Shiver

I was six years old. I believe it was the summer after first grade. My mom was pregnant with my younger brother and we were at our country house in Pennsylvania. The woman from across the street knocked on our door because her daughter had lice, did we have any of that special shampoo? Turned out we did. I had just had lice. It also turned out that her daughter was my age, her son was my sister's age and her dad was a lawyer like my dad and from a similar background as my father. The families became fast friends. H and I collected slugs in the summer and named them, usually 'slimey' and 'slimey 2' etc. In the winter we made snow men and when my mom went away for work and my dad stayed in the city we'd stay with them and have jelly donuts for breakfast and dance to Hey Mickey by Toni Basil and Venus (which we thought was penis and a very dirty song) by the Bangles.

One day while playing with our slugs H asked me a questions that haunts me to this day. She asked me which parent I would pick to die if I had to pick one. I had never thought about which one I loved more. Anyway, I realized there were more practical concerns than that. My dad makes more money than my mom. Also my dad is around on a regular basis and home every night. But, my mom can cook better, she braids my hair and she cleans the house. When my dad gets me ready for school I have two uneven pigtails. He does make a valiant effort with dinner and treats us with forbidden delicacies like ice cream and entenmann's cookies when mom's away. What it came down to was that I feared my dad was the weaker person, that as much as he loved us, he loved my mom more and her death would destroy him. I pictured him in their bedroom staring at pictures of her, leaving us to our own devices - snotty nosed, dirty, eating moldy food. I knew that despite not making as much money and her traveling, that mom would be stoic and strong and it would be business as usual at our house, just without the magical --> -->je ne sais quoi that my dad's booming, jovial presence brought to our home. I loved my dad so much that as a little girl I wanted to marry him. He played with me. He engaged me. Mom was no nonsense. Dad indulged me and my ideas and my dreams and fantasies. Dad told us bedtime stories when mom was away about the great baseball players of his youth like Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth and about the time he saw Robert Kennedy Jr. speak on 14th street and about he and his twin brother dating the same girl.

Many years later I realize that my dad's softness and kindness on the outside belie his steel interior. Meanwhile, my mother's no nonsense, stiff upper lip belies her soft, loving interior. Now I think they'd have been equally able/unable to handle the death of the other and raise us kids. I shudder at the thought.

My dad has atrial fibrillation. It means he has a dangerously erratic heartbeat. He is taking three medications for it. A beta blocker, lipitor and coumadin, a form of rat poison used to thin his blood and prevent clotting. In April, he went for a catheter ablation which was supposed to abate the need for the coumadin and regularize his heartbeat. The procedure was unsuccessful and his dosage of coumadin was actually increased.

Last Friday my dad went in to electrical cardioversion where he is sedated and defibrillators are placed on his back and heart to shock his heart into regularity. That was unsuccessful as well. He has another cathater ablation scheduled for January 31which will focus on different parts of the heart than his first one did.

I am scared.

My dad's response to my reaction was, "this isn't a bad thing [that it didn't work], everytime something doesn't work, we get closer to the solution. We're not done with options yet so nothing to worry about." Either my dad's a lot stronger than I thought he was or he is protecting me from worry, albeit unsuccessfully.

I can empathize with what he's going through, if he is actually scared. Not too long ago, I was on the roller coaster hell of close calls and near misses, believing I saw a light at the end of the tunnel of my treatment only to be back in complete darkness at square one. I hope he's not feeling the despair that I felt.

Now that ages old question is coming back to haunt me as I absorb the fact that treatment isn't working for my beloved dad. As much as I wasn't ready at age 6 to lose either parent, it is scarier now. My parents are people now. I appreciate them now. I know them now. We've gone through so much together. They love me unconditionally, just because I am me. Their love is my foundation. Without it, could I stand? My dad tells this story of his grandmother's funeral and how my grandmother, his mother, was so out of her mind bereft that men had to hold her back from jumping into the grave with her mother. If I lost my dad now, I would be in that mind state.

This is yet another thing I have no control over. I feel lucky that my health crisis schooled me to drink up my moments and live in the present tense. It also taught me that mortality is not an abstract notion.

I haven't spoken about my fears to my mother, sister or brother. They'd probably "tsk, tsk" me away anyway. I hope they're right.