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Edward Harrison LeZotte 1935-2004
Dec. 10th, 2005 12:34 pmYesterday was the one year anniversary of my father's passing. Three days ago last year, we made the very difficult decision to take him off of life support and it was a year ago Friday, at approximately 11 p.m., that we got the call that it was finally over.
They make up very nice euphamisms for taking someone off of life support, as if you're just going to pull a plug and, bang, they just switch off like a light. It doesn't work that way. We were told that it could take more than two weeks so I count myself, and my family, and especially my father, among the lucky. I think this leads to many misconceptions that have surfaced lately in the media but I don't want to get political about it so I'll stop there. This is about my dad.
My father and I had had a very complex relationship as I was close to him when I was very young and too little to understand his sudden change when he started drinking, unlike my brother and sister who had experience with it and were old enough to understand and deal with it. He abused me, I won't lie about it, mostly mentally, sometimes physically but very rarely. And when it was, you could see in his eyes it wasn't him. I don't hate him. He was a very sad, very unhappy old man diagnosed too late in life with severe manic depression and towards the end, he had developed dementia, making it even harder to cope with his commonly explosive temper and mood swings.
But to only say that about him would feel wrong, be wrong, forced, fake. He was an intellectual; he loved books on anything from ancient history to Rippermania conspiracies. He loved Joyce and Fitzgerald, Homer and Doyle, Christie and Smollet. He loved cartoon art and owned many pieces of original drawings by such masters as Walt Kelly. He was smart, outspoken and, when he wanted, extremely loving and caring. He often told me that, even though he didn't know how to deal with my illness, we wished he could take it all away and I could be happy.
This is the last real "landmark" of my ultimately crappy year so now I really feel as if I can move on. This song reminds me frighteningly how it felt last year and up until recently, made me cry:
A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast
The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl
Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
Peace, Ghani
They make up very nice euphamisms for taking someone off of life support, as if you're just going to pull a plug and, bang, they just switch off like a light. It doesn't work that way. We were told that it could take more than two weeks so I count myself, and my family, and especially my father, among the lucky. I think this leads to many misconceptions that have surfaced lately in the media but I don't want to get political about it so I'll stop there. This is about my dad.
My father and I had had a very complex relationship as I was close to him when I was very young and too little to understand his sudden change when he started drinking, unlike my brother and sister who had experience with it and were old enough to understand and deal with it. He abused me, I won't lie about it, mostly mentally, sometimes physically but very rarely. And when it was, you could see in his eyes it wasn't him. I don't hate him. He was a very sad, very unhappy old man diagnosed too late in life with severe manic depression and towards the end, he had developed dementia, making it even harder to cope with his commonly explosive temper and mood swings.
But to only say that about him would feel wrong, be wrong, forced, fake. He was an intellectual; he loved books on anything from ancient history to Rippermania conspiracies. He loved Joyce and Fitzgerald, Homer and Doyle, Christie and Smollet. He loved cartoon art and owned many pieces of original drawings by such masters as Walt Kelly. He was smart, outspoken and, when he wanted, extremely loving and caring. He often told me that, even though he didn't know how to deal with my illness, we wished he could take it all away and I could be happy.
This is the last real "landmark" of my ultimately crappy year so now I really feel as if I can move on. This song reminds me frighteningly how it felt last year and up until recently, made me cry:
A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast
The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl
Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
Peace, Ghani
