Betsy, I visit him with a purpose, an agenda. Twenty-two years have passed since I’d told him I wanted to become a distiller. I had fulfilled every promise I’d made to him. I’d completed my undergraduate education. I’d served in the military. I’d gone to law school … twice … and earned two law degrees, become a lawyer. This day, I’ve come to tell him I have not given up on my dream.
By this point, my father has entered his dotage, although his mind remains sharp. I’m 44 years old. I don’t need to ask my dad’s permission to change careers. But he is my father. I still need his approval.
“I’ve done well as a lawyer,” I say. “But I’m going to become a distiller of bourbon.”
My father looks concerned. I can read his mind. He has often told me to follow the money. I can tell he is worried about the finances.
“You sure?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Well, Tom,” he says, his forehead furrowed, nodding slowly, “that’s between you and your banker.”
* * *
Fast-forward.
1989.
My father has suffered a stroke and my sister and I move him out of assisted living and into a nursing home. His condition worsens. When I visit, he stares at me without recognition, routinely moving his empty fingers to his lips as if he held a cigarette. I can’t bear seeing him like this, ghoulish, a shell of himself. I finally say to my sister, “This is enough. I can’t stand to see my old soldier this way. If my old soldier saw me like that, he would do something.”
Incredibly, he had been evaluated with only 10 percent disability. I tell Mary Jo that I want him reevaluated at the Veterans Administration for a 100 percent disability.
“If we move him, it may kill him,” she says.
“I can’t stand to see him like this.”
The move to the V.A., his war wounds, and the shrapnel still embedded in his brain do kill him.
The heartbreak I feel is physical, an aching that roars throughout my body that at times immobilizes me. I force myself to press on. As he would have.
The dream becoming a reality.
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