In fact, he did such a good job that I'm pretty sure my collection of neuroses aren't his fault at all. Even if we had trouble seeing eye-to-eye on how good Rage Against the Machine was (they're great), he was a good dad who gave a shit about my happiness. And how rare is that? I think there have been like five of those ever.
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Those are actors.
So I dove into all the weird medical stuff face-first. "Okay," I said, sanitizing my hands and putting on tight rubber blue gloves, then realizing I had to pee and deciding to hold it because this was more important, "So this plugs into him here, and then I turn that, and it fills up with ... wow, that's a weird color." Let's just stop there. The point is that I was lucky to get to do that. It feels insensitive to point that out, because there's a lot that's shitty about this. But still, I got to say goodbye. And I'm lucky for that opportunity, and for having the support from my friends and family that I needed to jump into that, if you'll excuse me, big ol' pile of shit.
When things were really bad, I spent a lot of effort just trying to make him comfortable. After working at the same simple task for far longer than it should have taken, my dad finally got exasperated and snapped, "I'm trying to die here."
"And I'm trying to help keep you comfortable," I said.
I hope this weird little article reminds you to call up your dad today, or to drop by with a bottle of whiskey or something. Or to just just look past his screw ups and the walls between you and acknowledge that even really great families can be messy. And if you're reading this and getting jealous because of how much cooler my dad was than yours, then hahaha, just wait until I tell you the story about the wild boar.
For Dad.
12/1/1957 - 2/20/2015
JF Sargent will thank you for making a donation to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.
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