{"id":8355,"date":"2024-02-28T14:42:46","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T19:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=8355"},"modified":"2024-02-28T14:42:46","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T19:42:46","slug":"1996-two-versions-of-fathers-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=8355","title":{"rendered":"1996: Two Versions of Father’s Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an exercise from the Workshop with Deena at Rowe in February 1996. \u00a0After identifying different selves Deena asks us to identify one story that two of your selves share:\u00a0 <\/span>I choose my father\u2019s death, shared by the one who didn\u2019t come to this workshop and the one who asks \u201cHow can I express all that is in me?\u201d The story about my father’s death is actually the story of the last weekend I spent with him. That story is part of this blog, it’s a page called July 4th monologue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One who didn\u2019t come:<\/p>\n

My father is dying of cancer.\u00a0 <\/span>My mother is too drunk to take care of him any longer.\u00a0 <\/span>I go home to help so he can have a last weekend at home before he goes back to the hospital for radiation.\u00a0 <\/span>I have trouble getting home, I can\u2019t find enough to eat on the plane, I get shaky running from one plane to the other in Pittsburgh.\u00a0 <\/span>I have brought my medicine and vitamin B6 and acidophilus with me.\u00a0 <\/span>Mother is not very sympathetic.\u00a0 <\/span>I know I can\u2019t take care of Dad, he has a colostomy bag and a complex series of medications.\u00a0 <\/span>I call for help and get nurses to come round-the-clock.\u00a0 <\/span>Mother is angry about it.\u00a0 <\/span>I try not to let it bother me but focus on seeing that Daddy is comfortable.\u00a0 <\/span>I can\u2019t sleep at night.\u00a0 <\/span>I hear the chiming clock ring the hours until 2AM and then am shocked awake at 6AM.\u00a0 <\/span>I take a message from the doctor and then forget to deliver it.\u00a0 <\/span>I have to cook meals for myself because I can\u2019t eat processed food.\u00a0 <\/span>I wash the frying pan and put it on the burner and turn on the burner to dry it.\u00a0 <\/span>Minutes or hours later I walk into the kitchen and find the burner bright red.\u00a0 <\/span>I am confused, who turned it on?\u00a0 <\/span>It had to be me, there\u2019s no one else, but I can\u2019t remember.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m terrified by the failure of my short-term memory, what important thing have I forgotten.\u00a0 <\/span>I feel like I\u2019m going through this in a fog.\u00a0 <\/span>I call my aunt for help, when I hear the voice of a sympathetic responsible adult I burst into tears.\u00a0 <\/span>She is very supportive.\u00a0 <\/span>I talk to my brother, tell him I\u2019m really having trouble with my health \u2014 he says \u201cget outta there, sis.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>As my father is taken to the hospital, he looks straight in my eyes and says \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One who wants to express:<\/p>\n

My father is dying of cancer.\u00a0 <\/span>My mother is too drunk to take care of him any longer.\u00a0 <\/span>I go home to help so he can have a last weekend before he goes back to the hospital for radiation.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t believe the way they are behaving.\u00a0 <\/span>My father drinks the whole time, he\u2019s continually sipping a little glass of vodka, though he can\u2019t get food past the obstruction in his throat.\u00a0 <\/span>I refuse to deal with the colostomy bag, so I get free lance nurses to help out.\u00a0 <\/span>Mother keeps complaining about the nurses, no matter what I suggest she makes me wrong, she makes constant cruel remarks.\u00a0 <\/span>I write it all down, it\u2019s the only way I can stay sane.\u00a0 <\/span>I feel like I\u2019m in Long Day\u2019s Journey into Night<\/a> and Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf<\/a> rolled into one.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m writing as fast as I can, as though taking dictation from a master dramatist.\u00a0 <\/span>In my wildest dreams I couldn\u2019t come up with dialogue like this.\u00a0 <\/span>Mom & Dad fight about the nurses, about paying the bills, about what to watch on TV.\u00a0 <\/span>My last evening with Dad, he spends most of it worrying about what happened to one of the plastic flasks that he wants to fill with vodka and take to the hospital with him.\u00a0 <\/span>When he\u2019s out of earshot, Mother says \u201cI don\u2019t understand why he has to go for more radiation.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>The nurse says \u201cIt might ease the pain.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Mother says \u201cBut why do that?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I want to smack her.\u00a0 <\/span>She says \u201cIf he just stopped being fed…\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I almost ask if she\u2019s going to take responsibility for stopping his food but stop myself.\u00a0 <\/span>But I feel like an avenging fury.\u00a0 <\/span>I want to grab her and shake her till her teeth rattle and yell that she\u2019s talking about murder.\u00a0 <\/span>Feeling the need for help, I call Aunt Betty.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m sick of carefully editing my conversation.\u00a0 <\/span>I tell her they\u2019re behaving like infants.\u00a0 <\/span>I say I had to get the nurses in the house because neither Dad nor Mom would take responsibility.\u00a0 <\/span>She is shocked.\u00a0 <\/span>She tells me to go home and let them fight it out.\u00a0 <\/span>As my father is being taken away to the hospital, he looks directly in my eyes and says \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there some understanding I missed from the first character?\u00a0 <\/span>Only what a daze she was in, how hard it was to take care of herself in this chaotic environment, how shut down she had to be.\u00a0 <\/span>Desperately trying to do the dutiful daughter. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>??\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>But does she see this?\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

And from the second person?\u00a0 <\/span>O I am so angry at those two jerks.\u00a0 <\/span>Their precious precious lives, wasted in an alcoholic stupor.\u00a0 <\/span>Their marriage degenerated into a battle for control.\u00a0 <\/span>This is no way to finish a life, to finish a marriage. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Deena says \u201cThat\u2019s because you know a better way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, there\u2019s my anger.\u00a0 <\/span>I really am angry at my mother and I didn\u2019t know it til I wrote this piece.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am interested now, reading this, to see that I wrote it, just like the original<\/a>, in the first person, in the present tense, do not use the word “and.” \u00a0I notice that I occasionally call my father “Daddy,” but I never call my mother “Mommy.” One thing I don’t say, in either version, was that when Daddy said “Thank you,” his last words to me, he had an expression in his eyes I’d never seen before. The only words I could find were “His whole soul came into his eyes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an exercise from the Workshop with Deena at Rowe in February 1996. \u00a0After identifying different selves Deena asks us to identify one story that two of your selves share:\u00a0 I choose my father\u2019s death, shared by the one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-story","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}