July 7th sounds like a lucky day. 7/7.
I was already expecting to book the flight home when my mom called to tell me my dad was sick and they were headed to the hospital. None of us take illness that seriously, almost like we’ve developed this unspoken rule to trudge through the cold / flu / COVID and only inform each other after we’ve fully recovered.
Here’s a list of things I did that day. On July 7th, I:
Biked to the grocery store
That’s it. I got the call pretty early, around 9:30am. My mom put me on call with the nurse, because she lost her perfectly capable English ability from shock. I typed the nurse’s comments on the Notes app — the last modified date on the document still says 7/7. We were advised to contact all family members because he could die by EOD. Or even earlier.
My legs fell, I sobbed, I screamed. The fear physically sets into my body just by envisioning that moment. I had a cigarette on the porch to calm my nerves, wishing it was a sedative instead that would put me to sleep, away from the nightmare of reality. I packed a bag, including a set of black clothes – just in case.
I booked the flight. Luckily, in a twisted sense, I was the only one who needed to be contacted because no other family members live in the states. Once the plane landed, I sprinted through the throngs of people at LAX, not a single person more desperate and wretched than me in the whole airport. I fell face first on the marbled floor, backpack sailing over my head, that left me with huge bruises on my knee as a reminder. I got to the ICU past visiting hours, but they still let me in. He was unconscious, with a ventilator, or an oxygen mask, or nothing at all. I don’t know. Some images, my brain decides are not worth remembering.
My world crumbled in an instant, it settled a fine dust of foggy dissociation over everything, it left behind detritus — emotional and otherwise — that I kept stumbling into unknowingly. I wasn’t surprised when my therapist said I was showing signs of PTSD. There are entire weeks of the year I don’t remember — and the weeks that I do recall, I wish I didn’t. I re-traumatize myself when I have to tell someone (for the 100th fucking time) what happened in July, and again when the inevitable question of “how’s he doing now?” is raised. It always takes me a second to answer. I know it’s well-intentioned, which makes it even harder, because I’m scared to let down the people hoping to hear he’s doing better.
How do you define ‘better’? I suppose he is, because he’s no longer unconscious in the ICU. He couldn’t even recognize me those first few days, and now he can. Is that enough? I’m so grateful he knows who I am now, but he’s not ‘better’ to me, he’s forever worse, because he’s permanently disabled. That’s usually what I end up confessing, even though that’s a bad answer. I should probably say he’s doing well, even if it’s a lie. Yet it feels so incredibly dishonest.
Further complicating my inner confusion, I began to feel like an impostor when the grief began too. When I should be so grateful that my dad was alive, instead all I could think about was what was lost.
I grieve the obvious – my dad will never be who he used to be. Mainly I couldn’t accept this total regression of my parent, someone who should be taking care of me and not the other way around, at least for a few more decades. But he can’t talk or walk anymore. The list of things he can no longer do greatly outnumbers the list of things he can. He can still make phone calls, but the only texts I get are “ㅋㅋㅋ” and emojis. The text he sent on my birthday was the simplest I’ve ever gotten: 🎂.
The illness dramatically affected his speech. In Korean the honorific form is used to speak more formally to adults and people you don’t know very well, ending sentences with 요 (-yo) and answering with 네 (neh). He uses "네” with me now. This syllable haunted me for months. Every time I couldn’t help but feel like a stranger to my own father, the way he spoke to me like I was an authority figure. It made me feel like an adult when I never wanted to. And it felt like he became a baby. My dad, the baby.
The more time passes, the more I’ll miss, the tighter I clutch at memories I have. He’ll never visit me in the city I live in, or travel anywhere for that matter. He won’t do my taxes or cook Korean food on my birthday or bring my car back with a full tank of gas. When I had to submit expense reports, I’d log in to our Verizon account, and he always asked me if I was the one who requested the access code (who else would it be?). It’s funny, he used to annoy me so much, I hated him for it. And now I even grieve this loss of being so irritated at him. I wish he’d text me the Verizon confirmation code. They send the code to my phone now, because I set the primary account holder to myself.
When I was in first grade, my parents bought me a Cinderella-themed bike from Costco. We went to the park one Saturday and my dad unscrewed the training wheels because I was finally going to learn how to ride a two-wheeler. The man was so, so scared I would fall. He spent the whole afternoon hunched over, pushing the back of my bike, only letting go for seconds at a time.
The next day, he couldn’t get out of bed due to severe back pain. My mom took me to the park instead. She let go of the bike immediately, and there I went, no training wheels for the first time. The story of how I learned to drive is hilariously similar to this one. My dad gave the initial attempt, but ultimately, my mom was the one who taught me.
I always thought my dad would teach my kids how to ride a bike. He’d probably do the same, hunched over, too scared to let go, too afraid that his precious grandkids will get a scrape on their knee, God forbid.
I’ll never get that moment. I’d have to strike a deal with God just to even have him around when I have children. I will be eternally grateful if he is, but it coexists with so much heartache because he cannot be the grandfather I imagined he would be. Because he would look after my kids so well. They would never, ever get hurt on his watch. Is it so lofty and farfetched that I dreamed my parents would have a comfortable life post-retirement and be around to play with my future children? I dreamed, I could imagine it so vividly, that when I brought my family over for dinner, my dad would still go outside to re-park my car on the driveway, insinuating I never learned to drive properly. Grief is crazy in that way. I mourn the loss of a future that never happened. It’s too soon.
My mistake was that I lived, expecting certain events to happen in the future like I was entitled to them. Most of them happy and hopeful, like graduations, promotions, marriages, births of children. The heartbreak was further ahead, like watching my favorite people get older and ill. I knew I would experience the upsetting parts one day. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I was 24 and unprepared and fucking furious at the universe for fast-forwarding this pain to me.
In the summer, my dad buys 2 watermelons at a time. He slices them and puts the pieces into the largest tupperware we have. He tells me to eat from the container on the top shelf. The top container only has the ripest, sweetest pieces from each watermelon.
Happy Father’s Day, I love you.