to behold. The origins of this burden may be described in terms of the existential threat of my own and new encounter with the dying process, but it seems more likely to me that I felt it because I already knew the pain of losing Dad too well. I had, by that point, learned to tolerate versions of it that were less severe from my experience of my father; yet, these newer amplifications of the same, hyperactivated contents were, again, overwhelming my capacity to be present with him and present with the process I was (I believe, actually) being called to witness Furthermore, the depressive ruminations that are coupled with or followed from this event (and others like them) signify well the way in which my mind was striving to process them.

Before moving on, I want to make one last observation regarding the issue of the intensification of ambivalences in my relationship with Dad vis-à-vis graphic reminders of dying and death. In the general section of the previous chapter that I titled “Dad’s Cancer Miracle,” I endeavored to capture a conversation that my siblings and I had with him during the Father’s Day weekend before he died. I represented this conversation in such great detail and length in the story because I feel it gives the best account of, not merely the level of despair that I was (and each of us were) feeling, but it reveals well our tendency toward hypervigilant, even manic, flight from the unsettling realities of our history with our father regarding his emotional volatility and collapsibility.

I consider the scene to be rather tragicomic. Writing it stirred a great deal of anxiety and despair for me, compounded by the overall nature of the subject of my thesis, but I also found myself chuckling a bit (because, what else can you do?) as I recalled how ill-prepared my family and I were to digest what was happening. There was irony, I believe, in one poor attempt after another to feel safe and secure in the intimate space between us, because it simply didn’t feel to us that healthy intimacy was really a viable option. Each of us, in our own way, reacted to the topics of discussion with our own, unique (but generalizable) set of defenses and coping behaviors. Furthermore, I felt that I was the one holding the conversation together, which I bore as a necessary but unwelcomed burden.

Clinically, one might attribute the moderate to severe index of distractibility in the conversational dynamics of the evening in question to adult attention deficit, and the clinician who would do this would have solid grounds for this conclusion. I am aware that there is a thin line between psychoanalytic understandings of characterological mania and the general psychiatric category descriptors for adult attention deficit disorder. Contemporary psychoanalytic diagnosticians appear to be moderately aware of the tension between the two, as well.

For example, Nancy McWilliams (2011) writes that “the characterologically manic person is highly distractible and can easily be assumed to be suffering from ADD,” yet, “internal themes of loss, longing, and self-hatred, countered by the defense of denial, can discriminate a personality tendency from the symptomatic difficulties of people with adult ADD” (p. 264).39 Even in the DSM-V, features of the differential diagnosis are

39 In the PDM-2, Lingiardi and McWilliams (2017) write of children with attention-deficit disorder: “Although there is consensus that children with ADHD have poor self-regulation and organization

relatively ambiguous, at least regarding essential characteristics (see American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 64, 138-39). Differences between ADHD and mania primarily regard, of course, how long such characteristics last and what types of other dysregulations couple such conditions.

I submit that the anxieties of that Father’s Day conversation indicate that all of us, myself included, are sustaining two clinically-significant operations that I argue are related. First, we are toiling rather seriously, with hypervigilance, to avoid Dad’s emotional and mental collapse, and we’re doing this on account of the purposes I hypothesized in the previous chapter (i.e., we are accustomed to the fact that most emotionally-intense conversations between us, historically, have ended poorly, usually with emotional and even physical violence). None of us want our last conversation with Dad to incur these dynamics. Second, the conversation between us is provoking hypomanic defenses against depressive affect, as a defensive style (though, not necessarily as if on a pole of the bipolar mood disorder see Lingiardi and McWilliams, 2017, p. 31). I self-analyze this tendency in detail below, but all of us, I submit, appear to be potentially susceptible to the defenses that remind us, not just of the imminent loss of our father, but the potential intensification of our issues with him, which stir, rather painfully, depressive states of mind that usually lead to more destructive, external defensive behaviors e.g., Ryan’s use of methamphetamine. On some level, I figure, he must have been aware of this potential danger, even if merely preconscious to him. It skills, there is also a growing awareness that ADHD is not a uniform diagnostic entity, but one that includes considerable individual and subgroup variation. Emotional conflict, neglect, cultural dynamics, mourning and/or depression, and growing up with a severely depressed or absent mother have been found to contribute to symptoms consistent with ADHD diagnosis” (p. 586). It appears, however, that more research is required to substantiate the differentials between ADHD in adults and hypomanic personalities.

goes without saying that this danger was a severe one. If it had been successful at driving Ryan to destructive use of his drug of choice, it would have destroyed, yet again, the life he had learned to establish for himself, and which was waiting for him, back in Arizona.

From this point of view, the mania against multifarious forms of predeath grief that he was feeling, in sync with the rest of us, begins to make more sense.

The conversation is, perhaps, the most notable instance of these maneuvers from the story. Furthermore, these dynamics have been constant whenever we have gathered.

In other words, the contents of my inner world that were amplified in private moments with Dad were far less outwardly- or externally-significant in the space between he and I than they were between all of us and our father during the conversation in question. Therefore, I consider the undercurrents of this dialogue to be fruitful for the purposes of this project, because those dynamics yielded, exaggerated, or evinced core features of the intensification process that I have described here, which is central to this self-analysis.

Violations of my assumptive world.

I want to turn, now, to a discussion of what I assumed to be true about the world and how my father’s terminal illness challenged those truths. To accomplish this, I will focus on core or basic violations of what is called my “assumptive world.” Meanwhile, I want to recognize that there likely exist dozens of other assumptions (in my world of them) that I have not identified yet, which I imagine would be equally valid to the points that follow.

So, what is an “assumptive world”? First, I should note that, in the introduction to her most recent anthology, Rando (2000) remarks, almost aside, “the target of mourning is the anticipatory mourner’s internal assumptive world, not the dying loved one” (p. 9,

emphasis mine). She makes this argument as she discusses the issue of decathexis, which I reviewed in Chapter II. Therefore, as I move to deepen the presentation of my findings regarding the intensification of mourning in the narrative, I want to recognize that, for Rando, it appears the dynamics of the assumptive world should weigh greater in the selfanalysis of predeath mourning than the relational dynamics that exist between the mourner and their dying loved one. That said, Rando (2000) conveys:

The assumptive world is the mental schema that contains all a person assumes to be true about the self, the world, and everything and everyone in it. Previous experiences in life form the basis for the person’s assumptive world elements. These elements represent all of that person’s assumptions, expectations, and beliefs, with most of these becoming virtually automatic habits of cognition and behavior. (p. 61) She continues: In large part, the assumptive world determines the individual’s needs, emotions, and behavior, and gives rise to hopes, wishes, fantasies, dreams, and other conations. The assumptive world is the internal model against which the individual constantly matches incoming sensory data in order to orient the self, recognize what is happening, and plan behavior. (p. 61)

Rando discusses, in multiple sections and publications, the essence of what constitutes the mourner’s assumptive world in such a way that I believe she is defining another type of “unconscious” without explicitly stating that she is doing so. If I am right about this, the assumptive world is, therefore, not necessarily a type of “repressed” or “dynamic” unconscious, per se; yet, features of its core operations parallel psychoanalytic

thinking. The assumptive world, that is, may be (roughly) akin to something like “implicit relational knowing” (Stern et al., 1998) or the “prereflective unconscious” that Stolorow and Atwood (1989) introduced. Rando is not specific about when the assumptive world constellates or even how this occurs, only that it occurs and is operative in anticipatory mourning. Furthermore, it is in the assumptive world that the work of anticipatory mourning takes place especially regarding operations of decathexis.

There are two categories of elements in the assumptive world that pertain to preor postdeath loss. These are stated as “global” and “specific” elements (Rando, 2000, p. 61). The first set concerns “the self, others, life, the world in general, or matters spiritual,” and the second “are associated with precisely what is being or has been lost to the mourner” (p. 61). Examples of specific elements include the dying loved one themselves or the life-style one has enjoyed with them. Specific elements may also involve concerns one has with their loved one’s loss of body function.

Rando (2000) also indicates that the following set of losses “represent elements of the assumptive world that require revision in light of the reality of the loved one’s lifethreatened status” (p. 8, emphasis mine). Those elements are (a) “the losses of the previous functioning, health, abilities, and body parts,” (b) “the loss of the future that had been planned with and for the loved one,” (c) losses of the “hopes, dreams, and expectations that had been invested in the relationship and in the loved one,” (d) the losses of security, predictability, and control, and (e) “the loss of notions of personal invulnerability” (p. 7-8; see also pp. 72-77).

Revision of assumptive world elements is based almost entirely on something like the core principles of the acceptance/commitment model (Hayes, 2004), although Rando does not link these concepts with it The required revisions occur as the changes outlined above are accepted by the mourner, and the mourner commits to behaviors that indicate they have adapted to those changes. Rando (2000) describes how the mourner does this vis-à-vis procedures of psychosocial reorganization i.e., “by incorporating appropriate changes into one’s assumptive world, identity, and ways of being in the external world that reflect the current reality and begin to prepare the mourner for the reality that will exist in the future” (p. 93).

In a more “conventional” process of predeath mourning, both the dying loved one and those close to them that will survive them (i.e., “intimates”) must revise their perceptions and behavioral assumptions that regard the dying one. “Dad is a healthy, capable person to whom I can go when I need to” now becomes something like: “Dad is now frail and needs me to be there for him.” This requires intimates to accept and observe the fact that their dying loved one (i.e., the “patient”) is no longer the person that they were before. Rando writes that the process of assumptive world revision entails “learning not to need the ill loved one in the same ways as before” (p. 75). Furthermore, it “typically leads the anticipatory mourner to redefine his or her relationship with the dying individual to be consistent with the new reality” (p. 75, emphasis mine).

As I reflect upon my experience, especially as I endeavored to represent it in the narrative under analysis, I have come to comprehend better the ways in which I had grappled rather turbulently to discontinue needing my father well before he got sick, to such an extent that, when he got sick, there was little to nothing to mourn in anticipation

of his death except the amplified contents of it that had inaugurated this process in the first place i.e., the work to no longer need (pine after) my father.

Throughout the course of my life, Dad helped me financially while I was in school, and to some extent, I believe he was glad to do this. Parenthetically, I can only say that I “believe” he was glad to do this, and perhaps this is a charitable judgment of mine, because his behavior showed him to be mostly resentful of these requests for help. Asking Dad for money when it was needed was always brutal. I never escaped from such entreaties, no matter how submissive and compliant I became, without emotional bruising before what was needed was given. Looking back, and employing the knowledge I have gleaned from my year of dialoguing with him, I believe that his brutality around this (and possibly all other contexts in which it materialized) indicates more than anything else his own, interior self-flagellation following his awareness that he did not have enough of the financial resources to help his family that he wanted to have. Nevertheless, if during that final year I had meant to revise the assumptive world that Dad would be there for me, in the way Rando describes, it was not something of which I was aware, if even at all. Furthermore, Dad was not an emotionally-available parent. I didn’t know him to be one to provide support, help, or meaningful guidance when it was also needed. For the greater part of my life, when it came to my father, I was left to my own devices to figure out how to live it.

If it isn’t clear by now, mourning my father was almost entirely about mourning the absence of him, even since my earliest memories, and even, perhaps, since I was born. This is difficult to admit. The greater depths of meaning in this truth have been steadily registering by degrees since I started this project There is relief in knowing it, as

well, which replaces the anger that consumed me for so much of that formative year. The intensifications of mourning were primarily about disappointment and anger not necessarily over the fact of Dad’s impending death, but in view of a history of hope after hope after hope returned empty to sender. The relief I have described throughout this work is likely an indication that I have released myself, at least to some extent, from the phantasmagoric self-castigation in my inability to make my father more available to my needs.

As part of the process of adaptive readjustment, Rando argues that the mourner “must find other people or ways to meet the needs [that] the loved one filled when well, change his or her desire for what was previously needed, or learn to tolerate doing without” (p. 76). Again, from as early as three, I sported a set of lucid fantasies that reflected an avid hunger for my father for any father to supply something that I could not tolerate doing without. During his final years, as I directed attention, energy, and behavior toward him, I did so, in part, with the hope that my relationship with him might improve enough that I wouldn’t need to “tolerate doing without” for the rest of my life, at least with regard to the quality of the internal investment Dad and I had established throughout the course of our lives together. Rando concedes that the necessary changes of the assumptive world may revolve around the task of working to improve one’s relationship with the one dying. In my case, what seemed to intensify more than anything was the need to constitute one in the first place. That said, a number of global elements to my assumptive world were challenged in the course of my year of predeath, intensified mourning. These are assumptions that regard (i) the nature of suffering and (ii) the existential meanings involved in it.

For a period of time now, I have come to believe and see more evidence for the idea that I was raised in a culture at home, through my religious upbringing, and merely by virtue of the fact that I am an American that seems to galvanize denial of grief vis-à-vis the ideals of manic consumerism This is difficult to admit, but part of this seems to be rooted in the firm impression that if my life is (even or merely) inconvenienced, then I am actually doing something very wrong (or that something very wrong is being done to me). The burden of (once again, even) an inconvenience seems to implicate or threaten my sense of absolute worth rather than standing alone (and blamelessly) as a mere fact of life of my life, connected to others undergoing the same conflicts from similar or other dilemmas Theoretically, post-capitalistic ventures that manipulate the masses via propagandas tailored to infuse consumers with this notion exist, perhaps, because collectively we must be convinced prima facie that the lack of our absolute comfort is an indication of a lack in our absolute worth. I listen and take in the snake oil of this message; thus, I am wont to do whatever it takes to enjoy a sense of temporary wholeness.

I have been guilty of drinking this Kool-Aid. Throughout the narrative, as I witnessed moments of Dad’s decline, I was reminded of the existential realities of disease and dying The more I was able to sniff out these truths, the more it generated within me a noxious sense of guilt, as if I were somehow to blame for them. Furthermore, I could never quite throw it off or eject it out of me enough so as to prevent it from disturbing the equilibrium of my internal world.

The belief I’ve attempted to describe above, which was relatively unconscious to me in the story (borne from, as I will show, the “mad” wish for omnipotent control),

seemed to hover unapologetically around the path of trials that followed my father, me, and my siblings, lending me to devalue him, them, and myself often enough to compound the gross weight of the intensifications of mourning that we were all facing. I do not imagine that this belief constituted my only unconscious motivation toward manic disavowal of negative or untoward ideas or affect, but it certainly did not help. I took it personally when Dad or members of my family “failed” to live up to an idealized hope of who we or they were “supposed to be,” as I imagined it, and as we navigated any number of the expected challenges that surface in the processes of disease, death, and dying. Again, violations of this assumptive worldview added great and unnecessary burdens of depressive disappointment to this manner of mourning.

For the greater part, Rando (2000) appears to accept that the most common element of the assumptive world that is violated in the processes of both pre- and postdeath mourning is that “the world is benevolent, the world (and life) is meaningful, and the self is worthy” (pp. 61-62; see also Janoff-Bulman, 1992).

There are a number of moments throughout the story that I am undergoing a type of existential crisis. Witnessing my father’s mortifying decline, from disease unto death, shocked and stirred me in a way for which I wasn’t prepared. Aspects of this continue to linger, as well. I am now forty-two just one, short year in age before my father when he was first diagnosed with stage-two, renal-cell carcinoma. In the story, I learn that Dad should have died shortly after the turn of the millennium that he was one of a tiny few, documented examples of patients with this illness who lived longer than ten years past diagnosis. This information startles me, and I am, naturally, forced to confront a sobering

truth regarding my own mortality. It isn’t new, of course, or unique to me; but, during and since Dad’s death, a deeper awareness of it continues to disturb me.

When my father was my age, he had just divorced my mother for the second time. He moved to Mesa, Arizona shortly thereafter, where he was living in a joyless apartment in the center of an identikit complex on Mesa Drive. I am not sure why this is relevant, but it seems right to add that I didn’t enjoy visiting him there. I suppose Dad’s depression was difficult for me to handle, given the complicated nature of my own (and my need for him, especially at that time).

One night, my father woke up to use the bathroom. After doing so, he noticed an ominous, swirling discoloration in the basin beneath him. He quickly switched on the light, and this revealed that his urine was consumed with blood. Dad made an appointment with his doctor shortly thereafter.

“I was always frightened that I would get cancer,” Dad revealed to me in one of our conversations, “even when I was a child.” As he spoke this, he looked a bit like he was evoking the fear he felt during that period in his life, even as if he can remember the precise place and time of it. “It’s like I had a premonition or something.”

Dad’s story troubles me a bit. I am thoughtful about ways that I can take care of myself, perhaps with greater skill than my father. Yet, even if this is true, it doesn’t exactly matter, because we know, of course, as a fact of life, that the lives of people who seem perfectly healthy are shattered all the time by a terminal diagnosis. Nevertheless, I don’t suppose it’s any surprise that, especially in the middle of the night, after I use the restroom, I hesitate, but never fail, to verify that there is no blood in the basin.

In the narrative of Chapter IV, I am busy contemplating horrors of disease, my own mortality, and the nature of my existence. At one point, I am meditating on natural cycles that include death “The verdant foliage,” I write while driving past the Susquehanna river, “never fails to impress me, as I recall that it will soon change color and drop to the ground leaving only brown and black sticks covered by blankets of ice and snow.”

I feel there is irony in autumn. In the later years I spent living throughout New England, I came to value the way in which the season provides such a spectacular display of vibrant color. It astonishes me (and always has), because this stunning panoply is really a celebration of dying an orgy of forthcoming and inevitable demise. In wanton, desperate attempt to preserve itself and its species, the deciduous trees spread their seeds, while their leaves gradually change color. This inaugurates another timeless cycle, but not for their leaves. The juxtaposition of beauty and death seems absurd, especially as I contemplate how something so remarkably and dynamically beautiful will soon become compost for billions of bacteria and fungi to devour.

Death is the only element of existence that seems to systematically unite every living thing on this planet, solar system, and throughout the known universe. There is comfort in this, for me, because it assures me that I am not alone nor wrong in the experience of my own forthcoming version of it, however it will occur. But, witnessing the dying process of my father has required me not only to have a good, hard look at it, as an existential certainty, but also to reevaluate what I thought I knew about it, however naïve that was. In a word, I have discovered myself captivated by its sheer and unrivalled supremacy, as a force on par with the universal might of gravity or even love

I also question whether I will see my father again, and I contemplate what that reunion might entail. I don’t know if or how I would recognize him, because I believe, under the conditions of such a thing actually occurring, that my father would have grown beyond what I have known him to be, and this is something that I hope for very much, indeed. I can’t imagine an afterlife scenario where growth is not a key component of it, especially if there’s purpose in it (i.e., an afterlife). Nevertheless, there are depths of comprehension that I believe are ineffable regarding the cold and bleak finality of that last breath of mortal existence depths that I had always wondered about and into which I may have briefly tapped or stepped in the years prior to Dad’s declines. This is why no one’s words could have possibly prepared me for the new dimensions of familiarity I would garner as the sordid and natural issue of it of death got personal for me.

Moving toward and away from the dying one.

As I move to consider the effects that reflexive conversations between my father and I seemed to have had on my experience of working through the ambivalences in our relationship, I want to first write about my experience, in the story, of working to satisfy discordant, opposing demands that entail “moving away from” and drawing “closer to” the dying one, my father.

Rando (2000) presents a tidy summary of the literature on balancing conflicting demands in her chapter on the six dimensions of anticipatory mourning to which I have previously referred (see, e.g., Rando, 2000, pp. 84-88). She considers that information as it pertains to conflicting demands on the “intrapsychic,” “interpersonal,” and “systemic” levels. Intrapsychic dynamics deal almost entirely with the core issue regarding this

phenomenon from the onset i.e., decathexis or detachment from the image of the dying loved one as an interior operation. Interpersonal dynamics regarding the balancing of conflicting demands mainly involve conflicts that often exist between members of the immediate family i.e., the body of predeath mourners, which include the dying one. Finally, balancing conflicting demands on the systemic level involves those that usually occur between extended family, caretaking staff, and the larger health care system. On each level, to be clear, the mourner must cope with the natural implications of moving closer to and/or drawing away from the one who is about to die.

So, how did I experience this paradox? In a nutshell, I submit that it is this: If my primary ambition in the story is to work to change the quality of the internal investment that I had with my father in our final year together, then the operations involved in moving both toward and away from him as an attempt to resolve incompatible demands constitute, in theory, the variables involved in working to achieve it. I confess that I am conflating these operations with core features of the ambivalence in my relationship with Dad. These concepts i.e., of working to resolve (i) incompatible demands, especially on the intrapsychic level, and (ii) my ambivalent relationship with him are nearly synonymous.

In this subsection, I want to analyze my experience as it compares with the literature on anticipatory mourning regarding the former (i.e., these incompatible demands). I will devote the whole of the section that follows this one to an analysis of the ambivalence of which I speak, except I will pull mainly from psychoanalytic literature to do this. I have narrowed elements in the story that reveal these demands in the following ways, each of which I’ll deal with separately: (a) taking serious account of how I am

different from or similar to my father (in a word, my attempt at greater individuation with him), and (b) educating myself about Dad’s terminal illness and life history.

Even at the onset of the story, I am highly motivated to take actions that would help me better understand who my father is. Part of this also entailed working to confront him about matters in our relational past that have left a scar, so to speak, on my life. As I contemplated my father’s anger, I ultimately linked it, for the most part, to the unmourned contents of his relationship with his father.

In the process, I discovered a letter that my grandmother wrote to my father. As I read and contemplated this letter, it helped me to understand not just how my dad set me up to become a receptacle for his unmourned rage, but also that this sordid practice began far earlier than I had assumed or would ever have guessed Perhaps most significant to this is that I learned that my father did not have the capacity to deal with his anger in a good-enough way so as to rear a child in the earliest phases of his developmental trajectory without the use of violence.

As a parallel process, I also began to notice a general increase in my own anger during this time, especially in the mornings. I included a small handful of examples of this throughout the story; but really, I felt this way far more often than I demonstrated therein. That is, I began to find myself in a state of rage almost every morning of that year, especially in the colder, darker months of winter and early spring. This may be explained, at least in part, by the fact that I was not exposed to enough sunlight, which may have generated some depression that I expressed in this way. I may also have felt anger during this time because I am simply not a morning person. Most of my work days began as early as five so I could make my first appointment at seven o’clock at my

downtown office. I remember extending my schedule in this way so as to open extra time and money that would make regular visits to Pennsylvania more feasible.

Nevertheless, my earlier motivation to understand my father better inspired a valuable ambition i.e., to pinpoint how I was identifying with him on both sides of the “good Dad/bad Dad” ambivalence, and to eject the contents of the “bad” from my soul. I had it in mind that I wanted to take conscious and active measures to ensure that I especially refrained from identifying with them in the future, in the sense that I didn’t want to identify with him as an aggressor, especially in an ego-syntonic manner.40 On page 144, I write:

Facing the sobering truth of Dad’s mortality continues to spark in me a desire to identify how I want to be like my father and what aspects of my personality I have fortuitously inherited from him that I should consciously work to accept or relinquish.41

Later, I pinpoint how I do not want to carry, nor displace, the same anger and rage that consumed my father’s life, especially the sort he experienced after the death of his father. One early morning, as I was writing in my journal, I captured a snapshot of a rather remarkable idealization I have donned since my earliest life, recorded in Chapter IV: 40 I am referring to the concept of this ego defense (i.e., of “identification with the aggressor”) as it is coined in Sandor Ferenczi (1949) and explained by Anna Freud (1946).

41 By using the phrase “ego syntonic” to introduce this passage, I do so well aware that I am adopting the diagnostic framework from ego psychology, established by Wilhelm Reich (1933) in terms of assessing various levels of internal organization, be it a system neurosis, neurotic character, or psychosis. In other words, the ambition to identify ways in which I am identifying with my father, especially in areas where doing so appears “ego syntonic” for me (as in, displays of moments in which I am identifying with the aggressor appear, to me, to be “regarded as the only and obvious way” that I “can imagine reacting to current life circumstances” (McWilliams, 2011, p. 48)) became a serious focus and concern for me, ultimately, throughout this process.

I want to be like the people that I admire … who aren’t angry, but filled with love and compassion. The ones that have caught some kind of affection-bug and they can let go, who are part of a different echelon when it comes to the management of their moods and feelings. Not fragile, but strong. Maybe they are more forgiving and compassionate? Maybe they are more emotionally-secure?

I then speak of the desire to take ownership of my feelings better, while simultaneously contending with the theologies I had come to accept i.e., that my destructive impulses are evil or bad. I had come to accept this in part because, historically, doing so lent credibility to my need for an abeyance against Dad’s fury and rage or, at least, feeling a victim of them.

It is, therefore, no surprise to me that my energies toward this effort began with an avid denial of my father’s conservative politics. This seems to have been the most obvious display of my aspiration to further or increase the process of individuation with him. I employed social media to do this, reasoning that my voice might help contribute to the tides of social change against the forces of rabid fascism growing in the United States. For the most part, this is what I felt I was doing, but the more I penetrated the enterprise, the more I realized that I wanted the world, both inner and outer (but mostly inner), to know that I am not my father. On p. 149, I write:

Using social media for this platform, I feel energy from investing in myself, even for myself. Sometimes, doing so seems to feed the same sort of fury-unto-exhaustion I witnessed in my father; other times, it seems these postings of mine serve as public statements to the cosmos,

whomever will see, but I think primarily to myself that I am, in fact, not my father, and that I like this fact, and that I hope my behaviors will continue to propel me on this trajectory outward and away from him.

Later in the story, a few weeks after we have learned in February that Dad is almost entirely out of options for treatment, I wrote him a somewhat vitriolic letter expressing deep feelings of disappointment, rage (at him), and hatred (toward him). I analyze the contents of this letter in greater detail under the general section that follows this one; but, relevant here is the detail that, in it, I have inadvertently linked my rage at him with that which I have been feeling in the mornings (see p. 192):

I feel anger. I feel sadness and disappointment. All of it comes together in a blend of emotions that abides as a dull, steadfast frenzy as I access it, haunting my mornings and nights and everything in between as I work to avoid encountering it more directly.

I often felt the need to create or secure emotional and proximal distance between my father and me, even as the stakes went up for him. During his first night in hospice, for instance, Dad asked me to stay the night with him, but I didn’t want to do this. Yet, I felt it wasn’t an option to assert this desire without sustaining a great deal of guilt with which I didn’t want to deal. In the narrative of Mount Joy hospice, I have written on p. 207: At the base of the west wall, there is an alcove that features a table, two chairs, and a window facing the same direction with a narrow, seven-footlong padded bench at its base. After surveying the space, I reason that it

looks to be the most comfortable spot to nest for the night, mainly because

it will create a little space between Dad and me. I begin to settle in. Prior to this passage, I indicated that there is a couch across from the chair in which my dad is situated. I do not consider this at the time, but it was a far more suitable place to sleep than the bench I preferred.

As the title of this section suggests, in my efforts to understand my father better, even as I was gaining a better understanding of the dynamics of his formidable temper and its effects on both of us, there are clear indications that I was also about working to move toward my father. The most obvious set of examples that reflect this are those moments in the story that I am busy learning about my father’s past and his illness. Indeed, it was on the platform of these conversations that I believe my relationship with my father, overall, improved. His trust and love developed or remediated between us as we formed a partnership or team around the work of both (a) monitoring, understanding, and managing his medical care, and/or (b) investigating his life together. But, before I dive into a presentation of this point, I want to spotlight a small handful of instances where I toiled, albeit fruitlessly, to draw closer to him via dialogue.

I don’t believe that my father meant to set up our relationship this way, and I imagine that he would be ashamed (but, perhaps, not too surprised) to know I believe this dynamic existed between us; but, both of my parents, not just my father, set up a relationship with me that included a moderately-pronounced helping of role reversal. This is indicated in the story through behaviors I take that prioritize my father’s emotional needs over my own in both appropriate and inappropriate ways.

The attachment group, of course, refer to this phenomenon as role “confusion” or “reversal.” Fearon & Belsky (2016), for instance, connect role confusion with attachment trauma (pp. 297-98); Lyons-Ruth and Jacobvitz (2016) do likewise (p. 678). Magai, Frías, and Shaver (2016) and Shaver et al. (2016) both refer to role reversal in the affairs of caretaking elderly parents (pp. 543-44). Lingiardi and McWilliams (2017), from the psychoanalytic literature, refer to “parentification” (p. 652) as well as “role reversal” (p. 189) to describe similar/almost identical phenomena (see also Winton, 2003).

Papers from attachment literature that discuss and present findings around caretaking and the elderly demonstrate how role reversal is a natural byproduct of this effort. They also demonstrate how insecure attachment styles, borne from or constellated as such in the background of one’s earliest relationships with one’s primary caretakers (usually maternal), will, as one would expect, amplify dysfunctions around such matters. This should probably come as no surprise.

The narrative of Chapter IV is replete with examples of role reversal. My father even conveyed to me the pain he had been holding from adolescence, even to the present (in the narrative), involving his experience of this role reversal with both of his parents. It’s a transgenerational theme. Indeed, I could have easily focused this dissertation project on this topic, rather than anticipatory grief, and it would have yielded a wealth of data and insight.42

42 I chose not to go this route because my role reversal/parentification issues are mostly the byproduct of my experience being raised by a moderately to severely depressed mother. Both parents were active agents in parentifying our relationship, but there’s no question to me that my mother actively (and inadvertently) established the platform for this in the environment of my earliest life with her. Furthermore, parentification is a phenomenon that exists transgenerationally on her side, as well, perhaps to a greater extent than what I have discussed in my father’s line.

For example, in the subsection I titled “A lion roars,” Dad conveys to me that his tumors have gotten bigger. My thoughts confess that I am working to stay positive and “play along,” even when I don’t understand what Dad is talking about. I show that I am moderately distracted as well, even though Dad is, purportedly, delivering information that should be “good news” for us. I then note the following on p. 157):

It occurs to me that Dad has spoken and continues to speak openly about his faith in Dr. DeGreen, which adds to my confidence that Dad is getting the best treatment possible. Both of us, perhaps, need this confidence, even if our needs in this regard stem from separate and distinct motivations, which is likely. For instance, mine seem to stem from the desire to keep emotional distance and avoid feeling overwhelmed. It is as if to say: If Dad is getting the best treatment possible for his cancers, then it will keep moments where I don’t want to have to comfort him, but feel pressured to do so, to a nice minimum.

In a word, I am expressing gratitude for Dr. DeGreen’s capacity to help “hold”

Dad’s emotional experience of traversing the turbulent processes involved in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. My history with my father had made this a challenge for me, as I had, by this time with him, grown adverse or repulsed by any behavior or motivation that even moderately approached the perimeters of this dynamic with him something that Dad’s oncologist did not share with him.

Even prior to learning of Dad’s terminal diagnosis in 2016, I had grown wary of my compulsion to accept even implicit invitations, from either parent, that involved some form or another of role confusion, reversal, or parentification. Throughout the course of

Dad’s illness, these dynamics intensified, adding nuances to the conflict. Dad was now sick. To refuse or resist the task of seeing to his emotional needs felt, to me, to be fervently wrong in principle.

Aspects of my inner world that were conditioned to fear punishment, physical threat, and retaliation constituted in the lap of my inherent experience of Dad’s volatile character were sorely activated as I contemplated how to move or maneuver through and around this principle. Preconsciously, I was aware of the conflict that I am repelled by invitations to role reversal with my father, and that such reversals were, at the time, necessary and proper, given Dad’s prognosis. I felt stuck between guilt and threats of self-fragmentation, and I almost always sacrificed toward the latter rather than the former. To be clear, what I mean to say, here, is this: I felt torn by the dynamics of Dad’s decline, because seeing to his needs was necessary and proper. Yet, because I had developed a rather serious disgust and sensitivity for anything that even looked like role reversal with either parent years before Dad even began to get sick, I felt pressured and suffocated in the perception of my options i.e., either to fight the invitation (and, subsequently, deal with the guilt of this), or submit to a relational reenactment of something I had already determined, in principle, was wrong (even abusive). Because I had, at the time, not completed enough grief/trauma work of my own around these matters, I was prone to deny myself of what made me feel whole/separate from Dad in optimal, healthy ways. Thus, I felt the threat of self-fragmentation i.e., vis-à-vis “going against” what appeared to me, instinctively, to be right for me in terms of achieving and maintaining something like “unit status” (Winnicott, 1960) before Dad.

Finally, as I proceed from the passage quoted just above, I convey that my focus is on keeping Dad happy. On p. 157, I note that doing so appears to make it “rather impossible for me to really ‘lean in’ to the experience he’s having.” Thus, this and countless other examples of this dynamic appear to qualify my endeavor to “move toward” my father as rather fruitless, to say the least.

Yet, conversations with Dad also helped improve our relationship. I stated above that it appears that this is due primarily to two activities i.e., first, in moments both during and between conversations with Dad about his medical care, and second, as I interviewed him about the history of his life.

Moments regarding the first activity were usually very fruitful because the topic was entirely about working to understand his current experience. It was almost as if I had begun responding to my father as if he were a patient of mine. As I begin the general section titled “Moving Toward the Ill One” in the story, I reveal that I had asked my father to grant me access to his medical records. This inaugurates a process, for me, of working to understand what my father is going through physiologically. Most of these investigations occurred in private. I kept abreast of developments as they occurred, as well, inasmuch as I could understand what his doctors were indicating therein. When I didn’t understand something, I took it to my father and asked him to explain. This generated conversations that I believe appealed to my father. I asked earnest, detailed questions. As a consequence of this, I believe he felt that I cared about him and about what he was going through. This endeavor garnered energy, which I channeled into further research. I visited the bookstore at least once to find and read various works dealing with terminal illness, death, and cancer. I did this to glean deeper awareness of

what people typically must endure in the courses of these illnesses, as well as the illnesses themselves, especially Dad’s.

There are also multiple conversations that I had with my father that did not make it into the story. These centered around his experiences growing up, visiting Roaring Spring, and becoming my father. I show the conversation that Dad and I had in September of 2018, where we discuss the history of his, my grandfather’s, and my greatgrandfather’s athletic career that nearly landed each in the major leagues. In the story, the conversation sets up another that is more relevant for the purposes of this project, as it stands, regarding grief, loss, and the mourning process i.e., his mourning process. Nevertheless, if the purpose of this project were to produce a biography of my father’s life, the record I have of the several conversations that ensued would amply fulfill the need to compose such a work.

After Dad died, I discovered a portfolio that showcased dozens of newspapers clippings that his parents must have kept for him over the years of his adolescence and early adulthood. These are articles from local periodicals that either involve my dad or spotlight his athletic prowess. Two-sided page after page reveal the extent to which he was easily headed toward a prosperous career in the sport. I had known that my father enjoyed baseball, and I had known that it was a staple in Hite family dynamics, but I had no idea that Dad was as successful as these clippings reveal even considering the multitude of conversations that we had around the subject. Again, these did not make it into the story, but my father and I engaged in a plethora of longer, follow-up conversations where I investigated further many of the details that were imparted from earlier conversations. These were reflexive dialogues, whereby I performed, a bit (and I

think to him), a role as if I were his biographer. Again, I believe that Dad began to see how I wanted to know or get him on a much deeper level than before, and it seems to have touched him and opened him up to greater levels of affection, bonding, and love. In other words, dialoguing with Dad around his baseball career and in-vivo medical care, especially if they remained, on my part, almost entirely focused on working to understand him and his experience better, generated a sense of natural goodness between us. These conversations also appear to have motivated my father to record insights regarding his life, especially in the early hours of the morning after he entered hospice care. He did this in a way that stunned me, as I had never seen him so introspective, attentive, and full of insight before. Ever. In the story, I attribute this activity, in part, to therapy for his pain, which included a regiment of some very powerful, opiate analgesics This factor, along with Dad’s own need to sort out the horrors of the existential crises he was facing, may explain these moments, altogether generated in a perfect storm; nevertheless, I hope that I played some part in stimulating the initiative for him. Throughout the journals that he produced during this period, Dad followed the themes we had been exploring together in our dialogues. It was as if they had inspired him to explore his life for me on paper, and to leave me with something more of him than he had of his own father. This was, indeed, one of the greatest gifts that Dad could have left me, even though I have so many (a great many) questions for him, even now.

Pining For Dad

In Chapter II, while reviewing the seminal ideas of Melanie Klein under the general section titled “A Madness in Mourning,” recall that I wrote the following (see p. 54):

When Dad began to decline into serious mental, emotional, and physical health, … it amplified the internal properties of “bad-Dad” introjects, by which I had felt “persecuted” since I can remember. Dad’s decline also stimulated a regression into the operations and defenses of the depressive position, including the catalyzation of manic defenses against my own depressive anxiety. Whether a matter of regression or amplification, I unwittingly took actions to either block fuller awareness of the experience

I was having …, or I (unconsciously) attempted to destroy the “bad object” from within.

I then go on to write: Either way, the experience initiated terrible cycles of depressive and manic moods. It made loving Dad nearly impossible…. It foreclosed on my ability to grow more deeply into the realities involved in Dad’s passage from life to death. The general section that follows is dedicated to, more or less, justifying this claim regarding how I maneuvered through my year of anticipatory mourning vis-à-vis these dynamics. In essence, regarding what follows below, I am going to offer a psychodynamic formulation pulling mainly from the works of Melanie Klein, along with a nod or two to others in the British School of Object Relations.

In her book i.e., I should say, the book that has helped me so much to get oriented for the analysis of this project Nancy McWilliams (2011) argues that the emphasis of an object relational formulation should focus on the primary objects of one’s world in terms of (a) what that world looks like, (b) how those objects have been

internalized, especially the “felt aspects” of them, and (c) “how internal images and representations of them live on in the unconscious” (p. 31).

Ultimately, I want to make a theoretical argument that is in favor of Klein’s timid proposition that “pining for” or “after” one’s objects is central to (she writes, “constitutes”) the enterprises of passing through the depressive position (Klein, 1940, p. 348). I revisited this psychodynamic operation time and again throughout my life and history with my father. Again, this was a singular ambition or focus of mine for the greater part of the first three decades of my life. It was also something that was altogether intensified in the predeath mourning process. Dad was, after all, for me, the tragic “you” that could never be “You” in the tumultuous undercurrents of our relationship.

On the nature of “bad Dad” introjects. Melanie Klein’s groundbreaking work showed how a child’s actual experiences of the objects in their environment matter. Indeed, the Kleinian baby’s psyche is all about a continual negotiation with those objects to such an extent that Klein’s language veers on the edge of presenting a post-traumatic model for human psychopathology. To go this far would have, of course, provoked even greater resistance to her work within psychoanalytic circles, especially following the death of Freud. Ultimately, for Klein, the psychodynamic operations of the child’s mind entail the gross effects of how much “good object” experience is, as it were, “downloaded” into their psyche to counterbalance both natural and phantasied “bad object” experiences from that same environment.

I mention this because there exists, of course, a tension in the psychodynamics of this self-analysis that I have been working to navigate since I began this project, which I believe is captured well in this question: Are the conflicts that I had with my father post-

traumatic in nature or merely intrapsychic? Admittedly, this question is not terribly interesting, given that those that resemble it have haunted psychoanalytic theory since the era of the first world war or rather, even earlier when Freud began toiling to identify the etiology of hysterical phenomena (Herman, 2015, pp. 10-14, 18). Perhaps a more effective rendering of the question above goes as follows: In my case, were “bad Dad” introjects constituted as actual post-traumatic sequelae or are they merely fantasies of his destructive potential, then (in my earliest years) until now?

My answer to the question, for the purposes of this project, is that they are both. That is, upon reading the narrative of the previous chapter, one might easily discern and analyze, equally, (a) a type of post-traumatic hypervigilance in my dealings with Dad, conveyed ubiquitously throughout the narrative, that conveys my lurid fear that he will collapse into emotional even physical violence at any moment, along with (b) the phantasmagoric reveries of amplified conflict constituted in a not-good-enough environment with my dad. In other words, to put it plainly, Dad failed to both help me adjust to or metabolize my infantile fantasies of his destructive potential in a goodenough way, prompting a lifetime of multiple, regressive returns to depressive anxieties, as well as (or better, because) he was actually a violent person who actually threatened me a great deal, as a young child, young man, and as an adult.

In his defense (i.e., to be fair), my father’s developmental history served something equal to and even worse than mine in the object relational milieu of his maternal and paternal environment. My father’s mother, orphaned in depression-era poverty at four, had no idea how to navigate these complex dynamics at the time my father was born and when he needed it the most. Furthermore, my father’s father likely

brandished a narcissistic character. My father also, via his own report, suffered sexual abuse in childhood and early adolescence without anything close to the type of support he, or anyone else for that matter, would need at his disposal to help him work through it.

All of this was revealed in conversations with Dad both that made it and did not make it into the narrative that I presented in Chapter IV.

Given these findings, I want to state that I have chosen to focus this self-analysis on the ways in which introjective dynamics were intensified during that final year of predeath mourning, and that my experience of emotional and physical abuse under my father, especially in the earliest phases of my own development, not only failed to help me adjust to the disquieting phantasies that normally stir depressive anxieties, but also intensified them in ways that were active for the greater part of the first three decades of my life and especially throughout the year under investigation before Dad died.

One might argue that my choice of focus is arbitrary, and I believe they’d be correct. The literature dealing with anticipatory mourning fails miserably to consider what that mourning looks like for subjects who have experienced veritable trauma (as in, they qualify for a PTSD diagnosis) as core to or even merely a part of their experience of the one dying, nor does it investigate or explore, to my knowledge, how any variation in these dynamics might appear. No relationship is perfect, of course, but the literature misses the mark with exploring the predeath experiences of ambivalent relationships. It is, therefore, to this point that I want to turn.

Revitalization of the “manic position” in predeath mourning

.

“Its torturing and perilous dependence on its loved objects drives the ego to find freedom. But its identification with these objects is too profound to

be renounced. On the other hand, the ego is pursued by its dread of bad objects and of the id and, in its effort to escape from all these miseries, it has recourse to many different mechanisms, some of which, since they belong to different phases of development, are mutually incompatible. (Klein, 1935, p. 161)

Recall how, in Chapter II, I showed that manic defenses, according to Klein, operate to soothe the depressive anxieties that result from the mourner’s perception that their losses are rooted in their hateful and destructive potentials and behaviors. Without enough good-object content taken into the psyche (again, so as to counterbalance the force of these destruction-based phantasies), mania becomes necessary. So, how is mania indicated in the narrative of Chapter IV? The short answer is that the manic defenses I reviewed in Chapter II are represented in the narrative vis-à-vis the performance of the roles that I played in that final year, both as I (a) devalue my father and (b) seek to repair our relationship. In what follows, I want to develop both of these areas by discussing them in context and providing examples.

Devaluing Dad. There are a number of moments in the story where I am in conflict around issues of intimacy with my father. Toward the beginning of the story, while journeying back to Chicago after my September visit with him, I write: “Most memories I have of Dad’s quests for intimacy make me uncomfortable to recall, as intimacy with him has always felt awkward” (see p. 143). I then go on to think, “Somewhere in there … I must feel more than this. Why only the irritation and discomfort?”

Earlier in the story, Dad reports to me that he and his father were “best sports buddies,” at which I marvel when meditating on their relationship (see p. 127):

I am almost undeterred by the novelty of this realization, but another pressing emotion begins to materialize, which I detect is comprised mainly of a mixture of feelings that swell from both disgust and guilt, in that order. Is it the newness of hearing Dad speak with love and affection for another man? Am I struggling to accept that Dad was affected so deeply by losing grandpa?

I recall this moment well, because of the striking nature of the emotions it generated. On one end of this, there is evidence of ways I am identifying with Dad’s homophobia, mixed with a type of undeterred dedication to the taboo against incest. In other words, to me, Dad isn’t supposed to love other men. He taught me that. In fact, phobic mandates against love between men included even platonic forms of it. Furthermore, so the fantasy goes, if he’s going to love another man, it can’t be his father. There is an unthought known component to this i.e., that Dad isn’t following his own rules and this feels dangerous to me.

In another example of this, in the story, I describe watching the film About Time (Bevan, Fellner, & Barnes, 2013), and I remark that I feel uncomfortable with the intimacy that’s portrayed between father and son. This sensation i.e., discomfort that borders on disgust manifested, for me, as the main character, Tim (played by Domhnall Gleeson) describes and expresses deep love and affection for his father, James (played by Bill Nighy). The film delivers an otherwise rather remarkable, moving, and

even stunning portrait of an idyllic, loving relationship between a father and son, and, for me, it has taken some concerted warming up to appreciate this.

On the other end of this, there is a type of envy indicated, and we know, of course, that Klein covers this mental dynamic extensively She conveys that it is “a most potent factor in undermining feelings of love and gratitude at their root,” given that envy “affects the earliest relation of all” (Klein, 1957, p. 176). Spillius et al. define envy (as used by Klein) to be “the angry feeling that another person possess and enjoys something desirable, often accompanied by an impulse to take it away or spoil it” (p. 166).

Throughout the period of time that I spent contemplating dialogues with Dad that centered around the death of his father and its impact on him and our relationship, I felt angry almost all the time, particularly in the morning I introduced this tendency earlier in this chapter as I was discussing what it meant to simultaneously move toward and away from my dying father. I even noted that my anger was active more than I let on in the story. This is because, while writing the story, I felt embarrassed by it. It reminded me too much of my father, and the goal was so much about working to not be him. My desire to eject the “bad Dad” contents from my mind and soul is an expression of both a desire to grow beyond what I have inherited from him as well as, at least from a more objective standpoint, an expression of my disdain for and devaluation of him.

Ultimately, I realize that my father wasn’t wrong to have his anger. This is a grace that I often afford myself; I picked it up as a central insight from my first psychoanalytic treatment. It is characterized by the idea that emotion is always right, even when it has the potential to be very destructive. Thus, the existence of Dad’s anger and rage, I believe, seems to have revealed in him a formidable expression of his private and lonely

desperation his sadness, sense of futility and lack of control, hopelessness, and refusal to mourn his own losses. This desperation made my father’s life seem not worth living to me Furthermore, especially as a child, the performance of Dad’s anger reminded me of what made what I wanted to have with him or, for that matter, with any idealized object fruitless and impossible.

I have stated that my anger may very well have been an expression of my envy, but how? Dad characterized his relationship with his father to me in an idyllic manner, and it was the sort for which I had pined, both historically and throughout the year under investigation. I had wanted what he said he had had, with his father, with him. Therefore, this quality between them remained wholly on the back of my mind throughout that year, especially between September to May during the time that I was contemplating, writing, editing, and preparing the paper on Dead Fathers for the ICQI conference (but, more so, for Dad).

Writing that I pined for the love of my father, I should note, requires a bit of faith on my part. Consciously, I wanted little to do with him for much of my life. I needed him to go away. I felt he was a burden to the already chaotic family dynamic. I felt relief when he divorced my mother both times it transpired, and the window of time following each divorce seemed to sport hypomanic behaviors and moods on my part that I would later attribute to “feeling liberated.” This occurred to such an extent that I believe it reified the developmental trajectory of my hypomanic personality (McWilliams, 2011, pp. 260-266; Lingiardi & McWilliams, 2017, pp. 29-33). The fact that it takes “faith” to admit that I cared about my father seems to indicate how deep the cavern of denial may be between what it is that I am aware of feeling and what is likely true about my

relationship with him, even still. Regardless, by late infancy/early childhood, I had relinquished hope that Dad would remain a viable love-object, as I had lost conscious interest in him, I believe, before I even began to encode episodic memory So, on what basis do I make the claim that I pined for him?

Meira Likierman (2001), in her lovely and comprehensive review of Klein’s work in context, states that depressive states in adults are to be “regarded as an insoluble hostility towards a disappointing, but none the less intensely needed and loved object” (p. 120). There is no mention, here, or even suggestion that the needed and loved object is merely the subject’s mother.

In 1937, Klein wrote about the infant’s experience of tolerating and integrating the parental relationship, whereupon, in an ideal situation, the child comes to internalize the harmony of the triad. In the same paper (i.e., Love, guilt and reparation), she states openly: “Much of what I have said about the mother’s relation to her children in different stages of their development applies also to the father’s (p. 320, emphasis mine). She then clarifies that the father plays “a different part from that of the mother, but their attitudes complement each other.”

I submit that my father, in many ways, had an equal effect on my movement through early development, even preoedipal development, when compared to my mother’s, given that he would have been, I believe, my original, desired-for love object. Extended justification for this claim is beyond the scope of this chapter/work. Nevertheless, I have been haunted by my need for my father since as early as I can remember, hating him avidly, while simultaneously mourning him unceasingly.

If I were hellbent on pining after my father, why then did I feel the need to retreat from him? The contemporary Kleinian, John Steiner, wrote a paper titled Revenge and resentment in the ‘Oedipus situation, ’ which may begin to answer this question. Steiner (1996) argues that as a child becomes more aware of his father’s tendency to cockblock his exclusive relationship with his mother, the child suffers a formidable injury to the self. “Knowledge of the psychic reality of the relationship between the parents is felt as a blow to omnipotence tantamount to a castration threat from a malignant powerful father motivated by envy and hatred” (p. 435). Vis-à-vis the process of coming to accept the limitations implied, here, the child may resolve his complex; yet, he incurs a new, furious disposition. That is, it fuels his wish for justice and revenge. “Although he may redirect his sexual desires and inhibit his hatred and vengeance,” Steiner writes, “he is left with feelings of grievance, which make him look forward to a time when he can enact revenge and achieve the oedipal gratification he was denied” (p. 435).

These feelings of “grievance” belong to the boy’s need for psychic retreat, which is depressive. Therefore, if we accept that my mother was my first love-object, and that I experienced my father as competition for my absolute access to her, then Steiner may provide a response to the reasons for my need to retreat from Dad. Yet, his paper does not so much help supply reasons that I have pined after him in the first place. This only works, in my view, if, as I employ the logic of Oedipus and his fearsome complex, we can imagine that our fathers may play a slightly more significant role in our objectrelational development, especially for males with same-sex orientation.

The story indicates that I harbored a keen focus on obtaining my father’s acceptance, particularly of my ideas. Furthermore, the nature of the love objects after

which I pined throughout childhood avidly remind/ed me of characteristics of my father that I love/d. Therefore, I was guided by the ambitions of both love and acceptance with regard to him. My perception of his failure to accept me, especially the ideas I valued (or, better, the methods that I came to sponsor to come up with those ideas), created a terrible feeling of grievance, indeed. This tendency in our history may have originated in my earliest years, whereupon I would have experienced my mother as a primary competitor for Dad’s love, not the other way around.

My experience in the narrative of devaluing my father may also be applied to moments when I felt anything from impatience with or disgust upon encountering my father’s body throughout the course of his physiological decline. Even in the act of writing the story (as a postdeath enterprise), I am mourning a bit via devaluation of him, indicated primarily in my choice of words or phrasing, especially in these moments. During my July visit to Pennsylvania, for instance, rather than feel compassion for my father after helping my sister change his muddy diaper, I meditate with a focus on how I do not want his body. On p. 270, I write:

I activate my handy, digital recorder to process some thoughts: I don’t want my father’s body, I say. I want to be healthier and I want to celebrate what my body can do. … I fear that I am starting on a journey downward that shall be constant until I become what Dad has become.

I believe it is true that this sentiment reflects my fear of disease. At the time, this interpretation was conscious to me. Nothing shook me up into deeper awareness of my mortality than witnessing Dad’s physiological and mental decline in those final months of his life. Most of these sentiments felt to me, during that time, to be mostly and primarily

about the anxieties entailed in this sort of enterprise. And yet, there are a multitude of ways that one might express these anxieties; the content of my own focused on disparaging Dad as if I were engaged in something like blaming the victim.

Awareness of this, since beginning this project, appears to have helped me to improve in my clinical work. It has deepened my capacity to be inwardly empathic and outwardly compassionate, especially when I feel compelled to encounter or witness challenging or strenuous material. I am less inclined to take even subtle measures to shut these moments down or, at least, I am more sensitive to that possibility.

Devaluation (or avoidance) of attachment that is rooted in my relationship with my father is also indicated in my relationships with others. For instance, after waking up from the nightmare that involved a Frenchman/serpent fatally snapping my neck, Joel is there to help me through the emotional distress that this elicits upon waking from it. I write: I want to dismiss him, avoid him; my impulse is to push him back or away, or to escape the situation, relinquishing him to the cloudy dust of anxiety I have already stirred about the room; but, I reason that this will only escalate the problem I would otherwise be trying to avoid. In essence, I don’t want to have to rely on Joel for help, but I realize, while compelled by natural forces far greater than me, that it’s better to do so. Yet, at this point in the story, my preference is to do otherwise.

In another example, Dad and I are visiting the Lancaster Cancer Center in February. We have learned that his prognosis has worsened. Dad is introducing me to the facility. As I look about the “infusion room,” where patients receive treatment, I notice

the décor that features placards on the walls with statements that appear “vacuous to me.”

On p. 180, I go on to write:

Meeting with them annoys me rather than encourages a mood that I can readily accept to be an expression of my avoidant cynicism. Yet, they also seem to supply or embolden a type of manic flight from the very real and palpable grief that one would inevitably be forced to endure while receiving treatments there while sitting patiently in these nicelydressed, specialized chairs for hours per visit, plugged into machines that dole out steady doses of this brownish-orange treatment, hoping for a miracle. It is difficult for me to join them in this.

In this case, there is certainly an argument to be made that I am devaluing/disparaging the setting. In the passage, I qualify this by calling the center itself out for what I am, in fact, doing i.e., denying the shadows of what is occurring in this space.

As I have reflected on this moment in the story, I have become aware of the following thought process. It goes like this: What else, Devan, are they going to do?

Hope is all one has. To sit in these seats, focused on the ‘reality’ of their situation is not ideal nor functional. I began to notice, that is, that the décor of the infusion room is not meant to deny the grief, loss, or looming death; it is meant to stimulate hope in a remediation of the diseases plaguing those who are undergoing treatment there. Ultimately, therefore, I am the one devaluing/denying unconscious grief regarding, not just disease, but this possibility of mine and my father’s death.

I introduced this section by stating that evidence of manic defenses against depressive anxiety surfaced in the manner that I perform certain roles. So, what are the

moments in the story that demonstrate I am devaluing my dad vis-à-vis any of the roles that I play? The answer to the question is that this occurs in moments where I am essentially confused about the role I am supposed to play, given that the reality of Dad’s terminal decline unto death had not registered yet. This operation intensifies between February, when we learned that Dad was nearly out of options entirely, and April, when he entered hospice care. During my visit regarding the first, on p. 183, I write: I feel like the supporting role in a well-cast play of absurd, conflicted characters, because at no point, yet, in this epic drama, have I felt the reality the consummate and absolute reality that Dad will likely, actually, die. I can’t wake up. I can’t break in to whatever emotions or moods that comprehension of this might generate. I can’t seem to be more than simply a role, because I can’t locate myself outside the security of being whatever and whomever I am supposed to be. And as the dying process begins to materialize, I can scarcely catch the feeble and languid whispers of the terrible dread that seems to underlie it. Then, in April, as I am preparing to leave Chicago to visit my father after he broke his arm, I write on p. 201: Even so, in this instance, the concepts in purview Dad, hospice, impending death they are as real to me, they are felt about as deeply, as the frog in hot water. I don’t believe that Dad could say anything to me that would wake me up from my emotional slumber from what’s likely an unconscious need to play a role that safely protects me from a fuller

realization of what it means that my dad is, in fact, going into hospice a place, the place, where people with terminal illnesses go to die.

In February, I felt there to be something salvific in playing a supportive role for my dad, which is likely just as much an issue of seeking reparation as it is an act of disavowing the process he’s undergoing. I include it here, because of what’s motivating the need for the role in the first place. That is, I need Dad to get better for my sake, not his. To put a finer point on it, I am less aware that I care about Dad’s pain for Dad, and more that I am concerned his pain will make him more volatile, and thus, remind me, among other things, that I have failed to do my duty to keep him happy.

When Dad conveyed to me the details of what happened when he broke his arm, to give an example, he informs me that his doctors, Tracy, and he decided to discontinue any kind of treatment for the cancer, and my thoughts reveal: “I am getting sick of hearing that there are no viable options. Fix this, for god’s sake” (see p. 200), and I would add, here: “so that I no longer have to suffer.” It’s a plea, on my part, for Dad to fix his life, as if his terminal disease were his fault and rectification of it were somehow in his control. To be clear, that is, this plea even as a prayer, perhaps is offered because I don’t want to feel the pain of the intensification processes that I described above i.e., the intensification of the internalized “bad Dad” of my ambivalent relationship with him. Ultimately, to “wake up” from this “emotional slumber” would require me to face the anguish of my own obsessive preoccupation with my need for my father’s perfection. Devaluing my father in this (and vis-à-vis the general ways that I have presented here) made me feel strong, powerful, and in control of my life. It helped me to find relief from existential pressures, many of them planted by moments with or via observing my

father and his life. These defenses provided only a partial solution, of course, as they are wont to do, for they also spawned a fruitless sense of helplessness. The charade usually failed to uphold its guise in moments that I caught perception of personality traits that my father and I shared. To be not like Dad, for me, appeared to give me a purpose for living one that assured me, in fantasy of course, that I am safe and can be delivered from the terrifying prospect of anything catastrophic from taking place.

To develop the idea of how profoundly I have been affected by these psychodynamic operations, consider my decision to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I opted for this in large part because I had attributed the blanket of my father’s woes to the fact that he had not served one himself. Missionary service in Mormon tradition, as a singular rite of passage, requires a great deal of dedication; it delivers a formidable dose of mental and emotional duress, for which I wasn’t adequately prepared. In hindsight, I value the many life lessons I gleaned, but I really had no business being there. The nature of this religious environment, not only reified, but vivified an already-brewing sense of self-hatred that made life arbitrarily extra difficult and laborious, to the point that, especially in the years following my service, I almost lost grip on its meaning Nevertheless, the question remains open, for me, if my decision to embrace the precepts of Mormonism, as an expression of my desire to “beat” Dad at life, actually worked. From the standpoint of this analysis, it couldn’t possibly because the prospect of doing so is borne from manic phantasies that exist only in themselves, delivering, that is, this mourning in madness.

Aggression entailed in devaluing Dad also served to help me move away from my father as part of the predeath process. The destructive elements in this enterprise seems to

have represented, in the narrative, a rather committed desire to behold myself as decidedly not my father. This ambition manifested whenever I contemplated my father’s conservative politics.

Trump’s presidency established a fruitful platform for a set of neurotic-level displacements that, for me, involved everything I hated about my father. Trump was elected to office the fall after Dad revealed he had lymphoma. The truth that my father helped to install this man for a term made loving my dad even harder, especially because he would have known what everyone knew about him in the months before election day. Dad thought about it, and he choose Trump. In a swing state. Thus, my father’s politics kept alive the pain I felt (and had known since I could remember) of a rather constant process of de-idealizing him and working with the pain of disappointment in him. One may even argue, I concede, that the daily affairs of Trump’s presidency intensified “bad Dad” introjects as powerfully and consistently as did the mourning processes under investigation for this study.

I saw/see in Trump the emotionally-puerile, playground bully that my father could so often be. I saw comparable facial expressions and body comportments. I heard the same trite and hackneyed arguments. I saw white fragility. I saw the series of contradictions and absurdities that plagued Trump’s cancerous term in office. I discovered my cavernous potential to hate. Before he was even elected, I reasoned that Trump had no other plan for American politics than to institute a modern type of fascism that cared absolutely two shits about people like my father. I felt furious that Dad was so susceptible to the seductive nonsense of Trump’s infected platforms. The historical consequences of these aside, merely knowing that my father had aligned himself with this

troupe of sycophants burdened me more than I may let on in the narrative. I daily felt overtures of confusion and fury, which I worked to articulate in my letter to him, mainly because I felt such fury over Dad’s flagrant hypocrisy.

I also felt burdened by the fact that I couldn’t let it go. It was as if I believed my father was an extension of myself. It was as if his decisions somehow implicated me. I had known for years that my father was not the sort of person that I could idealize. Why did it matter to me so much that we belonged to the same team?

Whether there is an optimal or even “healthy” form of idealization, be it prescribed by Kohut or Klein, the answer to the question seems to be that I needed Dad to rectify what I felt were the areas of his life that had gone wrong so that I could let go of the burden of guilt I felt, entirely in phantasy, for the part I had reasoned, albeit unconsciously, that I played in that matter.

Seeking “manic” repair. Melanie Klein deals with the issue of repair in two, essential ways throughout her standard works, and both of them are relevant for this analysis. In the first, one is driven by the manic impulse to escape the torment of melancholic loss. For the sake of clarity, I refer to this as manic repair. The second type is motivated by love for the object. This is either because the object has survived one’s destructive onslaughts in a good-enough way (Winnicott, 1953; Winnicott, 1969), or because one has successfully imbibed enough goodness and love from the environment so much that destruction of it becomes untenable. This second sort might be labelled depressive repair. In what follows directly below, I want to discuss the former type and how it appears in the narrative.

First, a quick clarifying note. Manic repair, theoretically, appears to border the spheres of Klein’s two developmental positions, given that, on the one hand, the mania of it is imbued with both persecutory anxieties and phantasies of omnipotent control; yet, on the other hand, its trajectory is to repair something that the object perceives it itself has already destroyed or might destroy, but not the other way around. In other words, one is not going about merely working to ward off the objects of one’s paranoid phantasies of internal and external persecution. Rather, one has coupled with this enterprise a sense that one has the potential to destroy the object on its own. The goal becomes almost two-fold i.e., to keep one’s objects safe from one’s destructive potential, as well as to keep oneself safe from the object that might retaliate as a result of that potential. Yet, because this form of repair has yet to relax its manic defenses, it has yet to work for the restitution of its objects in such a way that reflects love, gratitude, and respect. This depressive form of repair, according to Klein, will increase these qualities throughout the procedure, all the while stimulating creative endeavors. Thus, theoretically, what is entailed in manic repair is also entailed in a mourning in madness, predeath or otherwise; it is absent or in denial of love and dependency, and it is devoid of creative capacity.43

In her paper on the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states, from which I have pulled much of the material for this chapter, Klein spends a good deal of time establishing the movement that I am endeavoring to simplify here. It likely goes without

43 This state that is “in-between” positions is difficult to delineate. Klein (1935) writes that it is difficult “to draw a sharp line between the anxiety-content and feelings of the paranoiac and those of the depressive since they are so closely linked up with one another” (p. 153, emphasis added). She provides criteria for distinguishing between them: “The persecutory-anxiety is mainly related to the preservation of the ego,” and, thus, it is of the paranoid sort; or, the anxiety may be based upon “the preservation of the good internalized objects with which the ego is identified as a whole” (p. 153). Ultimately, as I showed in Chapter 2, she presents the concept of a “manic position,” which appears to be intermediary.

saying that Klein’s focus is, of course, on the internal negotiations involved in this movement from paranoid-schizoid to depressive positions, primarily vis-à-vis the many ways the ego is attempting to preserve itself from persecution from within (i.e., from its bad objects and the id), to the point that one may actually withhold the introjective maneuvers of a good object for fear that the muddy, polluted waters of the bad ones will contaminate the soup that is brewing in the ego or better, as the ego. Denial of dependency, disavowal of need for, and devaluation of the beloved object are intrapsychic dynamics that all involve manic defenses, designed to, once again, preserve the goodness of them by omnipotently controlling them.

My analysis of my experience of the role I played in disavowing awareness of the meaning of Dad’s terminal decline, may be an expression of my desire for omnipotent control over my father and my refusal to grieve the fact that I needed him to be something else for me something he could never be, both before and during the period in question. According to Klein, devaluation of the depressive object holds a significant piece in the project of manic reparation, specifically with regard to one’s denial of dependency on the object. Again, in the story, this need manifests perhaps more than in any other way vis-à-vis the roles that I worked to play/fulfill throughout the story. So, how do I understand them to be expression of the need for reparation?

During my September visit, Dad first dictates, for me, a list of his wishes as he assigns me the role of his power of attorney. He also informs me about what’s contained in his will. In future visits, before Dad provided me with an official copy of it, I took pictures of every page, and they remained on my phone for over a year after he died. I knew that Dad’s attorney had a copy of it, and I knew that Dad would eventually supply

me with one for my records, as well. Yet, even after this occurred, I kept the images on my phone, as if I didn’t feel safe enough to be without them at any time. In essence, my father’s will became the sure-safe bible that would make it possible for me to perform my role as his power of attorney as fully as possible, guaranteeing that I could avoid any mishap that might fail him.

In the story, I write that “I want to do right by him,” which seems reasonable enough on its own, but I am also downplaying the anxiety I feel about the possibility of not doing so that is, of not doing right by him, especially throughout the dying process. I recall registering this fact as if it were about my desire to avoid any mishaps with my siblings after Dad died, but this fails to fathom the full extent of my behavior. Later in the story (see p. 182), as I am contemplating my visit with Dad to LCC in February, I write of the undercurrents that seem to be motivating or inspiring the role I am playing:

The governing dynamics that underscore most of my thoughts today and this evening seem guided by the mandate to appease something brutal, harsh, and coercive. Is it God? Dad? I squirrel about internally to locate the right or proper emotional disposition, guided almost entirely by the ongoing pressures in the heart of the question of who I am supposed to be and what role I am supposed to play. I notice an ambivalence to either use my capacity to generate and provide support for Dad, or, the aspect of this I can barely detect because it’s unthinkable i.e., to bolt and let the pieces of this process fall where they may on their own terms.

Note that an aspect of this obsessive, internal brawl includes the struggle to not only behave the way that I had reasoned I was supposed to behave, but also to feel the way I had assumed I was supposed to feel. Most of the time, I was able to navigate the performance of my emotions in appropriate ways, given the circumstances, often curtailing or “false-selfing” them for Dad’s sake. Sometimes this transpired in brutal fashion, but I justified it by conjecturing that Dad had never been able to handle certain expressions, especially aggressive ones, when he was healthy. I asked myself: What makes you think, Devan, that he will be able to handle them now, when he’s not?

I hope to have shown, in the story, the way that I believe Dad took his role as a father seriously. That is, for him, a father should teach a child to control his/her behavior. My father, however, did not seem to have any sense that it would work better to help the child adapt or adjust to the underlying emotions, feelings, or even impulses that drive or motivate those behaviors. He was almost entirely concerned with the look of the thing, and bore really very little to no interest in questions as to why the thing looked the way it did. It is almost as if he needed to erase its existence (as if he ever could), rather than deal with it. Dad seemed to me to be ever, hopelessly lost when it came to working from within the experiences of especially a small child, and few instances demonstrated this better (i.e., from within “everyday” moments) than Dad’s insistence on good social behavior, especially at church. Recall the vignette I present in the story of Dad’s treatment of especially my older brother and me while in church when we behaved in ways that were albeit unruly but inevitable or reasonable in the context of which these moments occurred.

Reparation failed to occur, in many ways, because Dad failed to allow the type of injuries to transpire between us that would inevitably induce consequent, proper forms of reparation. Instead, repair with Dad compelled manic forms of it, given that they provoked the phantasmagorias that had convinced me, by this time, that I had persistently botched opportunities not only to gain my father’s approval but to keep him from collapsing into emotional despair, devastation, and violence, as if it were my duty to do so. Recall that manic defenses are based on “a reversal of the child-parent relation,” in addition to a denial of dependency (Spillius et al., p. 471). Klein embeds her discussion of this concept in her dealing with the Oedipal dynamics of the depressive position, but I believe she is formally introducing what later is assumed to be “role reversal,” “confusion,” or “parentification,” which I discussed earlier in this chapter. My efforts at manic repair showed in false-selfing moments of parentification, caught up in the role I played as Dad’s emotional caretaker. This is a relational dynamic by which I felt almost entirely constrained, even as I became aware of the clinical literature on the topic years before Dad got sick. My performance of it was conscious to me, but it had become a matter of instinct by this time, and I didn’t know how to reverse it without confronting Dad; yet, this seemed impossible to me. Thus, in moments where I felt I had succeeded at subduing Dad’s turbulent anxieties as if his emotional caretaker, I felt the triumph of the manic/oedipal victor; yet, the cost of failing to do so plummeted me into states of serious despair and guilt the sort that Klein (1937/1975) figures will overwhelm the subject in developmentally pernicious ways (pp. 335-336).

Sometimes, I felt confused by my role, given the conflicts that these dynamics amplified, and my unfamiliarity with how to negotiate them on multiple levels. For instance, in another part of the story, I wrote:

Is it wrong, I wonder, that I am comforted by the thought of Dad’s death?

Is it wrong that the strongest emotion I feel lately is the delight that I might be useful in helping to facilitate a process that is so incomprehensibly real and intractable?

My desire to be “useful” in helping my father to achieve an appropriate death, a goal that the literature on anticipatory mourning covers in detail, elicited a reaction formation against deeper anxieties regarding my need for release from the pressures of being Dad’s emotional caretaker in the manner I have attempted to disclose. In other words, as I found “delight” in “being useful” in these ways, I could disavow destructive and sadistic desires and inclinations. I could avoid dealing with them. I could retain some semblance of triumph over my father, and remain good or virtuous to myself. Again, without the proper space afforded to work out such aggression between my father and me, little to nothing else was available than this and other compromise-formational defenses to contain it.

Pining, guilt, and reparation.

Until now, I have been developing the argument that my relationship with Dad improved vis-à-vis our dialogues. Before I conclude this chapter and move on to providing a response to my final research questions regarding recommendations, I want to briefly respond to the following question. That is, just exactly how do I justify the claim that my relationship with my dad improved, as it is indicated in the narrative? I stand by my earlier assertion that I ultimately underwent a “negative change arc” as the

main character of the story; but nevertheless, the story also develops, albeit in a less pronounced way, this movement from or through the endopsychic experience of my father as an internal, “bad-Dad” persecutor to one that generates a greater amount of trust, goodness, and love.

There are a handful of ways that I could reword this question, using Kleinian concepts. For instance, I could likewise ask: In what way did the relaxation of manic defenses contribute to the improvement in my relationship with my father? Or, perhaps, even better: What part do I believe working to better understand and appreciate my father, his life, and inheritances predominantly, vis-à-vis our regular dialogues had in strengthening or fortifying “good Dad” contents, thus enabling a greater balance in an otherwise skewed ambivalence of internalized objects, especially regarding the relaxing of the conflict involved in initial, “bad Dad” functions?

However I word the question, the answer remains the same. That is, improvement in my relationship with Dad transpired as I was able to appreciate him as an actual person, rather than merely a product of my internal phantasy. Thus, I was able to build and receive a better amount of trust and security with and in him, thus making use of it to counterbalance the function that generalized, “bad” impressions of him had left on me from the period of our earliest time together and onward.

In her paper on manic-depressive states, Klein (1940) conveys: “If greater security in the inner world is gradually regained, and feelings and inner objects are therefore allowed to come more to life again, re-creative processes can set in, and hope return” (p. 143). Klein then links this operation to pining for the lost loved object in optimal ways, which I will quote at length here:

As we have seen, this change is due to certain movements in the two sets of feelings which make up the depressive position: persecution decreases and the pining for the lost loved object is experienced in full force. To put it in other words: hatred has receded and love is freed. It is inherent in the feeling of persecution that it is fed by hatred and at the same time feeds hatred. Furthermore, the feeling of being persecuted and watched by internal ‘bad’ objects, with the consequent necessity for constantly watching them, leads to a kind of dependence which reinforces manic defences. These defences [sic], in so far as they are predominantly against persecutory feelings (and not so much against the pining for the loved object), are of a very sadistic and forceful nature. When persecution diminishes, the hostile dependence on the object, together with hatred, also diminishes, and the manic defenses relax. The pining for the lost loved object also implies dependence on it, but dependence of a kind which becomes an incentive to reparation and preservation of the object. It is creative because it is dominated by love, while the dependence based on persecution and hatred is sterile and destructive. (p. 143, emphasis added)

No area of the story demonstrates how this concept is more apparent than when I am reacting to Trump as a displacement of my hatred for my father for his politics, that is, and the characterological sufferings that drove him to them and into his own, perpetual madness. I do not mean to argue that my hatred for modern, Trump-truckling Republicanism and (in this case) by extension, my father for following it sycophantically is merely rooted in these Kleinian concepts; rather, I mean to convey

that the sentiment was often coopted by the endopsychic functions or manic energies of my own frantic sense of dependence on “bad Dad” persecution.

Most of the time, during that year, as I employed the word “hate” or “hatred,” even when referring to Trump, I was conscious of how I was defining it to myself, intimating what I remembered from studying classical languages, both as an undergraduate and later as a student in my first master’s program. In Latin, for instance, the nouns odium and invidia are used synonymously by Roman writers, but they are both translated as “hatred” in English. Regarding the first, Cicero uses the phrase odium est mihi cum aliquo, which is translated, “I am at enmity with” (Simpson, 1968, p. 409). In this case, Cicero is referring to all of those who wish to wage war against Rome 44 Thus, these renderings of “hatred” communicate the experience of having a strong aversion toward something or someone that is threatening to annihilate or destroy. Invidia is used by several other Roman authors to communicate begrudged ill-will toward something/someone, even envy toward them (p. 326).

I believe this distinction is important, given that the word “hate” has become, colloquially, something of a moral concept. To “hate” someone is to desire something “evil” to happen to them, especially in terms of death or destruction, almost for its own sake. When I felt hatred for Dad, I was aware that it was about, more than anything, a strong aversion toward the actions and behaviors that I assumed were foreign to him, not those that defined him, even though the distinction between the two is nearly impossible to make, philosophically. Nevertheless, for Klein, hatred is not a moral matter, but a pragmatic one. It feeds persecutory anxiety, and vice versa in reciprocal fashion. This

44 See Cicero’s classic work On the Consular Provinces, 10.24 for this passage, cited as Yonge, C. D. (Ed.), 1891.

leads to dependence on the “bad” object, thus reinforcing manic defenses. Therefore, hatred presents a developmental challenge, because it ultimately plays an important part in threatening endopsychic security. Yet, this is not a moral challenge, but one that involves sustaining intrapsychic equilibrium

Even before I begin writing my letter to Dad, I am frothing with hatred toward Trump for, yet again, mocking the weak and vulnerable. This hatred for Trump’s contempt for such people is, in principle, absolutely and unequivocally right to me. In other words, I never want to not feel the same, strong aversion toward the actions of anyone who would do this. For that matter, I believe my hatred for Trump began to reify when, while campaigning for office on November 26, 2015, he openly mocked the disabled reporter, Serge F. Kovaleski.45

Most of what is contained in my letter to my father grows from my opening statement on p. 191: “I feel overwhelmed today by your hypocrisy.” My hatred for Dad is, in other words, hatred for what he became to me vis-à-vis his draconian methods of enforcing the way he felt things were supposed to be, especially, of course, in those areas of our lives that intersected. On p. 192, I state:

I am writing this to you because I am confused and furious. I feel anger. I feel sadness and disappointment. All of it comes together in a blend of emotions that abides as a dull, steadfast frenzy as I access it, haunting my mornings and nights and everything in between as I work to avoid encountering it more directly.

45 See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34930042 for more regarding this incident.

Trump is a bully, and I hate bullies because I hate the introjected, “rejecting,” “bad-Dad” object of my inner world. How does one ever make peace with such an object? It is impossible. Fairbairn has established this in the way that he emphasized the structural aspects of inner life, splitting and fragmenting into various parts, in this case, around the antilibidinal ego and its endless enrapturement with its rejecting object.

During a recent session with my psychoanalyst, the question arose: “How does one mourn a rabid dog?,” and this has stuck with me. By virtue of being a “rejecting” object (Fairbairn, 1944), that is, essentially it can be nothing else while retaining its integrity as such. My father the actual father Mark Hite was never actually the rejecting object, but his rejection of me, when it occurred, was formidable and overwhelming to my psyche, especially as a young child. It was internalized and became operative as such an endopsychic, ground zero.

My beef with my father, from this point of view, was (and still is) my ongoing and ne’er-reconcilable, antilibidinal beef with the internal representations of him that were intensified during the final year of his life. Changing the quality of my internal investment with him, therefore, was not a matter of ejecting the bad, rejecting object from my inner world, no matter how badly I wanted this to come to pass, but rather in striving to balance, supplant, and relax its functions as much as possible by internalizing more of the loving, “good Dad” functions of my actual father. Furthermore, the manic defense of disavowal made this effort very difficult, because it convinced me, perpetually, that I actually didn’t care about him, it, or anything in between. Historically, it propelled me to seek elsewhere into equally (if not more) frustrating and hopeless relational terrains that

turned up nothing except reified idealizations that went nowhere and could never be satisfied.

Throughout the proceedings of that final year with Dad again, especially with regard to the dynamics involved in dialoguing with him regularly about his life, history, and our lives together as father and son helped me to feel accepted by him. Dad took my work/ideas seriously for the first time, and I began to see evidence (again, for the first time) that Dad honored and valued what I had to offer him, and what I honored and valued about myself. He even allowed the process to inspire him to work to achieve an appropriate death by endeavoring to make peace with his extended family, children, and even my mother. As a result, I submit that I was able to appreciate some mitigation of internal, persecutory anxiety connected with phantasies of and actual experiences with him. Hostile dependence upon internal, “bad Dad” representations of him also began to diminish, which afforded greater comfort in accepting something, both intellectually but especially emotionally, that is quite obvious to me now i.e., that I do love my father, and that I have always cared about the quality of our relationship, even when I have sought for something else elsewhere. Therefore and this is extremely important I could begin to achieve some semblance of actual repair with my actual father.

Conclusion

I have asserted, in a manner that I hope is apparent, that my experience of mourning in anticipation of my father’s death was motivated largely by the wish for a change in the quality of the internal investment with him before he passed away. I have also stated that the greatest threat I encountered, as I pursued this enterprise, transpired as

the ambivalences regarding my relationship with my father intensified, especially throughout critical phases in his physiological, mental, and emotional decline.

I have also argued that my relationship my father ultimately improved throughout the course of that year, which I have attributed to optimal responses on my father’s part in dealing with my attempts at what I have labelled depressive reparation. Sitting with Dad in reflexive conversation about our lives together, his early life, and his points of view regarding our family’s history allowed me to achieve a semblance of my goal, because I came to understand him and the nature of his inheritances better. Dad is far less of a mystery to me since this time, and I feel more capable of appreciating him in context, as a person, rather than merely an object a disquieting shadow of my internal world. That said, I hope at this point that it is clear that “mourning” my father did not begin with his terminal illness. Most of my grievances with him were established in our early history together, even in infancy and throughout early childhood, whereby he became a formidable and frightening object of both inner and external experience, while simultaneously remaining enigmatic and disconcerting. Whatever part fathers may actually play in the preoedipal development of their children especially their gay, male children I hope to have shown how and to what effect failure on his part to assume and fulfill the responsibilities entailed in that development affected that extended mourning process for the greater part of the first three decades of my life. When Dad got sick, the sorrows entailed in this arrest in my development were revived and increased, along with the reasons that they existed in the first place.

Ultimately, I hope to have shown that although the literature that explores the experiences entailed in predeath mourning contributes well to the discourse regarding what I have termed “normal” grieving during that period, it also oversimplifies those experiences by assuming they are stimulated merely vis-à-vis terminal diagnoses, at least for those of us who are undergoing the process ambivalently. The lines that delineate the categories involved in assessing the phenomenon in question are, as I have argued by virtue of my experience, arbitrarily drawn. By employing the works of Klein and others from within the discourse she began, I have demonstrated how the position of my earlier statement is justified, given that Klein’s work reveals the way in which the processes that originate in the earliest developmental positions remain operative throughout the course of the lifespan. Predeath mourning processes, therefore, also stimulated regressive experiences that encumbered both practical and emotional aspects of those processes.

I set out to organize this chapter around the core, research questions I presented in the first and third chapter, which I believe I have accomplished. That is, I have responded to the question of (a) how my experience of anticipatory mourning seems to have affected me personally, as well as the ambivalent relationship that I had with my father before he died, (b) what I have felt are the most significant and noteworthy ways in which my life was disrupted or disordered as a result, and (c) the impact that I believe the reflexive conversations with my father seems to have had on my experience of working through those ambivalences. Now, in the next and final chapter of this work, I will respond to the last of my four research questions, namely, the question of how I believe that my self-analysis might inform theories dealing with anticipatory mourning, and how it could be useful to others, especially those in the helping professions.

Chapter VI

Concluding Remarks

Introduction

In Rando’s (2000) comprehensive review of the phenomenon under examination for this project, she stipulates that “the present discussion assumes a healthy, positive relationship between the mourner and the ill or dying person” (p. 51, emphasis added). She continues on the same page to reason that “to the extent that a particular relationship is not so characterized, this material will need to be extrapolated.” Therefore, what is it that have I extrapolated from these works to convey an experience of “complicated” predeath grief and mourning in my self-analysis, and, by extension, how might both inform theory about the phenomenon that proves potentially useful to others in the helping professions? In what follows, I present a brief response to this question.

Theoretical Conclusions & Actionable Recommendations

The distinction I have made between complicated and uncomplicated anticipatory mourning is more or less arbitrary to me. I have argued that “complicated” forms of bereavement may very well be merely human forms of it, in a nutshell, if we are to apply the concepts I have reviewed, discussed, and applied throughout this work seriously or wholly. Since I began practicing psychotherapy, I have found it near impossible to locate the actual threshold that seems to exist in the realms of the positivistic sciences between normal human behaviors and the pathological forms of them. Psychiatric categories seem

arbitrary (in essence) to me, given that our behaviors, moods, feelings, or any cocktail of them that make up an emotion, which are deemed “pathological” or “unhealthy,” are merely everyday versions of those that now appear robust or potent enough to cause dysfunction in one’s life or cause arbitrary destruction in the lives of others. I have always read the works of Freud and Klein to be (ultimately) communicating as much.

Stationed on the epistemological platforms of this study, I can say with confidence that our psychiatric categories are political. We may employ our categories well, I believe, to converse about the phenomena that enter our consulting spaces and treatment rooms, but that phenomena does not occur in one like, say, a virus. One does not “catch” anticipatory mourning, and it is not irradicated by applying a specific treatment or cure. “Complicated” or “pathological” grief, like complicated anticipatory mourning, is complicated to the beholder of it, perhaps, and it is in or through this experience of it that the category is invented.

The criteria that Rando and her contemporary commentators apply to predeath mourning is far too tidy for my tastes. All mourning is in madness. The threat of death is ever-constant, and if the dead or dying person held or holds any meaning for one, a process of mourning is bound to also occur. The question is only about how much of it and to what effect it appears to be having on one and those around one. My analysis of it shows the ways in which I both foreclosed upon and openly embraced the opportunities to grow into the realities of the experience I was having with my father, namely, of the dying process, of deepening my relationship with him, of achieving greater independence from him (especially as an interior enterprise), and of growing in my ability to deal with the unpleasant and discordant realities of everyday, human experience.

Our psychiatric categories, nonetheless, also help us to communicate more effectively about any given phenomenon, specifically the one under investigation for this project. I consider those categories to be a necessary evil, if you will, for isolating aspects of a larger, ongoing process toward the purposes of better understanding it.

Given that the research dealing with anticipatory mourning focuses almost exclusively on what Rando terms “positive” relationships between a person who is dying and their intimate loved ones, if its discourse is to be revived, it is likely to occur vis-àvis deeper examinations of the phenomenon that include relationships that might be categorized as “ambivalent” or rooted in attachment trauma. I imagine that there might exist a multiplicity of possible angles under which such investigations might occur for example, a study about the predeath mourning experience of children of a “borderline,” “narcissistic,” or otherwise emotionally-insecure or stunted parent, spouse, sibling, or child. Such studies would do well to include subjects who appear with amplified distress or suffering when faced with loss, but report feeling little to no recognizable grief or sadness over it, as they are, again, “normally” or typically characterized.

The attachment group may find it useful to examine the predeath experience of subjects who test “preoccupied” on the Adult Attachment Interview, especially the more amplified version of it. Doing so may help us better understand what might be occurring between the lines of, say, powerful expressions of anger toward the dying one, or the more pronounced, vocal expressions of disparagement that often occur in such subjects. To go further into the rabbit hole, I also wonder what it might mean for children of psychotic parents to mourn their deaths, both before and after they have occurred. Nevertheless, such stories should always appear to the reader as stories about human

experience rather than pathological ones, as each is sure to bring a plethora of unique and idiosyncratic detail to each, respective case study in question.

Mental health professionals might also do well to work prophylactically with neutralizing pronounced ambivalences in relationships between parents and children. I believe, that is, that my story and the analysis of it both demonstrate how once a terminal diagnosis hits a relationship, it is almost too late to begin reversing the effects of toxic, relational ambivalences without noticeable effort. A patient who is suffering from “complicated” forms of predeath mourning, in this case, will likely present with problematic intensifications of despair, anger, guilt, and disappointment; or, on the other hand, they might appear disproportionately disconnected or apathetic to the losses in question. In both cases (and anything in between), once thoroughly explored, it is likely that those narratives will begin to yield very good reasons as to why those intensifications of manic or depressive qualities predominate.

From another angle, studies not just around predeath mourning, but dealing with human development in general, would do well to consider more the earliest influences a father has on their infant children. In the case of this study, I would hope this includes an especial focus on queer children and their fathers, especially their gay and transgender ones. As I hope my study has shown, the internalizations of my father mattered a great deal to me as a gay person growing into an adult identity. Many of the failures regarding this and other matters on the part of my father, in terms of raising a queer son, occurred and were internalized as such because of my father’s ignorance to how important he would become in the course of my emotional and cognitive development. I believe that he foreclosed upon many areas he actually wanted to be part of my life because he either

didn’t think it was necessary or he didn’t feel it was something I wanted. It is true that I communicated the latter as part of my manic avoidance of him, but I don’t believe my dad ever saw how much I needed him, and how much I was suffering without him, until the last few months of his life, and I believe this encumbered him with a great deal of regret.

Barrows and Barrows (2002) wrote an excellent paper titled Fathers and the transgenerational impact of loss. In it, they write:

It is our view that the father’s ability to support the child … will be profoundly influenced by his own history, particularly how he has dealt with losses in his own life, and that in this way he will profoundly influence the developing infant’s capacity to face loss. (p. 163).

Much of the regret-unto-failure of which I’m conveying, I have argued, is likely rooted in my father’s inability to mourn his own losses especially the loss of his early adult life.

When my grandfather died, my father didn’t know what to do with his grief. He described (and showed) it in visceral ways that moved me a great deal, once I was able to curb my discomfort over the intimacy it was generating between us. My grandfather’s death had such a profound effect upon my father that I believe it was a serious turning point in the history of his life. Throughout this work, I have speculated a bit in the argument I have made that some of the most disturbing behavior, whether it seemed to be outwardly connected to this loss or not, was a direct offshoot of the deeper pains he felt in both grieving and refusing to mourn it.

My father’s relationship with my grandfather was also ambivalent, but Dad and he shared something that Dad and I did not. I suppose to some extent this is a blessing,

given that these factors likely strengthened the conflictual ambivalences of my father’s interior world because he and grandpa were both such close “buddies” as well as fearsome foes. Dad did not talk much about the physical and emotional abuses of his father, but I know that they existed, given reports from Heather and Ryan regarding information Dad had imparted to them in otherwise heated or, sadly, psychotic moments that Dad would later not recall.

Nevertheless, because of the difficulty Dad had with this fateful loss, much of his adult and parental life was spent pining for his father rather than working to directly deal sufficiently with the fact of it. As I have shown, Dad foreclosed on aspects of our relationship before I even knew how to ask him not to before I had the capacity to realize that whatever semblance of a relationship we may have garnered in those earlier years would soon be lost. I have argued that if this occurred, it would likely have done so before I began to encode memories I could later remember or recount, given that for the greater part of my life the only feeling I had for my father was avoidance and disavowal of him, his actions, his feelings, his invitations for intimacy, and any real chance to petition him for a renewal or generation of goodness between us.

Yet, I have always known that the energy and force entailed in the way I pined after the affection, attention, and love of so many of the men that resembled him in some way or another was connected to Dad, both idealized and real. As a result, I did not know how to face my own losses, both real and imaginary, especially those that occurred in succession, with little to no window of time between them, for the first three decades of my life. I barely achieved a full breath between heartbreaks, and most of the men in question didn’t even know I existed. Pining for Dad vis-à-vis these series of

displacements marks one of the single-most intense and abiding frustrations of my developmental history, establishing a foundation upon which I do not believe I will ever really have “overcome,” for lack of a better word.

Thus, beginning with parents, on to religious leaders, pedagogues in the early lives of children, coaches, therapists, and even doctors or nurses all would do well, I submit, to understand and appreciate the quiet sufferings of children-unto-adults who depend upon them to deal with their own losses adequately enough to be available for those of the rising generations. Mothers, when primary caretakers (as mine was), contribute a great deal, of course, to the development of their children; yet, fathers may not realize how needed they are in ways that go beyond satisfying mere “father hunger,” as Herzog and his contributors have detailed (Herzog, 2013).

I want to close by discussing the significance for me of an extended passage from the book Raising Cain: Protecting the emotional life of boys (Kindlon and Thompson, 2000). They write: A father was putting his seven-year-old son, Charlie, and the son’s friend

Jeff to bed on a sleepover night at Charlie’s house. Charlie was going through a period in which his sense of vulnerability was heightened: he had fears of many things. Charlie was focused on tornadoes, because he had heard a news report about the tornadoes that had hit Nashville, Tennessee very hard and because his family had close friends who lived in Tennessee. Even with Jeff in the room, Charlie expressed his fears without hesitation:

“Dad, I’m not going to be able to go to sleep because of the tornadoes.”

“Charlie, there won’t be any tornadoes tonight, I promise.

“But, Dad, there are tornadoes.”

“I know, Charlie, but not in Boston.”

“I’m not going to be able to go to sleep, Dad, I’m sure I’m not.”

Jeff, the friend who had been listening to this exchange and who had undoubtedly experienced the fears in his young life, spoke to Charlie across the dark room. “Charlie, I just banged the wall by mistake. Maybe that’s the sound that scared you.”

“No, Jeff. It wasn’t that. It’s the tornadoes.”

Charlie appreciated the effort to reassure him, but he couldn’t take comfort in Jeff’s words because it wasn’t the sound in the room that had frightened him; it was the sound of the fear in his heart, and his thoughts were not so much about killer winds as about loving friends he worried were in the path of danger.

The father heard the friend’s effort to calm Charlie and realized that his own efforts to persuade had been pointless. So he asked, “Would it help if I lay down with you and put my arm around you?”

“Yes, Dad, but you have to stay.”

The father stretched out beside his son and put an arm around his shoulder. “I will stay until I’m sure you are asleep. Will that be okay?”

“Yes, Dad. Can you hug me tighter?” (pp. 250-51)

When I moved to Chicago back in 2010, I began working with a therapist named Christopher. Much of the work I did with him explored the experiences with my father that I have endeavored to represent and explain in this work. With the passage above in mind, he imparted the following bit of wisdom. He said, “a boy’s confidence originates in his experience of his father, namely, his father’s ability to allow his young boy full access to his body without shaming or rejecting him for wanting or needing it” (C. Miller, personal communication, 2010).

I remember little to nothing else from the years-long, weekly sessions I completed with Christopher, except this insight, which burrowed itself deep in my psyche. I think it did that because it resonated with me because it is true for me. I think it also instigated a process that helped me to begin really grieving the loss of my father, even nine years before he died.

If it isn’t clear by now, you see, my father was not the kind of man to extend the type of love and care that is idealized in the story above. In fact, he swiftly vetoed such entreaties. He would have said something like, “Quit this ridiculous fear of tornadoes and go to bed! I’m not going to tell you again!” Dad rapidly confronted then terminated the presence of irrational thoughts and feelings, even age-appropriate ones; so, of course, in fear, I would have worked to adhere to his command. Nothing soothed. Nothing repaired. My (albeit) irrational, childish fear of something whatever would have been the equivalent issue would have remained unmitigated, and a father would then lose, again, the chance to participate in the critical task of developing his son’s confidence, self-esteem, and emotional security. This feels tragic to me. But my dad, you see, didn’t understand that this was his duty. It was never taught to him, and the only option at his

disposal, perhaps, was to work to develop a relationship with his father built on their shared, mutual strengths and talents. Dad would need to become my grandfather’s “best sports buddy” and finally earn his love, acceptance, and support. I didn’t really have this option with my dad, either because Dad foreclosed on it, which I have argued, or because I didn’t have the propensity for it. Nonetheless, to a large extent, I am glad that my father had this with grandpa, and glad that he was able to know what it meant to feel connected to the Hite family of fathers to participate and contribute to our remarkable fatherland museum. It gave him identity and purpose. It made it possible for him navigate through a turbulent sea of otherwise insurmountable trials and obstacles along the course of his life. I know that he didn’t feel he had much else in his life but the internal representations of his good Dads of Roaring Spring, of the drug store, of the Capra-esque generosity of his extended family, and, of course, of baseball games of mitts, balls, and gloves. To a large extent, I can feel the energy that is entailed in this as I write, and it feels warm to me. Whatever my father’s incapacities were, he gave me the chance to know the very best of what I come from, and I am so thankful that I had the foresight to listen to the inner workings that were generated from the bottom of my soul, earnestly prompting me to turn my heart toward my father in the last years of our lives together. I hope that I can live a quality of life that he and those before him would be proud. I hope that I can succeed at doing my part to overturn the traumatic and disquieting aspects of the inheritances he left. I hope I can succeed at relaxing whatever defenses might make all of this difficult or impossible to accomplish. And, I hope that if there is a heaven, my father is in it.

I suppose I can only hope.

Appendix A

The Fatherland Museum (and Other Artifacts)

Appendix B

Trump’s Tweet

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