Don't Cry Over Spilled Pee

On the anniversary of my father's death, a reflection on loss, forgiveness, and regret

Doubled over, pounding the hardwood for dramatic effect, her response to my joke filled me with self-satisfaction. So much so that I only remember her response, not the joke. It had been a while since either of us had laughed that hard. We clearly needed it. My robed roommate was en route to the shower and had been intercepted by the impromptu gathering of friends in our kitchen. Eventually, after wiping away her laugh-induced tears, she made it to her destination and the party continued. After enough time had passed that the shower’s running water had become part of the room’s ambiance, someone pointed and exclaimed, “What’s that on the floor? Did someone spill something?” I followed the trajectory of their finger and adjusted my gaze to see the reflection of something wet on the hardwood. There were no fallen glasses in sight. It wasn’t even near a table. In fact, it wasn’t near anything except the exact spot where my friend had been crouched in her fit of comic relief. We all slowly came to realize what it was, and before anyone could consciously consider the most tactful course of action, I heard, “DID YOU PEE?!?” being yelled directly at the bathroom door. My eyes got wide. The whole scene was so absurd. And hilarious. And human. “Did I?” She replied from inside with such innocence and nonchalance that her guilt was unquestionable. We all lost it with laughter. I remember holding on to a nearby stool for balance, but the next thing I knew, I found myself spraying the area with cleaning agent and wiping away the pee. My behavior, to my friends, seemed nearly as bizarre as the puddle itself. But to me, it was second nature. It was like leaping to hold the door for mother awkwardly trying to maneuver her baby stroller. No big deal. It’s just what you do. It’s what anyone would do. Maybe.   

It was three days before I’d say goodbye to my dad for good, but I didn’t know it at the time. That the credits will eventually roll on a person is an impossible reality to grasp, especially when that person has always been there. Well, kind of. My father had never really been there, at least not in the ways I’d come to expect from after school specials and the private school parents I grew up around. Grappling with drug addiction, an abusive childhood, a brilliant mind, and a sensitive heart, my dad struggled to be there for himself, let alone his family. I’d spent a lifetime trying to find a definition of fatherhood that made sense to me, first by rejecting it entirely, and later by creating a friendship with him that taught me that love is more meaningful when it’s a conscious choice. But despite the countless “close calls” throughout his lifetime, nothing could prepare me for the final absence of my absent father. Not a lifetime of emergency hospital visits, frantic phone calls, dangerous deals with drug dealers, two kinds of cancer, threats of suicide, random disappearances, homelessness, inhaling a chunk of apple and ending up on a ventilator. The apple encounter was a particularly tragic episode as, after all the odds my dad had beaten, what a way to go! The irony was not lost on my dad either. When he awoke from a coma, the first thing he said after ripping off the oxygen mask was, “I thought an apple a day kept the doctor away!” No one laughed but him. My dad’s relationship with mortality had always been a hostile and humorous one, but it was also a triumphant one… Until it wasn’t.

My dad loved the ocean. All the stress and anxiety that plagued his life on land seemed to dissolve into its salty depths and dissipate into the infinite horizon. We used to joke about him being a ship’s captain in a previous life, or that maybe he had missed his calling in this one. In all the ways I didn’t feel safe around his tumultuous temper as a child, I felt invincible on the boat with him at the helm. For a while, when he was doing well as an entrepreneur and before his addiction had depleted all his material and spiritual wealth, we had our own boat. We would take trips to the nearby Gulf Islands off the coast of Vancouver. My parents would drink peach coolers as I sat on my dad’s lap to “steer” the boat, pretending to be tipsy from the sip of cooler they let me drink. I remember being jealous of the children who lived on these islands for how they galloped over rocks with their calloused feet, as I tip-toed tentatively behind. Though my feet are still soft and I freckle in the sun, I did manage to develop a love for the ocean and deepened feeling of “oneness” when I’m on the water. It’s possible that this feeling grew as much from my father’s influence as it did the calming power of the ocean itself, but I prefer to see it as one and the same, especially now that my father’s spirit exists forever in the salty, wet wind.

During one of my dad’s many attempts to get his life back together, he rented a big motor boat for us to take a trip “as a family.” The unlikely crew consisted of my younger brother, me, my older half brother, and my dad’s girlfriend at the time. I was twelve and beginning to figure out who I was, and who I wasn’t. Who I wasn’t was someone who could get bossed around by a dad who only showed up on holidays. At one point, in a teenaged rage, I locked myself in my room (or more accurately, a crawlspace with a sleeping bag and two feet of headroom) for a whole day and read Carlos Castaneda’s Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. I didn’t come out to eat and held my pee for as long as I could. I imagined a future where I could be free to do whatever I wanted without constraint. Normal things like driving a car, traveling the world, or going to the desert to trip on peyote. But that future was far away and I had nowhere to go, so I eventually emerged and made amends with my dad over wheat thins and smoked salmon cream cheese. The rest of the trip was pretty serene. I played solitaire or swam in crystal clear lakes that made my long hair shine like no shampoo I’d ever used. I felt a sense of peace and acceptance of my existential aloneness, as premature as it was.

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On the day before we had to return the boat, a terrible storm rolled through. The responsible decision to stay an extra night and let the storm pass was overshadowed by my dad’s unwillingness to pay an extra day for the boat. Under concrete clouds, we unmoored and embarked on our voyage. No cell phones, no other boats that we could see, and the only sea savvy adult on board was my dad. We quickly found ourselves in a bad situation. Roaring waves engulfed the entire boat. My dad stood at the second level steering wheel, his eyes wide with fear and determination. He took extreme 90 degree turns to avoid the colossal crash of each moving mogul. My older brother leaned over the railing and vomited into the angry darkness, sometimes obeying my dad’s demands to bail out the water accumulating on the boat. I was seasick too and, even though common wisdom says you’re supposed to look out into the horizon to quell the nausea, I opted to cocoon myself in my sleeping bag until it was all over. In some form or other.

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I bought numerous books on death and dying in my dad’s final years. I read some of them. And I subjected myself to a trillion thought experiments that started with, “If he were to die tomorrow…” Still, the paradox of permanent loss perplexed me. I believe this is why, in his final days, I decided to stop by the mall on my way to his bedside, and why I spent time catching up with friends in the evenings instead of asking him all the questions I’d never get to ask later. These decisions haunt me to this day, but I couldn’t possibly have known. At least, that’s what I tell myself. To surrender completely to his demise, after so many false alarms and fatal diagnoses, would be naïve, I told myself. But in my heart, I knew this time was different. The doctors agreed, which made it feel like that much more of a betrayal to believe them. To honor my dad’s philosophy would be to never blindly believe authority, especially if they deem something impossible. My dad was already defying doctors’ prognoses by being alive, so who was I to conclude any differently? Call it intuition, call it confirmation bias, somehow I knew I would one day try to recall those precious moments in the hospital and try to keep them alive with words and sentences, sealed with tears. I knew that one day these moments would morph into memories, and those memories would become the final days of my father’s life.  

Nearly all the literature I’d read emphasized the illegitimacy of expecting to “do things right” at the end of a loved one’s life, but stubborn as I am, I tried anyway. I tried hard. Now, instead of needing my dad to fit a falsely constructed role, it was me who had to play the part. I rehearsed to the point of exhaustion. I wrote dialogue in my mind, the beats, the breaths, the inner monologue of the nurses observing what a loving daughter looked like. In my entire career as an actor, I had never prepared so much for a role. After all, in this production there were no reshoots, no “take 2s,” and no one to say, “Don’t worry, it’s just a job.”

On this particular day, after the pulmonary specialists had delivered the news that his lung capacity was irreversibly low and his trajectory was in a sharp decline, my dad finally entertained the imminence of his own death. To emphasize the significance of this, just the week before, he had checked himself out of the palliative care unit to work out at the YMCA down the street. Backing up into food trays with his electric scooter, oxygen tubes dangling as he raced down hallways meant for slow, mournful shuffling, doctors admitted they’d never seen anything like it. But in a boxing match, there is a reality to the number of times a boxer can get knocked down before he simply doesn’t have the strength to get back up. Calling him a “fighter,” as so many people did, always felt like an understatement to me, but fight he did, with every faculty, every cell, every ounce of will he had accumulated in his troubled yet tireless existence. Though my father was not a religious man, I have no doubt he had made inner negotiations with God akin to some of the best salesmen in the world.

I knew reality was sinking in because my dad said he wanted an assisted suicide and started to plan his own going away party. For someone who had struggled beyond measure to gain control of his life, surrendering to the hands of time was a fate worse than death. So even in his most fragile states, he was telling doctors what to do, what drugs he would take, and what lofty business goals he hoped to reach before his death. While the morphine certainly had its effect, these pronouncements were not out of character, and I think to control his own death was the only way he could face the truth of it. As I snuggled up beside him in a nest of tubes and wires, we discussed who would be invited to the big event, his farewell party. Prince Charles was in town on Royal business, so my dad thought he might like to come. “What about Princess Diana?” I suggested with a smile. He scoffed, “Don’t be silly, she’s dead.” Apparently, his delusion had limits.

Being able to step into my dad’s world, no matter how casual its relationship to reality, was a talent I had always felt proud of. My dad had a brilliant mind, some might say too brilliant. He was one of those tortured souls with an intellect that weighed too heavy on his fragile heart. He cycled through success and self-sabotage like a live action game of snakes and ladders. He always seemed to partner with eventual criminals and attracted betrayal like cleavage attracts a male gaze. He tempered the wounds of childhood abuse with a hot temper and a healthy addiction to chemicals that altered his brain chemistry, all the while having enough self-awareness to criticize his own misgivings and perpetuate a vicious cycle of self-loathing. A scientist by training and businessman by trade, he knew how to self-medicate and negotiate states of consciousness to an impressive degree. If I am to believe his stories, he was introduced to drugs by participating in his own laboratory experiments at university. He may have even paid for his chemistry degree with the yield from his “findings.” He had a joke about his graduation class photo being in black and white, but he, on the other hand, was in color.

His sense of humor, I miss it so. I know I shouldn’t though, as it has never left me.

For example, when I crossed airport security carrying his remains, there was a whole protocol of special bins and additional swabbing. When the conscientious and compassionate officer finally handed me back the box carrying my father’s remains, I silently asked my dad’s forgiveness before blurting out in total deadpan, “Wow, I think that’s the first drug test he’s ever passed!” Her eyes went wide as she tried to process what I had said, while an eavesdropping attendant burst into laughter. With a wink and a smile, I gave us all permission to breathe, and to laugh at the absurdity of being reduced to a box of sand, the weight of which is heavier than you might think. These kinds of vulnerable, human moments were the crazy glue that kept my dad and I together. Even in the darkest moments, we could always find a way to laugh. I can hear him now responding to my crazy glue metaphor with feigned outrage and bulging crazy eyes, “Crazy glue? Speak for yourself!”

One thing I think many people come to realize when caring for the dying, if they’re humble enough to admit it, is that their actions are more motivated by their own self-preservation than that of their loved one. The projected despair is nearly too much for us healthy mortals to bear, and yet the process of dying is so deeply personal and undeniably solitary. The only cure for bearing witness is being able to project into your future self and assure your present self that you are doing your best. I did my best in moments of fear, of incomprehensible pain, and moments of complete uncertainty. My best included sleeping the entire night in a recliner at his bedside, only letting go of his hand long enough to offer the other one. It also included arguing with him in front of his nurse about the exact color of his phlegm. Some moments I’m more proud of than others. I regret turning up my nose and calling the nurse when he started cleaning his own ostomy bag, but I’m slowly learning to forgive myself, and accept these lessons as the parenting gifts my father couldn’t provide while he was alive.

When he was first moved to the palliative care floor, my dad had a roommate who was rather imposing. His disgruntled mutters echoed through the paper thin curtain that separated them and were only muffled by the staticky sounds of old Star Trek episodes. The roommate was scrawny and gaunt, a dying person straight out of central casting. He had no visitors. His body parts showed in ways that one might be ashamed, but he wasn’t. His biggest transgression, however, was his habit of urinating on the floor. And since my dad shared not only a room, but a single bathroom with him, it was a point of major contention and complaint. My dad may have been fighting for every ounce of oxygen he could summon into his lungs, but he would never allow himself to be reduced to a helpless victim of circumstance. Whatever it was this man represented to him, it inspired rejection and rage in my dad. The pee was the catalyst, but I think it had more to do with the idea of being seen in a similar category, and fighting for the dignity he found it impossible to afford his pathetic neighbor. My dad wouldn’t like to hear me say that, though. He hated it when I tried to explore his underlying psychology in difficult moments. “But what’s the worst that can happen, dad?” “I can’t fucking breathe, Nicki!” Not my proudest moment either.

My dad’s COPD (a debilitating and often fatal lung disease) made every breath a nearly insurmountable effort. I honestly can’t imagine anything worse than watching a loved one slowly suffocate. And nothing makes you feel like more of an asshole than meeting their terrified gaze and instructing them to “straw breathe” (a breathing method where you breath as if through a straw), pursing your lips to demonstrate, all while they are fighting for very survival. What also happens when you struggle to breathe is you are apt to lose control of other bodily functions. On this day, during this particular breathing attack, my dad stood hunched over his dinner tray table, grasping for stability, gasping for air and, as a result, making a puddle on the floor beneath him. Between breaths, he commanded me to clean it up. Even fighting to breathe, he fought even harder for self-respect. For reasons unbeknownst to me still, I didn’t want to clean it up. Maybe after dousing my hands in hand sanitizer at every hospital door for days, I had developed an irrational fear of germs. Maybe I was simply scared and overwhelmed. Whatever the reason, I instead got up to get the nurse. My dad, still wheezing and coughing, scolded me as only a dad can. No, he said, you clean it up!" I knew why. I knew he felt like this would debase his argument against his despicable roommate, but I also knew the nurse wouldn’t care. I knew his fear was irrational, so I continued for the door and told the nurse about his accident. When we both returned, he was bent over with a wet paper towel in hand, grumbling to himself. She grabbed some more and did the final wipe, much to his discontent. It was no big deal. But it was the biggest deal to him. And now to me. What I wouldn’t give to clean my daddy’s pee.

Perhaps now it’s obvious why my roommate’s puddle was nothing short of a gift from the universe. It was the closest thing to a “take 2” I could hope for, and I rose to the challenge with reckless abandon. Though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, it was an opportunity for healing, for atonement, and for forgiveness. Not only did I wipe up my friend’s pee quickly and efficiently, I countered the potential for shame with nonchalance, and taught my nervously laughing roommates it was, in no uncertain terms, no big deal. I matched their laughter and diffused it into nothing. By the time I was putting away the cleaning agent, we were on to the next subject. For my defenseless showering roommate, I like to think I helped it become nothing for her too. Even though, to me, it was everything. By the time she emerged from the bathroom, damp now only through socially acceptable means, it was a non-issue.  If my dad had been there, he would have surely said something like, “You know what they say, don’t cry over spilled pee.”

Rest in peace, Dadster. You are with me always and I love you with all my heart.