My Dad Is Dead
My dad is dead... I feel so strange.
I don't know if I miss him or not. Were we really special for each other? What was I for him? Was I his redemption? Did he really mean anything to me? I wonder if it is supposed to feel like that for normal people too.
Well...
I think at least I must have been special to him... After all he came back for me. I think that somehow that makes him special to me, because he never gave up on me, and I did let him take me back.
My dad was an alley cat.
He never made it big, though he was smart, he was always struggling for his next meal. Too independant to be adopted, and too tough to be caught by animal control. Just a plain tough and stubborn bastard.
I have fuzzy uncomfortable kitten memories of being caught in the violent catfights between him and my mother. You know, those fights destroyed my mother's flame inside... However she was stronger than that and she had decided she would save me... She found an opportunity and fled with me, a run away hiding from place to place, running from him... until a familly found us one nioght in a parking and compassionately adopted us. My mother was a furry, having been beaten by other cruel humans during our journey, but they managed to grab her, tame her.
Cats are not supposed to be mated for life. That's not the way... Maybe that's why an attempt at a familly unit had to fall appart that way, we can't fight our feline nature. After all the running the newfound human dwelling finnally granted me the respise needed for a cub to grow up a happy sheltered life.
That is, Until he found me again.
He had been relentlessly looking for me all my life. I had no idea. I had forgotten him. I had moved on... But he had refused to move on. And he found me. He looked scruffy, uncomfortable, sitting still on the porch of a house, staring at me as as I was walking back home. That was our first encounter. He was skinny, just bones and muscles, not very big but tough looking and brooding, and such an intense penetrating glare in his eyes. It froze my thoughts to ice.
I could not read him. I was still a cub then, but now on the verge of adulthood. I was not the little ball of fur he remembered that was suddenly torn out of his life. It had been years. As a matter of fact, it had been most of my life at this point. He looked familiar: Deep down I knew he was my dad. However he was also a mysterious unreadable stranger that I didn't care to meet. I knew nothing of him... I knew only to fear him. Confused tortured memories of violence and anger resurfaced, like the hand of a long forgotten primal nightmare, reaching out of from the deepest recesses of my soul. I didn't know what to expect. And I was so afraid. I was alone. Petrified. There was noone to protect me from him, from my memories, from my fears. There was no cocoon, no blanket, no escape. My mind was blank, confused... Yes, I was afraid. The ultimate kind of fear that freezes you, not the kind that makes you scream and run away.
He just asked politely if he could come in. He was coming in peace, to win me, not to torment me. I didn't know how to refuse, I didn't know if I wanted to refuse, nor if I could, so I let him in. All I remember is him sitting there on the couch awkward, and me silent, so shy and petrified that my life would forever change, sucked into a new tornado of violence. He could just steal me from this house and I would not know how to stop him. My mother would not be there to help me, she would never find me again. After all, he could not find us... Well, not until that day. He could do the same. I don't know what we talked about... Who cares? The fqct is he had come back for me, but this time his resolve was following the voice of reason. He would not resort to violence or temporary insanity. He had come to ask permission to see me again. Maybe that's wy his eyes were so intense and unreadable. He was on a mission of redemption. I was not going to be a victim. Though not scared any more I was still uncomfortable, yet I accepted him.
I was going to be adopted by my dad again. Eventually he and my mom communicated through mediators. She did not approve and could never forgive nor trust him again, but she left me the freedom of choice. She knew better, cats have to make their own mind and cannot be told. After a few gifts and letters to try to win me over, he invited me and I was off to see him, during the warm summers. I joined in in his life.
A strange new adventure as an emerging young man. He showed me a very different life... How to survive as a man, strong, looking for scraps in the back alleys. A different culture altogether. An opening of my mind. He wasn't going to beg humans for food, he was more proud than that. At first, We lived broke, in the back of a run down gas station but he kept moving here and there. I still remember that first sense of summer heat, the smell of hot asphalt,and the heated air rising in slow pulsations off the gray roadways, the gas station sign advertizin 97 cent gas, a whopping 2 cents cheaper than the competition, significant in this runned down neighborhood. The smell of poverty, the smell of freedom, the way of the felines. Proud. Dirty. Tough. Noble.
My dad had violent outbursts allright, but he had a strong sense of moral and familly. You've seen pissed of cats. It's a sight to behold. Those teeth and claws multiply like the madness of the fury. He hated himself for his uncontrollable urges of violence. They had destroyed him and his life... My mother running away had destroyed him and he was to blame. He still maddly loved her but knew winning her back was an impossibility. She too was strong, fierce, independant, and frail at the same time. How could he not love her? How could he not see she would run away to protect her only real treasure?
I can't say how strong my connections to my dad are, because of all this confusion in my feelings, and my inability to fully commit my love to him. All that time of discovery with him, I somehow stayed aloof. He had brought me into his own world too late for me to fully embrace it. I always felt like a spectator. Yes, one that is fully immersed, fully welcomed, but I would return every time to my house cat life, once the weather would start turning. One of the reasons I stayed there is the strangeness I felt. The other was him. I felt he needed me. I was the last link to a shreded life he lost through his own weaknesses, and that he was so desesperatly longing for.
Well, time went by. I eventually became adult. After some travelling of my own, I settled down closer to my dad, but still far enough we would not have the urge to see each other too often. That worked for me. I did not fear him anymore, I was bigger and stronger, so now his outbursts of rage became nothing more than tantrums to me. He had also mellowed significantly and they had grown rare. We had seemingly mended some of the pieces of our lives. Not a pretty mosaic, just a ragtag set of broken parts picked up and put together with the glue of despair, incomplete, still broken. But it's a start...
That brings me now... My dad is dead.
It started a couple of weeks ago after I visited him. I had left him tormented but I thought nothing of it. He had good reasons to. We just got the news that my cousin commited suicide. Her sister found her dead cold in the litter they shared. She had done that as a terrible punishment for her parents. She was angry at them for birthing her, for making her so small and feel so awkward. My aunt was one of those tiny, pretty kitties... For some reason my cousin didn't learn to appreciate her own beauty. Out of place, she had plotted her own solution to her personal misery. She had succeeded... And her blind rage hurt my dad.
On my arrival home, I was informed that my dad had been found unconscious in the streets, brought to a vet. I had to go back. As I arrived to the vet, he had awakened and was held down on a stainless steel table, naked,
surrounded by humans. Somehow though not fully aware, he was fighting his attackers, yelling a plea
to not be tormented any more. Who are you? Why are you doing this to me? Please!!! It was a terrible sight to see.
His mind was shrouded by confusion. He was helpless, squirming, incoherent. Unable to make coordinated movements he was feebly fighting the demons assaulting him in this wakened nightmare. It was so terribly demeaning... Once again I could not recognise my father. He was again a stranger, in his strange universe, fighting a fight I could not comprehend. But the vets meant good, and he was fighting his savior - They fought back and managed to save him.
They pumped him with drugs and eventually shaved his head to drill the pressure out. When I was allowed to see him again, he was some sort of frankenstein with a big scar on his head. He stunk of antiseptics and some
uncomfortable foreign body odor that seemed to come from inside that I did not recognise... Seeping froom his head? But he was OK. It was him again, he was so gentle and we were reacquainting. He was in good hands so I could go home. We left happy. He had been tamed. Maybe we could now be closer in his path to recovery, doing away with the last shreds of violence and resentment. The fire of insatisfaction in his eyes finally extinguished... Yeah... Well... I'm not really keeping a surprise here. It was not to be so...
He relapsed short after, the blow was hard, and took him down, deep. He would not have a chance to fight this time.
I was told that was it. He was still alive but now he would never, ever wake up. I had to go back. The vets wanted me to make the decision to put him to sleep - definitively - pull the plug on a painfull, tormented life full of unachieved hopes, desires - and somehow love. The weird, rejected kind of love... You don't make fairy tales out of that.
As I was travelling down for this last time, I stopped, as the melancholy was sweeping my mind into an abyss of despair. I settled down in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, a side road running in front of a large ranch. I watched the sad sunrise slowly flood the buildings and its sea of bovines sprawling in front of me to infinity. An ocean of misery.
There was fog from the dust and methane emmanating from dense concentration camp where cows were packed awaiting their doom. It corrupted the light into sadness. I was filled with melancholy, not sure of my emotions. I was alone, felt alone, and yet I had a sense of communion at that moment with this dull colored universe. My pores were absorbing the sad, dirty light of that early morning. The misery and solitude of the world... No matter how many are around you are ultimately alone with your destiny. All you can do is stand tall and face it. Calmly. Like those cows. No hope. No hate. No distress. My dad had been alone all this time. His quest was pointless. We were all alone, together. Why was I sad then? I had been taught to be tough and independant. I could feel the warmth of the light slowly reviving my soul. Why did I care what was going on then if we're not connected... Is there hope for me? This made me realize this wasn't necessarily bad. It was the ultimate realization of why cats are independant, proud. They have that ultimate understanding and are strong enough to accept it. We are not the kind to mop. So I decided to shake the melancholy to continue my journey, breathing deep to relinquish the hand of sorrow was squeezing my heart. Its grip was already weakening. I am stronger than that. That's why I'm a cat. I had business to attend...
At the vet, I saw my dad on a bed, he looked peaceful. Though hooked on machines he had regained his dignity.
The smell was still there, but it didn't bother me as much. It wasn't so strong. Maybe I had adopted it as part of my familly too. The vet, honestly, non appolegetically announced to me that his body functions were failing. I respect them for that. I hate whiners. I would not need to make the tough decision, he was going out on his own terms. His last gift to me. I would not have the guilt of patricide.
As his last heartbeat took his breath away, he left peacefully, finally a moment of calm in the rough seas of his life.
I was there, watching over him for once. And I felt him go...
The soothing brush of his presence watching over me for a few days. Then it faded, as he finally accepted that we would never be any closer. Don't get me wrong, I have a thriving familly that cared for my dad very much, stray cats tend to have large families. That didn't prevent him from being alone, desperate, and broke... One of my cousin recounted that once he wrote her a check for a thousand kisses, and that's all he could give her. As he died, my grandmother was also visited by a butterfly that landed on her as she basked in the sun. She took it as a sign that my father was at peace with her too. I sincerely wish my dad luck where ever he went. I wish him a better life without anger, he has a good soul deep down and didn't deserve the painful fate his life choices carved for himself, and for us...
Rest in peace.
In my own way, now I think I love you... Thinking of you now, I cry... Yes, I love you -. in my own way.