I’m fine. I don’t mean that cavalierly — truly, I am okay.
And also, the facts of the headline and subhead of this email are true.
It is my dad’s birthday today. He should be turning 64 but instead he is dead.
I had emergency surgery yesterday. I was supposed to meet with a surgeon in June 2023 (June 2023!) to talk about my gallbladder but instead I puked for ten hours on Sunday night and had my fiancée take me to the ER at 8am.
I don’t have a dad anymore. I don’t have a gallbladder anymore.
Here is what I do have.
Parker, in her purple tie-dye sweatsuit and her burnt red wool beanie, her perfect heart shaped face buried under blankets, her glasses strewn next to her carelessly, snoozing with Zucchini on the new pull out sofa we bought from IKEA last weekend because we finally have a guest room. She’s tired from the past two days.
Parker, who woke up groggy to her alarm at 7:30 the morning I needed to go to the ER and said “of course baby” when I told her I needed help, who Googled which hospital was closest and took my insurance and had the best online reviews, who gathered my clothes and my wallet while I shook naked on the pull out sofa where I’d been lying all night when I wasn’t standing over the toilet puking and clutching my belly, who patiently responded to my fears when I expressed why I didn’t want to go to the ER even though I knew I needed to, who, when I told her my main fear was peeing in my pants in the waiting room because I couldn’t seem to control my bladder when I vomited violently and it seemed absolutely certain that I would vomit violently at some point at the ER, calmly said “that might happen, it’s true, but that’s okay” then went back to our bedroom and got me an extra pair of sweatpants and underwear.
Parker, going to our house to check on our dog, going to the store to pick up my stool softeners, going to the sushi spot by our house to pick up dinner tonight because it’s my Dad’s birthday and I like to eat sushi for dinner to celebrate him on this occasion.
I call Parker my wife at the hospital because she’s going to be, because it’s easier, because once I say it we have fun with the role play, but also because I want to emphasize that we are family. You don’t need to have a wife to have a family; I have enough queer radical friends to know that the institution of marriage is a tool of the state and that family is so much more than “my wife” but also — I guess I am not that radical. And also — I just really like calling her my wife.
It’s the day of my emergency gallbladder surgery and my mom is on the phone and she wants to know that I’m okay.
I tell her she doesn’t need to take a plane just to come see me now — the surgery will only last one hour, they will send me home the next day, we will see each other in three weeks, she has plans to visit in December — but I know it would be a gift to tell her yes, please, come, I need you.
If Parker wasn’t here I would tell you to come, I say, and she agrees, she says, if Parker wasn’t there I would absolutely come. She has come to Portland when I needed surgery in the past. That surgery was planned, not emergency. I had a girlfriend then, but she wasn’t family. She wanted us to be, but we just weren’t.
The thing is, if Parker wasn’t here, my mom would come, and I would be grateful, but also — I would still be okay if she didn’t. When I was sick last year and my then girlfriend (also not family, this time because I wanted us to be but she did not — maybe that is the secret, maybe in order to be family both people have to really want it) was too busy to take me to the hospital, Chrissie would take me. When me and that not-family girlfriend finally broke up last year — on October 31, exactly one year ago, wow — she asked if I wanted to celebrate my dad’s birthday with her anyway but I said no. I ordered sushi with Chrissie and Lizz instead. We ate takeout at their dining room table and talked about my dad, about his Zoom memorial that they attended. We talked about their parents. Chrissie and Lizz are my family. You don’t have to be my wife or my mom to be my family. This is obvious, yeah?
Words are so strange; they can do so much and also so little. They illuminate and they obscure. One of my students is about to launch a Substack as a writing project and we spent some time in class last week talking about how publishing essays regularly online means you have to accept that sometimes you will love what you publish and sometimes you will hate it. I don’t publish essays regularly online anymore so I’m not sure what my excuse here is, but I guess what I’m saying is I want to write this and I want to send it to you today, and also, I realize it might suck. It might not do anything of the things I’m trying to do.
What am I trying to do? I want to talk about family. I want to talk about love. I want to talk about how we build care into our lives, for ourselves and for our loves. I want to talk about what happens when you lose a family member — I want to, one day, talk about all the different ways you can lose a family member. That is not what I’m trying to do in this essay. But it’s been on my mind.
I want you to see what I always want you to see: My dad is gone and I will never have him back. And — my life goes on, and it is full and beautiful, and that would make him so happy, and that makes his definitive goneness infinitely sadder.
Parker’s sister calls her when she hears we’re at the ER because she wants to know that I’m okay.
My best friends text Parker to ask how the surgery went because I’m sleeping and they know she is awake next to me. Megan texts, and Lizz texts, and Binky texts, and Alex texts, and Leah texts, and Arri texts, and, and, and, and.
Parker calls and texts my mom frequently, sends her photos of me high out of my mind on pain meds, answers all her questions, promises she’s taking care of me.
My brother ignored Parker’s most recent text about basketball but responds to every one she sends in the hospital, every single one.
Parker’s mom answers all her calls. She says she hopes I’m doing okay and she hopes my mom is doing okay, too.
Is someone family when we feel safe knowing that someone we love is in their care?
I wish my dad was still alive. I wish I could have called him yesterday and asked if he thought it was the right choice for me to get my gallbladder removed in emergency surgery. I wish I had chosen a dorky card at CVS to mail him a few days ago so it would’ve gotten to him in time for today.
The last birthday card I sent him got lost in the mail. My mom nagged me for days about it, asking where it was, why it hadn’t come. I didn’t know. Finally, I bought a new one, wrote in it, and put it in the mail. It arrived in early December, a month after his birthday. His last month on this earth. My dad loved his birthday. My dad loved birthdays. My dad loved living. He really just fucking adored being alive.
He wrote me birthday cards every year. My mom was in charge of mailing them. They were never late. I keep the last one he wrote me — pink, with sunflowers on the front and his recognizable scrawl inside — in a ziplock bag in the filing cabinet in my office, along with some photos of us together when I was a baby.
Thank god my mom made me send a new card in 2020. It’s not like he would’ve questioned my love for him if he hadn’t received one. He knew. But he knew because of repeated gestures of care that we had shown each other for the entirety of our relationship. When you miss enough of those small gestures, things start to crack. You can get away with it with family sometimes. But you shouldn’t.
My alarm is going off, which means it’s time to wake Parker up from her nap. Zucchini will be disappointed to lose her warm body next to his; he doesn’t understand that when we leave we always come back. But we do; she does. She will go pick up the sushi because I am recovering from emergency surgery and can’t drive right now and I will sit here without my gallbladder and without my dad, and when she gets home we will celebrate his birthday, and I will wonder if I made anything clear in this essay, anything at all.
I miss you, Dad. Happy birthday. If you were here I would’ve gotten a card in the mail on time and I would’ve called you to ask about my gallbladder and I know you would’ve told mom that she could come to Portland to be with me if she wanted to but you also would’ve reassured her that she didn’t need to because I have Parker and my friends and I am cared for and loved even when she can’t be here to do the caring and the loving herself. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what my mom and my dad taught me about love and family through their care for each other, for my brother and I. I haven’t gotten to the root of anything, have I?
I’m not happy with this ending. That’s a fact and also a metaphor. Tonight, on my dad’s birthday, on the day after my gallbladder surgery, as I wait for my (almost) wife to return home with dinner and our anxious dog cries at the door because he misses her and doesn’t know she’s coming home and I am grateful and sad and grieving and happy, this is just the best I can do.