13. This is Me Trying
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
this is me trying
LOGAN
FIVE YEARS AGO
UPSTATE NEW YORK
“You know, they used to make shit that lasts!”
Dad’s been shouting mostly random complaints and curses for the last few minutes in his thick Cork accent, waving a broken shovel the entire time.
IMOGEN
So how is he?
ME
Threatening the gardening tools. Other than that? Seems fine.
IMOGEN
Oh, okay. So normal.
“Fuckin’ piece of shite!”
ME
Totally.
IMOGEN
Tell him I love him, okay? And I’ll see you both next week.
The chemo’s been taking its toll for a while now, and while he hides it pretty well, it’s starting to become more and more evident. It seems innocuous, but he’s started wearing hats; at first I thought it was just a late-age fashion change until I noticed the clumps of hair in the shower. After that I started paying a lot more attention, probably more than would be considered healthy. He’s more exhausted than ever, but if Declan Flynn is anything, above all else, he’s stubborn as a mule. He’s always insisted he’s fine, and that he never needs help with anything, even as his body is completely betraying him.
Some days, I don’t think he’s fully accepted his diagnosis.
Most days, I’m pretty sure I haven’t either.
“I think it might be a user error, dad,” I tease, setting a couple beers down on the patio table beside him. “You’re really going all-out on those cucumbers.”
Thankfully, today is a good day. He’s got enough energy to do a little bit of gardening, and complain very loudly about the shitty tools that he paid far too much money for.
He puts his hands on his hips, lowering his aviator sunglasses as he glares at me.
“Y’know, Logan, if there were two cunts in this town, you’d be both of ‘em.”
I start laughing almost immediately; I can’t help it, I see so much of my sister in him. They definitely have the same death stare. If there are two things the cancer hasn’t managed to tear off of him, it’s his quick wit and quicker temper.
“Come and get your drink, old man!”
He waves me off, dismissing the notion as he bends down to retrieve his shovel before trudging back to the shed. He used to be quick on his feet, dancing and jumping on a whim. More than that, though, he loved to run.
The cancer’s taken all of that from him. He was diagnosed with glioblastoma three months ago, and the doctors gave him another eighteen, tops. Now he spends his days barely managing the headaches, nausea and dizziness, while pretending nothing’s changed.
There’s a part of me that’s always counting down, constantly reminding me how little time is left, but I took the most cliché advice I’d ever heard, and decided to try to take each day as it comes. It turns out it’s not just something people say to you when they don’t know what else to say. Some days are better than others, sure, but we watch rugby matches and baseball games, we drink beer and talk about horror and pop culture, and all the while I just keep thinking he might beat this somehow.
He’ll get better and he’ll be my dad again.
He has to, because the reality of facing a world without him terrifies me.
Nobody talks about the time leading up to that loss. How it’s like putting on armor every morning, spending days and weeks and months bracing yourself for a punch that’s going to knock you out, no matter how hard you try to keep standing.
Dad told me that he wouldn’t let me put my life on hold for him, but I did it anyway. He spent years taking care of me, wiping tears and bandaging skinned knees, and now I spend my days helping with chores around the house, doling out his medication, and making sure there’s always at least a little bit of laughter.
Even on the hardest days.
Especially then.
In contrast, Imogen isolated herself. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like she’s given up. Just earlier today she mentioned looking into an experimental treatment in the UK. Like me, she’s hoping for a miracle. The difference is, a phone call is the closest she’s managed to get, and every time she gets the courage to ask about him, I can hear her voice crack.
Mom’s… Well, at first I thought she was just pretending none of it was happening, but then I caught a glimpse of her out one night, sitting in the backyard and crying into her glass of wine. She’s always been private about her grief, never wanting to burden anyone with it.
When I think about it, I don’t even think any of their friends ever really saw them apart; Annie and Declan Flynn have been practically attached at the hip for 34 years, and I’m not sure what she’s going to do without him.
I rub my eyes, watching him walk toward me, wobbling with each step. The tumor’s been messing with his equilibrium and he’s been unsteady on his feet for a few weeks now. I move to help him, but he lets out a snarl as he swats me away.
“I’m fine, Logan.”
“Okay.” I raise both hands, letting him stumble toward the lawn chair and slowly ease himself down into it.
Mom told him he should think about a wheelchair, but he brushed the idea off without a thought. Said he’ll walk until it’s too hard to take another step.
I pop the cap off his beer and slide it over to him.
That’s just who he is.
“Garden looks good.”
“Yeah. Those pink roses your sister likes are really taking to this new fertilizer I got.”
“Different brand?”
“The dog next door keeps hopping the fence and shitting in the rose bush,” he laughs. “I figured he’s not destroying them, so what’s the harm?”
The two of us clink our bottles together, staring out at the gorgeous summer day. Sometimes I like to sit out here with a good book and just get lost in it all, the words and the breeze and the heat. It reminds me of the first summer I spent at home after college, back when I was still deciding if I wanted to follow in dad’s footsteps or not.
I was so anxious about making the right decision that the first thing I did after I parked my car in the driveway was go straight into his office and ask for his opinion.
“It doesn’t matter if you choose to be a plumber or get a fuckin’ PhD, both are just as necessary. I’ll always be proud of you, mo chuisle.”
His little name for me. It means my pulse .
He calls Imogen mo stórín.
My little treasure.
Of course Mom is mo ghrá.
My love.
“It’s a cruel irony, you know…”
I watch as he tears at the edge of the label on his beer, getting most of it off before balling it up between his thumb and forefinger, the same way he’s always done when he’s anxious about something.
“What is?” I ask.
“Growing all this while I’m dying.” He gestures to the gorgeous garden he’s spent years creating. “I’ve only got 15 months, but even then I don’t know if I have the energy to live what I have left.”
Dad sleeps a lot, more and more in the last few months. Sometimes we catch him dozing off in the middle of dinner, and try our best to pretend we didn’t notice when he wakes up. His body’s exhausted from fighting; he’s both physically and psychologically depleted from the anxiety, the legal bullshit, and everything else that comes along with watching your own life slip away. I can tell he’s starting to get fed up with it all; he finds the whole thing humiliating.
“We’ll fit in the important stuff,” I tell him. “Iggy’s coming out soon.”
“Yeah.” My dad nods. “That’ll be nice to have you both under one roof, fightin’ and teasin’ each other just like old times.”
Iggy and I were terrors to each other growing up. You might think I’d be the mature one with a ten-year age difference, but I learned quickly that it’s a brother’s sworn duty to terrorize his little sister, and I’m never one to shirk when family is involved. She got me back, though, almost as often as I got her.
Maybe even more when she was a teenager.
“I don’t want to die.”
His words are pinched at the edges, and raw with grief.
“I have so much more?—”
I watch his face crumple, tears rushing down his cheeks as he swears under his breath. He rests his head in his hands and I feel myself grip my beer bottle so tight I think it might just shatter.
The cruelest thing about all of this is that there’s nothing I can do; anything I say is trite and meaningless. Every night, he goes to bed counting how many days he has left to breathe this air, to see the sun, or to smell those damn pink roses in the garden.
“It’s okay, dad.”
He shakes his head, tears rushing down his face.
I can only imagine that kind of terror, or how paralyzing it must be.
“I wasn’t done raising the two of you. I wasn’t done being proud of you. Loving you. I wasn’t done watching your mother dance in the kitchen every morning. I wasn’t done writing, I wasn’t done teaching…”
He collapses into sobs and I’m pulled out of my chair by some invisible force, crouching down in front of him, my hands on his knees.
He looks up at the sky like he wants to curse it, but he doesn’t have the strength.
When he was diagnosed, I told God to go fuck himself.
If his faith is right, and there’s an all-knowing, all-seeing divine presence that could make this all go away but chooses not to? Chooses to take people like my dad?
That’s fucking cruel.
“I just want the two of you to be happy,” he whispers. “I want you to find someone who loves every single part of you, even those damn mismatched socks.”
My laughter turns to sobs as I press my forehead into his knee. We haven’t had many talks like this. For the most part, both of us just pretend none of it is happening when we’re around each other.
“Promise me you’re gonna be okay. That you’ll look after your mum and your sister.”
“I promise.”
“And I want you to find somebody, to fall in love. Because at the end of the day, there’s nothing else that matters.”
“I will, dad.”
He kisses my forehead, just like he used to do when I was a kid, before he’d ‘fight off monsters’ that were hiding under my bed.
“You’re a good man, Logan. Mum and I did a hell of a job with you.”
He gives my cheek a gentle pinch and I chuckle, getting to my feet and heading back to my chair before the two of us settle back into the quiet of the afternoon. The breeze makes a beautiful whooshing sound as it brushes past the trees, and Dad clears his throat, passing me the beer I left abandoned on the edge of the table.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” he says softly.
I look over at him, my stomach churning.
“I’ve been talking to some people in Oregon about…” He pauses for a moment, looking for the right words. “Well, about assistance. You know, for… what’s coming.”
My heart pounds as I watch him struggle to fully verbalize the thought. It’s been happening more often lately, where he’ll forget what he’s saying as he’s saying it, but this isn’t exactly that.
“Death?” I ask, a lump forming in my throat. “You’re looking into assisted suicide?”
We both wince at the word, but he nods.
“Your mother and I are going to be flying out there next month. We’ll be filling out some forms and?—”
“Dad, you still have fifteen months.”
It’s selfish. I know it’s selfish, but the scared little kid in me just wants his dad.
“Sure, that’s what they said. But that’s at the top end, and probably only a handful of those will be good ones,” Dad replies, his eyes welling up again. “I know what happens at the end of this. I’ve seen it. Slurred words, trouble holding a conversation, memory loss, confusion, and that’s all before I start shittin’ myself and getting the headaches— blindingly painful fuckin’ headaches. That’s all three to six weeks prior, and it just gets worse from there.”
I didn’t even think about that part. I know I googled it, along with: cures , prognosis , clinical trials , and transplant. Maybe I was too focused on the Hail Marys, anything that could give me some hope.
Even then, nothing did.
“I’m fighting a losing battle with something I can’t even see, and it wants everything, including my memories.” My dad’s chin trembles, and that steely expression breaks all over again. “I’m not dying in a hospital bed with no conception of where or who I am. Or who you all are.”
He sighs, swallowing his pain and turning back to me with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“And then there’s the hospital food. I wouldn’t even feed that shit to a dog.”
Even in his darkest moments, he’s cracking a fucking joke.
“Does Iggy know?”
“No. I’m gonna break the news to her when she comes up. She’ll hate it, but I need you both to know they’ve assured us it’s peaceful. It’s humane . And I’ll be able to call the shots right up until the very end.” He snorts. “You know how some people say you can’t play God? I just tackled the fucker to the ground.”
I don’t know much about medically assisted death. What I do know is that I’m terrified to lose him, and I’m still hoping that we can find a way to beat this thing. This late in the game, though, it would take a miracle. When he’s gone, I’m not sure I’ll know what to do with all this weight. I don’t think I have the strength to carry it with me every day.
I’m so angry all the time, but I’ve been holding it in and staying strong for everyone around me. That’s my job. I can work through the pain later, but I refuse to watch this family sink.
The deeper the love, the deeper the grief.
My dad reaches over, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. I’ve watched these last few months as his hands have become bonier, his skin paper-thin and stained with light purple bruises. It’s a hard thing to process.
“Fuck sakes,” he sighs. “I hate crying like this.”
“You know, the last time I really saw you cry was when Iggy graduated.”
“Right, right,” he laughs. “How many tattoos is your sister up to now?”
“At least 40,” I chuckle.
“Good, good. I saw the Michael Myers one she got. Good taste.”
“She got it from you,” I reply, grinning at him. “We both did.”
Dad smiles, nodding as he looks out at those pink roses.
Iggy’s roses.
Imogen’s in the city right now, not too far away from here, but she doesn’t make it Upstate often with her school schedule. Dad keeps telling her she needs to focus on that, and that he’ll be fine. I think they both like to pretend it’s true.
It’s not like she’s completely avoiding him or anything; she emails snippets of her honors thesis chapters so he can look them over and give her feedback. Lately though, he’s mostly been framing them to put up in his office.
Even the ones with spelling mistakes.
“Hey, what color’s her hair now?”
“Uh, green, I think?”
I take out my phone and pull up her Instagram to show him. There’s a picture of her in a black dress with long, emerald green hair that just barely touches her elbows.
“Looks nice,” he whispers, leaning back in his chair. “It’s a pretty shade.”
My sister attempted to have a rebellious phase a couple times growing up, but it never really worked out. Mom and dad figured we’d try to rebel anyway, so why fight it? Communication was a big thing in our house, so the only real rule was that we had to be home for Sunday dinner, and when there’s no real rules to break, well.... Iggy was always at that table, even if she was getting shit for getting her tongue pierced at 15.
“You both grew up to be good looking kids,” Dad chuckles. “Didn’t get that from me, that’s for sure.”
My dad’s got wild jet black hair and dark green eyes didn’t really translate to us, my mom’s sandy blonde hair and brown eyes pushing to the forefront in our genes. We’ve both got his long, slightly upturned nose, though.
And his temper.
I take a moment just to breathe, the wind rustling in the trees around us while the birds chirp and sing off in the distance. This would be a perfect day in almost any other scenario.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he murmurs, paying more attention to the blue jay that just landed on the fence across the yard than anything I’m saying.
“If you decide to go to Oregon to–” I clear my throat. “How will you know when– you know…”
We both watch the bird preen its feathers in silence for a while. I almost wish I didn’t have to ask, but it’s not something I can ignore.
“I dunno,” Dad eventually replies with a shake of his head. “But even if I don’t, my body will. I’ll keep going until it gets too hard, until I’m forgetting too much, sleeping too long… until I’m not really living, and then. Well, I think it’ll be time.”
He gives my hand another squeeze.
“It’s like you said, we make time for the important stuff.”
My own words repeated back wash over me like dread.
The problem is we don’t have much time, not for ‘the important stuff,’ or anything else. Imogen should be here, we should all be here.
Possibly against my better judgement, I whip out my phone again.
ME
You should come out this week instead.
IMOGEN
Did something happen? Is dad okay?
ME
He’s fine. I just think you should be here.
I see three bubbles pop up and disappear again and again. She knows something’s up. My sister has a weird intuition for this kind of shit.
IMOGEN
I’ll talk to my professors. I can submit my final papers this week. They’re basically done anyway. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
ME
Thanks, Ig.
IMOGEN
Are you sure everything’s okay?
ME
Everything’s fine. I just think we need to be a family right now.
“Boys?” My mom calls from the back door. “Supper’s ready!”
“Oooh! Lasagna!” My dad sings, reaching for me as I get up from my chair. “Come on, Logan. Help your old man up.”
I grasp both of his hands, staring at their wrinkles, and the way his wedding ring’s ended up slightly too big for his finger. When I pull him to his feet, he stumbles forward and I catch him.
“You okay?”
Dad only grunts, patting me on the shoulder and flashing me a warm smile that almost convinces me nothing’s changed.
“I’ll be just fine, son. Just fine.”