Me and My Dad

Me and My Dad at Disneyland back when we worked at Disney, April 2000 (scanned image)

One of the great things about having a blog is the way we can communicate instantly with our friends and clients. Because of the ease of instant sharing, there is a natural inclination to overshare. Where do I draw the line between the personal and the professional? How much sharing is too much. Well, I feel that the events of this past month warrant me getting a little personal. This is what’s been happening in our world.

As you may or may not know, my Dad is in a hospital in Boston, fighting for his life against bone cancer and pneumonia. This has come as a total shock. I have spent the better part of the past month shuttling back and forth between Nashville and Boston. Everything in my life has come to a complete halt while I’ve tried to help my Dad get better.

See the thing is, my Dad and I are best buddies.  I have an amazing relationship with my Dad. We have had so many wonderful times together and I look forward to so many more.  I just don’t know what the hell I would do without him.

About a month ago, I get a call from my sister Amandah, telling me something was wrong with Dad and they are taking him to the hospital. She called back later that night saying that he had cancer but they weren’t sure what kind it was or what the prognosis was.

Sharon and I started making arrangements for me to fly up to Boston to see him.

When I arrived, he looked emaciated. He’d lost 30-50 pounds. He had bone cancer. His kidneys are shutting down because the calcium from his bones is leeching into his bloodstream and overwhelming his kidneys. He has crushed two vertebrae because of the calcium loss so he can’t lay down in bed, he has to sit in a half hunched position. He looks worse than ET when Elliott’s brother finds him collapsed in that stream.

Over the course of a week, he got better enough to go home and continue treatment from there. I stayed a few extra days and then headed back to Nashville.

A few days later, I get another urgent phone call from my sister. My Dad is back in the hospital and he is having trouble breathing.

Two days after that, I get another frantic call from my sister telling me they need me up there right away, things have taken a turn for the worse.  I am on a plane in a matter of hours.

This time when I arrive, he is in intensive care and looks even worse. He still has the cancer and the broken vertebrae but now he has pneumonia and is unable to even talk.

For the first couple weeks, I stayed day and night with my dad in the hospital. Somehow it feels like if I can keep vigil in a crappy hospital chair at the foot of my dad’s bed, his body will sense this and fight harder, or maybe god will look down and see hey that kid really cares and send something hopeful our way. Im not really sure it works like that   but I thought that it couldn’t hurt. So I spent countless days and nights in the hospital with him.

One of the nastier side effects of the Cancer is that the Chemo that will ostensibly save his life is also causing a rare side effect called steroid psychosis.  Every few days, my dad starts to hallucinate and think outlandish things.  He rips out the IV’s and tubes in his confusion. The doctors say there is nothing they can do about this for now until they can see some progress in the fight against the cancer.

I missed my son’s birthday because of all of this. I can’t tell you how much that hurt. H turned 8 and I couldn’t be there.  That was the day my Dad almost died.  Two doctors from emergency medicine sat me down and told me that my dad had just hours to live.  I had to call everyone and tell them to get down to the hospital because everything was going sideways and the doctors said it could be anytime now.  So for the 45 minutes it took my sister and my Mom to get to the hospital, I was in my Dads room asking him to please try to keep breathing. Telling him if he would just relax and take a few deep breaths we could turn this around. He can hear me..I think he can hear me. But he refuses and shakes his head no. I look at the monitor and can see his heart rate skyrocketing while his breathing is dangerously erratic.  ”Dad, please, please don’t die today, you can’t die on H’s Birthday” he just keeps shaking his head no. I try a one man version of good cop /bad cop while sobbing like a fool. This goes on for 40 minutes or so until my Mom shows up and is able to slowly calm him down. My Dad’s heart rate starts leveling out and his breathing starts to improve.

That night I called Sharon and had her and the kids get in a car and drive up to Boston. For reason’s I can’t really go into here, my Dad has never met my youngest daughter S. I was so afraid that my dad wouldn’t live long enough for her to meet him. So Sharon dropped everything, piled the kids into the car and made the thousand mile trek north.

April 28, 2000.

For the past 2 1/2 years, my Dad and I lived together while he worked with me in Los Angeles. During that time, we grew very close and shared many amazing times.

Here we were on the last night of my Dad’s stay in Los Angeles and I wanted to do something really memorable to commemorate this. Earlier in the evening, I took my Dad to see Shelby Lynne at the House of Blues for a ridiculously amazing show. We had dinner first and then we were front row center. What up!  You can read a review of the show here

(At one point during the show, Shelby looked down at me and said “Los Angeles, you’re looking good” That’s my story and I am sticking to it.)

Anyway, after an amazing night, I wanted a really cool way to end the whole experience.

During my Dad’s time in LA we had an ongoing Steve McQueen film festival. We screened the classics of course, Papillion, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt, Thomas Crown, but we also tracked down some hard to find titles like Le Mans, The Cincinnatti Kid, Junior Bonner, amongst others.

My Dad is a big fan of McQueen from back in the day. But for me Steve McQueen really represented what I was doing in Los Angeles and how I was living my life.

Now McQueen died back in 1980 so I thought we could go visit his grave or something, but McQueen, of course, had his ashes scattered so there was no grave. So I gave this some very serious thought and tried to think about what Steve would want us to do.

(As a young man, It is very important when making many decisions to ponder what the great McQueen would do)

So In the early morning hours of April 28, 2000, I took my Dad for a ride up to Steve McQueens old house in the hills of Brentwood. Where we drank a toast to him outside the gates of his house. I remember us talking about his time in LA, I remember my Dad laughing at me when he realized we were at Steve McQueens old house and I remember tearing up when I hugged my Dad and told him I would really miss him. – All this, mind you, after midnight on Steve McQueens lawn.

So flash forward Ten years and here I am, married, with three kids, trying to make sense of what is happening in my life.

This whole ordeal has felt very surreal. Like it is not even happening. Like I am somehow disassociated from the reality of what is transpiring.  I don’t want to talk about it, my natural inclination is to just withdraw and deal with it myself. Luckily Sharon has  been helping me and encouraging me to reach out. Telling me to return emails and make phone calls.  But it has been hard.

I’ve got to get some work done. I have clients who have been extremely patient for their photos while I have been dealing with all of this, but I have to buckle down and try to put all of this aside.

I want to thank all of my friends and clients for their well wishes, support and understanding during this difficult time. it has meant a great deal.

I miss my Dad. I’m sitting here, back in Nashville, but my Dad is 1,152 miles away, slumped in a hospital bed fighting for his life and I am having a real hard time figuring out how we got from Steve McQueen’s house to here.