Dad

Hey Dad,

I hardly ever write to you and now I know why. It’s impossibly difficult to write to the people that you hold closest to your heart. Sometimes when things get real quiet I think of you and what it must have been like for you to go through everything that we went through. I’m always amazed at the stoicism and duty you go through everything with. I know Mom told us all the time growing up about this quality of yours but as I grow older I come to realize just what a rare thing that is and I’m extremely grateful for it, even if I struggle with it often.

You’re a really great dad.

I don’t know if there’s anyone alive that really knows how they feel about their parents because it’s almost like looking at the sun. You really can’t look to closely at it but you can see it all around. Sometimes, though, you can kind of get a glimpse of it and it’s really striking, kind of like an eclipse.

One time I told you that you reminded me of a cereal box and you took it in stride the way you take almost all my egregious snarls. That sweet, boyish smile came across your face (the one that everyone that knows you loves so much for its purity) and you said that it gave you a kind of pride to think of yourself in that way. I think just about anyone that grew up with their parents around kind of sees the qualities of their parents simultaneously as the most annoying thing on the face of the earth and something undeniably precious.

One time, in a hospital, you told me that I think more than anyone you’ve ever met and you’re probably right. One of the things that I spend so much time thinking about is the way that we, as individuals, go through life in this terrible two-fold lonely way where everyone has their own independent isolated journey that is entangled with our social selves. I think this will probably remind you of David Brooks’ book and maybe I’m taking it more from him than I realize.

But I think about your journey through life and what your alone hours must be like and it makes me terribly sad. I don’t know why it makes me so sad but it does because it feels so unbelievably lonely. All those hours in commute to and from work, those cold winter nights where you walk the dog through the bitter wind, living so far away from your kids. Sometimes it makes me feel so sad that I want to book a flight home and just spend a week I can’t afford in Minnesota with you guys just to like, be there.

The weird thing is though, Dad, is that I think I’m wrong. I don’t think that you are actually that lonely, that you enjoy your solitude and your reflection and your heavy rotation of 1970s reggae and rock n' roll in an easy-going contentment that has always been a mystery to me. It seems like you’re impervious to this human condition in the way that I’ve spent an obscene amount of hours trying to study the world religions to see how they handle it. Maybe it’s just an acceptance of yourself as a cereal box if that’s what you are. Maybe what you’ve somehow learned how to do is to just be who you are unapologetically but in the most subtle, quiet, and reserved way that it’s nearly invisible.

How do you do it?

I remember once we were driving on some Minnesotan highway and I got into thinking again and I asked you what happiness meant to you. Being the organized and systematic thinker that you are you gave me a three-part answer and being the forgetful, scatterbrained person I am I’ve forgotten the first two parts. But the third part of your answer was this: you have to find your way back to God.

This, I think, is the essence of you who are. A person who can take the whole human experience and put it down in one sentence that is both extremely simple in words but maddeningly complex in practice. I remember how that blew my mind because I demanded so many answers. What on Earth does that even mean? What/Who is God? Where is God? Did God leave or did we and how long have we been away from them? There’s no way for words to be useful here.

Now I’m a few years older than that conversation and I can see that we all go about this world with the notion that we’re doing the right things and then all of the sudden we’re not okay and shit maybe we haven’t been okay for awhile. We need to find our way back to God. As you know, I’ve never really been a big fan of god and I didn’t really believe in God until I broke down the definitions in the way I think anyone who isn’t a nihilist has to in order to have faith. But if God is what you understand God as, then maybe that is what we’re all trying to do.

Here is one really big fear of mine, Dad. That I won’t really ever know who you are and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to get to know you in retrospect and then one of these days it will be too late. What’s it like for you now that your parents are gone? Are you experiencing this same thing? Did you feel like you knew your parents?

I can almost hear your response in my head now and I think there might be more to that than I realize. That we know people and we don’t know people, just like I know you and will never know you.

The last time I saw you one-on-one was on a terribly shitty rainy day in May when I was back in town for a work conference. I think it brought you a certain amount of joy that I was traveling for work. We went out for pizza and we talked about a whole bunch of shit that we had never talked about before, like what it was like for you to join Mom’s family when grandma was sick and about mental illness and our family. You asked me about therapy and you said you felt like maybe we could have done a better job finding me a better therapist when I was in high school. This once again made me profoundly sad because it made me realize that this must be the sorts of things you think about when you’re on your commutes, or walking the dog, or whatever.

I told you that I don’t think it would have mattered because depression isn’t really like that. The coping skills that they teach you in therapy and the whole process of talking through this thing that really cannot be described are helpful to a certain extent but they become obsolete real quick when the whole thing comes bearing down on you. Maybe I’m wrong about this and maybe I’m contradicting myself in this writing project that I’ve made here. This whole thing is kind of for you, in a way, as well as for me and for anyone that might read it. But it’s especially for you in a sense that it might help you understand why I do the things that I do and what it is that I go through that I really struggle to articulate to people.

The point is that I’m just trying to find a way to deal with my own shit by forging a lifestyle that works with my messed up brain without really thinking that there is a solution and learning all the ways I’m wrong along the way. Part of that process was just realizing I had to leave. Just like I’ve left so many times. But leaving isn’t enough, as everyone knows and will tell you, and at some point you have to live somewhere and somehow. I don’t think that it’s going to make this whole depression thing go away and I honestly have no idea whether or not it’s going to end well or not but I’m trying my very best. You always told me when I was going through school that you didn’t really care about my grades you just cared that I was trying my best and I guess I listened to you.

But the thing about depression is this:

It’s like driving down a highway that’s very steep and under heavy construction so they’ve closed down a lane and they’re concrete barriers on both sides of you. It’s rainy and you can’t see very well or very far and maybe your windshield wipers are kind of old and shitty. But you have your music on and it’s bearable and fine but then all the sudden you look in your rear view mirror and there’s a runaway semi-truck bearing down on you and there’s no way to pull off the road because of the barriers and you obviously can’t just like stop and even if you try to outrun it, that truck is going to catch up with you.

So what do you do?

Well you grab the steering will with both hands and you try to ride the fucker out, blasting down the highway way too fast and out of control and you’re absolutely terrified and you have no idea if you’re going to make it out and you just hope that you get out of the construction zone before too long so you can steer out of the way of the damn semi-truck and pull off to the side of the road and maybe cry and shake and throw up and look up at the sky and scream and then call someone to tell them about it but all they can really say is “oh my god that’s sounds really terrible I’m sorry you went through that.” But eventually you just have to get back in your car and keep driving.

And yeah, maybe you can look ahead at the routes and try to avoid construction zones or freeways or something or maybe like not drive in the rain or whatever but life always kind of finds a way to have you and the semi-truck cross paths and maybe after some encounters with it you learn how to ride the semi-truck but sometimes that semi-truck is weighed down by regrets and fears and anxieties and it’s going to just plow you over.

That’s just it. That’s just the way life is for people with depression.

I know that’s not a good answer. I know that’s not really anything you can work with but that’s the work of life: trying to accept that the semi-truck is going to come no matter what. That’s what I’ve had to accept and so many other people. Hopefully you can accept that too.

I love you and I promise to call soon.

Sincerely,

Roman

P.S. Some music is better to listen to when this music is happening than others and I’m really grateful for the rock and roll education you gave me.