My dad’s funeral will be Friday, July 16th, at 11 AM. It will take place at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Corvallis, Oregon. All are welcome.
—
My dad had a blood clot in his leg in 2016. I was in the 24-hour room of the Vassar College library when I found out. His leg had ballooned and changed color, but the clot had not moved. He was misdiagnosed initially, and the clot did permanent damage to his left leg. It was always purple, it was always a bit firmer and more rotund than his right leg.
I would ask him how his leg was doing just about every day. I always got some version, “Great! Motion is the lotion, kid!”
When it looked worse, he would tell me that it was because he hadn’t been on the bike that day, that he’d been sitting down too much. When it looked better, he’d show it to me with pride, “See, it’s hardly an issue!”
On Sunday, June 20th — Father’s Day 2021 — I told him I thought it looked worse. We were watching a basketball game. He replied as he normally did, “It’s the end of the term, you know how it goes. I don’t exercise as much as I should.” I pressed him more than I typically did, “Doesn’t it look a bit more purple than usual?” He just lifted it up, directed me back to the basketball game we were watching, and continued on his merry day.
We’d had a version of this interaction dozens and dozens of times over the previous five years.
Earlier that week, he’d been complaining of a very specific back pain. He’d point to a spot on his back and say, “I think I pulled something here.” When I asked for an explanation, he told me it was because the new bed that we got was too low — “I really have to swing myself out of that thing!”
I told him that that didn’t make sense. But then the very specific back pain went away, and everything seemed basically fine again.
And he started breathing a little heavier.
What we know now is that he died of a pulmonary embolism. The clot that had started in his leg — likely in about the same location as his clot had in 2016 — had navigated from his leg to his back, and from his back to his lungs. There, it lodged itself. There, it killed him.
I don’t have much more to say about this right now.
—
I think I got some things wrong about my dad yesterday. Not wrong, I guess, but if every essay is intended to capture the duality of his being, then I’m not sure that yesterday’s did. Definitely had some passion, though.
I guess I explained it, right there in writing: I have to lean into anger to feel like I can function. And yesterday’s essay was angry.
That’s always there for me — whether it’s the cultural stereotype of the Irish hot-streak, or the very real, if sparing, moments when the gentle giant that was my father reared back and only embodied the latter half of that endearing phrase.
But what someone does with anger — whether they turn inward to focus, or outward to hurt — is a singularly defining principle, at least for my dad and me. And my dad almost never turned his anger outward. It fed perfectionism, and it fed a dogged work ethic. But the delicate way he handled other people was always visible, always beautiful.
From my dad’s best friend Walter (aka Big Malter):
“As your dad often advised in the most distressing of situations — keep feeling the feelings, don't suppress them no matter where that takes you. You are doing that, fighting the fight with your feelings. And as he and so many others would say, the only way out is through.
I never saw or knew that side of your dad — the sports and street fighter. I came onto the scene much later. But that again is part of the duality you referred to so well earlier. For me, he was the gentle giant — incredibly strong physically with a presence that could not be ignored. Matched with his charisma and his smile, everyone knew when Mike was in the room. His gentle ways manifested themselves in his ability to just plain listen — something you also referred to earlier, and something that is just so rare. He was not judgmental of people going through sometimes seemingly insane situations. His ear, and his words with his recommendations — that was the gentle giant in him. And since he was so well respected, his words had impact.”
Nothing to add.
—
The thoughts in my head have no direction. They bounce from wall to wall in my skull, never staying in one place long enough to form anything coherent. To burrow down in any one place, I have to force myself to do something else. I haven’t been able to force myself to read yet, but I have been able to force myself to write here and there; to momentarily halt the ping pong balls popping around in my head like they’re trying to figure out who has the first pick in the NBA Draft. To corral them, I have to immerse myself in one thing — or try to. I have to convince myself that one thing actually trumps all other things.
Yesterday that one thing was anger. But no one voice in my head is right, so if I’m not at least trying to listen to a couple of them, I’m losing truths.
I’m losing truths.
Some of the ping pong balls dinging around in my head seem so stupid. I keep having one that tells me that grief is like wakeboarding. I can stay on the surface — able to socialize, able to form coherent sentences, able to laugh — as long as there’s a boat tugging me. But if the boat stops, I immediately sink.
See, not that helpful a ping pong ball. Few of them are.
I think I’m still in denial. I know my dad’s dead, but the permanence of the situation isn’t really fathomable. Maybe I keep thinking that if I can be as normal as possible, then normal will start to feel normal again. I block off the hours at night and in the morning to write, trying to bleed in front of the keyboard. Then I try to suture the wounds I’ve opened up and face the world. (If the above analogy were better, I’d say I was ready to get back on the wakeboard.)
It turns out there are many social obligations of grief. By 3 PM every day, I’m so tired.
I’ve been trying to hold “Dead Dad Office Hours” with people I know who have been through something at least somewhat similar to what I’m going through. Saturday, I spoke with a wise friend from college who lost her dad in the past year. She, too, came from a four-person nuclear family. She, too, was inseparable from her dad.
Of the many helpful things she said, one in particular was the observation that every member of her family — her mother, her brother, and her — grieved differently. And she told me to trust that we’re all grieving in our own way, but that no one is doing it right. As the hours have turned to days, I have clung to that observation — clung to the okay-ness of the fact that I want something so different than what my mom and sister want right now. But that doesn’t mean I’m handling any of it well.
This friend of mine also said that death was a logistical nightmare. That starts tomorrow, now that the holiday is over. Add and stir, I guess.
—
This essay seems distant from me. My two best friends came over today at about 3 PM and stayed until about 9 PM. I’ve been telling people I want and need space — that in the few moments I want to be around people other than my mom and sister, it’s people who knew my dad well, and who can enhance my maniacal attempt at historicizing his life. I want stories. Maybe I’m just in my collection phase — nothing to give out, so I’m trying to take it all in.
My two best friends made me laugh a lot, which is disorienting and guilt-inducing (for what I know are stupid reasons). We ate, we looked at pictures from my childhood, and we went to a nearby middle school to shoot hoops for a little while (my jumper felt...okay? Normal?).
Sleep has felt like torture. It’s worse than I imagined it being. I’m actually able to fall asleep, but only for about 20 minutes at a time. Then I jolt awake and try again. It is the most stressful part of my day. Tonight I’ll end up sleeping pretty well.
I went to Timberhill Athletic Club this morning — a gym that my dad spent countless hours in, on bikes, nautilus machines, and “killer machines” (adaptive motion machines). I ran into one person, and he was a good person to run into. I cried when he hugged me, of course. I’m always one hug away from melting.
I lifted for about an hour. It felt really good. I realized that it was the first time I’d felt like I was in my body since he died.
I spent my entire life obsessed with learning things. And I feel like I know nothing about what’s happening to me right now.
—
My dad got life from two things, mainly. He loved engaging with students, and he loved exercising hard. Growing up, I heard few things more than, “I can bench 300 pounds...five times!” It was one of my dad’s favorite opening lines — a signal that the jovial, loving fellow you were talking to was also the strongest person you knew.
During the pandemic, he never lifted weights, and he never really got to engage students. He called Zoom teaching “yelling at a microwave.”
He would constantly talk about how difficult the pandemic was for students, and so he was more than gentle with them. He didn’t make anyone turn on their cameras, so he’d stand in front of 200 black squares for 2 - 4 hours every single day putting on the performance of a lifetime. I hated those 200 black squares. I hate those 200 black squares. He never did.
Watching my dad teach on Zoom was like watching Larry Bird try to bring all of his basketball excellence and intensity to NBA 2k (a basketball video game). It was admirable, but it was heartbreaking.
Toward the end, he said his foot started bothering him, so he stopped standing and started sitting. But he would still careen through the philosophies of education with as dutiful an exuberance as anyone could muster. I loved listening to his lectures as I plowed through emails and essays. It was the great gift of the pandemic.
He taught a class the day before he died. My mom asked him why he was breathing so heavily during it. I’m sure he dismissed her — “It’s the end of the term. I get tired at the end of every term.” That was true. It was also not true.
Duality, I guess.
And it also probably conveys what I was trying to tell you about my dad earlier. He never trained his anger outward — he thought if he wasn’t feeling well, that it was his fault. And he thought that the solution just involved turning his anger inward and perfecting what he was already doing — riding the bike harder, teaching to 200 black squares more passionately, starving himself until dinner.
None of that stuff stops a blood clot.
I’m going to leave the final word to his friend Walter, again:
As your dad often advised in the most distressing of situations — keep feeling the feelings, don't suppress them no matter where that takes you. You are doing that, fighting the fight with your feelings. And as he and so many others would say, the only way out is through.
I never saw or knew that side of your dad — the sports and street fighter. I came onto the scene much later. But that again is part of the duality you referred to so well earlier. For me, he was the gentle giant — incredibly strong physically with a presence that could not be ignored. Matched with his charisma and his smile, everyone knew when Mike was in the room. His gentle ways manifested themselves in his ability to just plain listen — something you also referred to earlier, and something that is just so rare. He was not judgmental of people going through sometimes seemingly insane situations. His ear, and his words with his recommendations — that was the gentle giant in him. And since he was so well respected, his words had impact.
This essay isn’t very good. Adds to the broader picture, I guess.
Thanks for reading. Tomorrow’s will be better, I guess.