June 24th, 2010: Love Ladies

So here we are in Love Ladies. Yes, Love Ladies. Love Ladies, New Jersey. It’s a small city on Long Beach Island, the island north of Absecon island, where Atlantic City is located. Long Beach Island is The Hamptons for the Jews in Philadelphia who need a summer vacation destination. So that’s where we are. And we're here because Mom and Dad insisted that they continue to be here every weekend this summer as they have for about twenty-five years. And they'd made this decision despite their diseases, despite their unpredictable daily abilities and despite the fact that when I asked Mom who would help to care for her and Dad during the weekends, Mom had said:

“The kids will. They come down every weekend.” I cringed.

My brother and his wife just gave birth to their second child not even a month ago, and their oldest - a three year old girl - was already a handful because of her brains, curiosity and stubbornness. They simply wouldn’t be able to care for their two children and help Mom and Dad. My sister had just started her own corporation and had just begun landing clients and making money which was an incredible goal of hers. Who knew if she’d even be down the shore every weekend with her business at such a crucial juncture...?

So never mind that we’d have eight people sharing a small ranch house; never mind that Mom and Dad haven’t shared a bed for years; never mind that both of them are battling debilitating diseases; never mind that the kids would also like to have an actual getaway themselves and not be forced to spend every weekend caring for their sick parents. Never mind the god-damned, fucking obvious: if the family’s gone down to the Jersey shore during the weekends for the past twenty-five years, then fuckit: this summer wouldn't be any different. Period. No need to think about it more than that. 

Which is why I interceded.

With the help of my dear and amazingly knowledgable friend, Pam, I arranged for a company called Home Instead to provide a home care worker at the shore house every morning, just as we do at Mom and Dad’s house in Philadelphia. Thank God. Thank God for my friend who made the recommendation. Thank God I had the presence of mind to do the research on the company and ask them questions to see if they could handle our situation. Thank God, the company had really capable providers to offer us. It literally made the difference between having a somewhat workable family weekend and a complete and utter disaster of the highest magnitude.

We moved into the shore house: I unpacked the car; we picked up the repaired sails for the old sailboat; I moved both of my parents into the house; we met and interviewed the Home Instead representative who came out to the house to meet with us and assess our situation; I provided them with Mom and Dad’s insurance information; I even took Mom and Dad out for an incredible dinner to celebrate that we made it, despite all of the obstacles... and even got a little drunk drinking some Chimay.

So... here we are in Love Ladies. And I can certainly use some love myself: Mom’s back on her chemotherapy pills after getting a week off and she’s in as foul a mood as I can remember since I’ve been home. Rage seems to be her default coping skill right now. Maybe that will change tomorrow but probably not. 

What I do know is that, tomorrow my sister will arrive in the late afternoon, followed by my brother, his wife and their two children just before bedtime. And then, for seventy-two hours, we’ll have a full house and absolutely no privacy but plenty of baby crying.

What I do know is that the day after that, I’ll help rig up the sailboat with my brother and that, later that night, there’s going to be a full moon. And it will rise like a giant cantaloupe over the Atlantic. And I plan on being outside to watch her rise, the lovely lady that she is.

Love Ladies, indeed. 

June 23rd, 2010: Dear God...

Dear God,


Fuck you. Fuck you for what you've done. Especially after what we do for you...


We get on our knees, we pray, we try to do right in this world and by your name and we praise and revere you. We start wars in your name. We bless our children in your name in your houses of worship. We inaugurate our Presidents by putting their hand on one of your Holy Books. We invoke your name at the start of sessions of congress. We make the time in our lives to acknowledge the Blessed Perfection and Peaceful Goodness that are the hallmarks of the All-Knowing and Supreme Father.


And, in return, you denegrate my father. You insult his legacy. You spit in the face of a man who has served your children well, a man who dedicated his life to treating the ill and helping them to regain health. And you're not just taking his body and physical abilities, like his ability to dress himself or his ability to wipe his own ass, or his ability to just get up from a mother-fucking chair.

No, that's not enough for you, God. Because you're a sick fuck. You're taking his mind as well, his ability to know what's going on around him, his ability to cognitively navigate the world. And today, you took his ability to remember that we have steps in the back of our house. And so, when it was time to say goodbye to the cousins who'd come over to visit, he walked out the back door, forgot that there were steps there and then... just tumbled wildly through space.

There were four of us nearby too, so you really planned it out well, you evil fuck. We were close enough to watch everything unfold in that blink of an eye but not close enough to reach out and grab his arm and help him. He fell to the ground on his right hand, hip and knee and as head tumbled forward. Our two tomato plants stopped his head from cracking open on the cement porch. Disgraced. Shamed. Embarrassed. Face literally covered in dirt.


And there he sat, stunned on the ground, in front of his wife, his son, his cousins, and the at-home aide who comes here every day to try and make his life and Mom's more easy. So we all rushed to help him, us puny humans, us limited and imperfect creatures of habit because you didn't, God.


You're a pathetic sham of an illusion. You're a douche bag magician who can't pull off the simplest of card tricks. My father doesn't deserve this undignified, disgusting, degrading decay. Not at all. So fuck you, God. Fuck you for your contempt of a man that served. Fuck you for your ignoring a man who provided for his wife and three children. Fuck you for the disgrace you permit despite our best efforts.


And if this is how you've seen fit to treat a man who's served others for his entire life, it makes me wonder about what your plans are for a selfish prick like me. Because I haven't spent my adult life tending to the sick and trying to heal them. 


A mentor and spiritual advisor suggested that I get on my knees this afternoon and pray after what happened. To open up to you and humble myself and just give it all over to you. I replied, "Why should I pray to the God who's taking my Father's life?"


"Tell him you're angry," my friend responded. "He can handle it." And so I have.


As for your houses of worship, they mean nothing when my own house is in mourning and decay. As for your Righteousness, I don't see it. As for your Grace and Perfection... Fuck you.


Later, this afternoon, when I was cleaning up my Father's urine from the bathroom floor, and from his shoes, and from his pants because he can no longer urinate while standing, I pretended that what I was cleaning up was you, you twisted fuck. Cleaning up the remnants of my faith that you actually matter, that you actually listen and that you actually care.


And then... I tossed you into the toilet with what was left of Dad's piss and flushed.