Breaking my own rule again

Had a bit of sad news just now. My dad relapsed. He left me a message at 3am and said he was going to try check himself into the VA (Veterans Admin.) hospital. I visited him yesterday, and I think I might have been able to talk some sense into him -- in directly that is, I could tell he relapsed the moment I walked into his apartment and started coughing. The look of a person's home that's strung out on hard drugs has a very distinctive feel to it. This time I pretended not to see garbage that had overflown into the kitchen, smell the feces from the dog that had not been let out, not see the missing appliances and more pawn-able electronics and music equipment were gone as I walked over the clutter and stains in the carpet and sat down like nothing had changed.

I didn't storm out like I did a few years ago. I talked to him. A few months ago he had gotten off interferon treatments. A kind of treatment of last resort for Hepatitis C sufferers, basically chemo-therapy for your liver. Most people have to pass a psyche eval. in order before they can start treatment since one of the most disturbing side effects is suicide. If my Dad's anything he's tough, but poison is poison, and I watched the treatment literally shrink him over the last two years. What I'm trying to get at is that he's pretty weak right now. He was sober during my graduation in May, but still on treatments, so I figure he must have relapsed just recently. Maybe for a month at most. He had the crazy whatever to-hell-with-everything-look but without the sick grin this time. He looked like a hangover in hell.

I just talked to him and let him talk. Every now and then I throw in something like, you know Grand-daddy only lived to sixty eight and you're in late fifties or simply, you can't run wild for much longer you know.

After a few hours of this he managed to get his strength up enough for us to go out. I wanted try to give him a normal day, and maybe he was trying to do the same for me. We even saw the new Batman (great movie btw). All this was so hard to do without condemning him or lashing out; he was tweaking the whole time like he was on MS treatments. Still, I gave him one day with me, and that might have worked. Time will tell.

I know arguing won't work. Tough love won't either, I tried that for the better part of a decade. What did work last time was something no one wanted. My brother died, and that tragic event woke my father out of his haze four years ago. He relapsed about a year later and that's when I stormed out on him.

I'm amazed he's still alive to tell the truth. Statistically, he probably should have died several times by now. Both my brother and I used to wait for that call. You know all those your so and so smoke's crack jokes? Well, they were never a joke with me. My dad was the too cool dad that everyone wished they had when I was a kid, but he turned into a homeless crack head for nearly a decade. Real cool. If you ever wonder why I like to make people laugh, well it's because I had to learn to laugh at the world at a really young age. It was either that or hate the world and I saw enough of that in him to want to rebel against it.

Now, I have to decide, if I'm going to try to help him further while I'm still here. I should call him back. I should.