Bat Mitzvot

I'm going home tomorrow.

I originally planned a few months ago to return home for my second cousin's bat mitzvah. I am not close with anyone in my family besides my mother, but my cousin is a quirkily beautiful 12 year old girl who recently got into trouble for having an online relationship with an adult male who tried to persuade her to run away from home and then, when confronted, got pulled by her ear by her father and in turn reported him to child services... So I thought she might appreciate the guidance and support of her seemingly worldly and sophisticated cousin. I also sometimes try to scrounge up hope that someday our family will be a real family where people actually talk to each other, but as it turns out, the cheap ticket I booked was timely in other ways.

My father has taken a turn for the worse. None of the medications is able to stop the cancer from spreading and so it has--to his spleen, his liver, and other pretty vital organs....His body is progressively shutting down and strange things are happening. He's delirious--very forgetful and disassociated, doing and saying odd things, and is agitated and paranoid. Doctors are uncertain of whether these things are side effects of medications he's on, or some other phenomenon called terminal agitation. Likely it is some lovely combination of both.

I have avoided thinking about what it will be like when I get there. What do I say to a man who knows he's only got a few months to live?? He's not yet at that purported "acceptance" phase, and somehow I don't think he'll ever be. As I've already mentioned, he and I both lack any type of religious belief and essentially hope. Plus, I feel like my father never really even began to truly live until a little over 12 years ago when he retired and my parents moved to Ann Arbor. It just doesn't seem fair.

So I have been driving myself a little nuts as I lay down to sleep. I try to plan or imagine what I will do and say to him and my mom when I get there. Then, of course, I imagine what it must feel like to know you are going to die. This thought makes me really panicky, for him and myself. And I get this guilty feeling that I have to take care of him and fix everything, but I can't!!

Then I start to wish I could keep my head in a rational, analytical place. I think--A) I should write down every single thought and feeling I am having in all of its profundity! I mean, if I want to be a writer, isn't this the Stuff?? Which is followed by the thought-- B) Fuck it, isn't it all really just too trite to bother?

Another part of me just wants to allow the father- and self-pity to overtake me. Stop the intellectualizing. Have an emotion. It's just too damn hard and no one can really make sense of or handle all of this! So for a few moments I become overwhelmed with a physiological response to my sadness, uncertainty and loneliness, and my brain kind of shuts down and I start to cry. But then I feel guilty and unproductive again, and return to thought A (see above).

I'd better go to bed.