Combative

When I was 16 years old, my dad killed himself, not in the way you’re thinking though. It wasn’t with a gun, or a rope, or drugs. It was slow, and it was painful. And it took him years, and it wasn’t always intentional, but he did it. Every day I think to myself, how could he treat his body like this? He has two kids, a wife, a normal yet exciting job in a career he is passionate about. Had. He had all that. 

He was fifty-two when he died. The day is seared into my brain like a brand on an animal. The hot iron of June twentieth torches my mind, and it’s permanent. 

My dad smoked cigarettes. Even when he held me as a baby, there was always one in his mouth. My mom hated it, of course, but he would yell at her until she stopped caring. The smell was something I became used to, my lungs were heavier but that’s the way it always was at home. I remember thinking school had fresher air. Still, kids avoided me because I smelled of burnt wood. Not the good kind, obviously. Not the kind that reminded you of winter, and a big fireplace melting the snow on the roof with its smoke. It was the kind that suffocated you. And kids didn’t want to be around that. 

His smoking habit started when he joined the marines. He enlisted to prove something to his own dad, “a man who devoted his life to the Navy, but never learned how to swim.” That’s what my gram says at least. His whole life served to prove a point to the man who relentlessly beat into his head that men needed to be tough. Smoking was just another way of being manly, but it must’ve also been an escape. A moment to unwind, even during the chaos he experienced. He served for three years until he was released for injury. I was never told the real story, and everyone else who knows it has died. But I know he almost had his leg amputated. Something about a motorcycle crash, and doctors suggesting a regular hospital suggesting amputation, but the military hospital suggests to preserve it. A metal rod was installed near his bone, or something like that, and he was in a wheelchair for quite some time but eventually he learned how to walk again. 

He met my mom while learning how to skate. He was a fan of hockey and played for years before enlisting, but being back now with a leg barely working, skating was a big challenge. There was a lake where he and his friends would go, they’d gather everyone they knew and split into teams, and play tournaments against each other until it was too dark to see the puck. This day though, his friend Mike took him back to the ice for the first time after surgery. Mike told me he could barely even stand on skates by himself. But on the other side of the lake was a girl and her friend. 

My mom describes dad as being a big, quiet, softy. On their first dates, he was shy and didn’t talk much about himself. Still, after years of marriage, he had trouble telling her that he loved her. He wasn’t a man of many words. But on big days like Valentines, he’d go all out with the biggest bouquet of mixed florals, chocolates from the local fudge shoppe, and a meaningful card with an extra note describing every feeling he had never mentioned. He always signed off with, “Loving you is my greatest gift, forever and ever.” A year after he died, my mom got it tattooed on her arm. 

Marriage is when my dad finally started giving up. His friends played it off as “letting himself go,” but now I think they feel guilty. Because this was all so preventable. 

Being a kid with him wasn’t the same. Tee ball had him winded, once around the bases and he’s sat on the curb telling us to continue without him. Playing catch was fine, until it started to bother his shoulder. It got so bad, he could barely even pick me up. I’d beg and beg for him to carry me on his back, but he couldn’t. One day, I had asked a few too many times and he finally snapped, yelling in my tiny face that I needed to shut up, to stop asking, and to leave him alone. I don’t think I ever asked again. And every day I got bigger, I reminded myself that it wasn’t even possible anymore. 

My dad was fat. It was so far beyond a beer belly, that at one point he had to take a month off from his job. He was the real life version of a fat cop that eats donuts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He ate for two, lost all of his muscle, and made his lungs that much worse by forcing himself to carry around his big body. My mom warned him that high cholesterol ran in the family, she reminded him that his blood sugar was high, and he needed physical activity and a better diet to keep himself alive. He brushed her off like it was nothing, sometimes he’d even get so angry and scream in her face that it was his life, and she needed to stop being so controlling. In reality, she just cared. And he was combative. 

The first time he called me combative, my therapist told me he was projecting. He was the most stubborn man I’ve ever known, but maybe I did learn some of it from him. He was the one who taught me how to drive, although he wasn’t there to see me get my license. He was frustrating to learn from. He couldn’t understand that I was just learning, that I had never done this before, and that parking in the lines was not as easy as it looked. He would sigh, and roll his eyes, and sometimes yell. I stopped wanting to practice, and he noticed that I never wanted to go with him. He’d offer, but I just didn’t want to bother. He continued to call me that word every time we fought.

The last night I spent with him was a good one, at least. He had this historic car, a 1969 red Firebird that was his prized possession. It was nearing summer time, so the weather was finally warm enough for a convertible. He wanted to take me to an ice cream shop that was 20 minutes away. I was surprised when he said the name of it. He had this one place that he loved, Polar Cub. It was a tiny 90’s style parlor that he would take me and my brother to when we were really little. He’d always get a large cone. We were only allowed to get a small. He knew I was afraid of him after all of the driving practice. So just this once, he offered that I could drive the Firebird. He knew I wanted it so bad, that I had actually been dreaming of it becoming my car. Still I said no, and that I wasn’t hungry for ice cream. When he said I could get whatever I wanted, I caved. I sat in the back. We took a long, silent drive to this big red barn on a mini golf course. When we ordered, he got a chocolate fudge sundae, so I got the same. We ate with the top down as we watched the sun set. And then we went home.

The next morning was fathers day. I had made him breakfast in bed with my mom, and I called to him from downstairs, asking if he was ready for me to bring it up. There was no response, so my mom offered that I go to his room and wake him up. When I opened the door, his face was blue and purple, and he couldn’t breathe. 

A lot of this day I’ve forgotten. I’ve blocked it off in my memory, and it’s unreachable at the moment. I don’t know who called 911, but someone did. I don’t know how long it took for them to arrive, but it felt long. My mom made me stay at home to watch the dogs and she would call my brother who was sleeping over at a friend's place. 

He was in the hospital for 9 hours. All of his family rushed to the hospital, as well as his friends from the ATF in Brooklyn. I remember seeing him for the first time there, tubes all down his throat, blood covering his gown. 

Even with barely any brain activity, he was just as stubborn. It was like it was programmed into him, he didn’t want anyone's help, even when he desperately needed it. He would shakily move his hands to try and remove his own tubes. The doctors said at one point, he even tried to climb out of the hospital bed, which I guess was a good sign. Even though that was good, he had crashed a total of ten times and they were worried that his brain had been without oxygen for too long. 

It came time for the talk. It was five in the afternoon, and nothing about his health was improving. He had been moved to the ICU, I remember when they wheeled his bed past the waiting room. My dad’s dad had to go back home for the night, so they did the last rights. It was now my moms decision to try to keep him alive or not. She explained to us that if they kept trying, he still may not ever wake up. And if he ever did, he was just a shell of the person that he once was. 

The rest of it I don’t remember. I don’t even remember his funeral, or the days that followed. All I remember is anger. 

It was all preventable. He died because he was fat, his lungs were weak, and he had undiagnosed diabetes, the thing my mom had been warning him about for years. But all he heard was nagging. 

He had done this to himself. It was all his fault and now he was dead. He left behind his entire family, just because he liked cigarettes and junk food. Just because he was letting himself go. Because he was giving up. And it was permanent.

The house didn’t smell like cigarettes anymore. My lungs felt clearer for the first time.

There was a new lingering feeling, this desperation for him to yell at me again. This hopelessness and realization that he would never see me drive, or graduate high school, or go to the same college he did. He would never see me succeed, or even eat an ice cream sundae again. He would never meet my first boyfriend, and he would never watch me get married. 

A guy I dated about a year after all of this called me combative once. He knew the word after I told him what my dad used to call me. I didn’t love him a whole lot after that; I saw him quite differently. I thought that maybe he was just projecting, because every time my dad used to say it, he proved himself to be even worse than I was. I think maybe my dad was better off never meeting anyone I’ve dated. That night, I cried to myself thinking about this guy saying those words to our daughter.