Riding Towards Myself or Picking Streets

Riding my bike from Commerce Place to the Royal Alexander Hospital I took 97th instead of 101st. Something about 101 makes me feel competitive with buses and fast cars whereas 97th makes me feel apart of a chaos and not a potential victim of it.

On the way I was thinking how much of how people turn out in life is a result of their parents and how much they do or don’t want to be like them. I have always understood that about myself but it was on my way to see my Dad in the hospital for the first time since he had been diagnosed with esophagus cancer that I realized in this very moment I was becoming exactly who my dad was the minute he first disappointed me.

At the age of four he left me at the hospital to be collected by social welfare. It was not a conscious decision on his part but a series of poor choices he made stemming from his own poor mental health. Here we were 24 years later and the table had turned. He was in the hospital and I couldn’t bring myself to be there for him.


Having not been to the Royal Alexander in a long time I was surprised at its post apocalypse feel. The obvious newer external renovations making the blight of the internal of the hospital seem that much more bleak. By the time I got up to the 5th floor I felt as thought maybe I was an extra in Vietnam era film Coming Home.

As soon as I got off the elevator I heard my mother’s voice say my name but I couldn’t see her. I looked around in the 3 directions where her voice could be coming from. Amid the chaos of a functioning hospital nothing took root for a few seconds after coming off the elevator. It wasn’t until my Mom was right in front of me that I saw her. My parents are not particularly close so seeing the profound stillness and sadness in my mom’s eyes clued me in that my Dad was not getting out today as expected.

We walked around for about 4 seconds when finally she just stopped, moved closer to the wall and looked at me for a second before launching to telling me new secrets that neither she nor my dad were ready to share yet. New secrets that could wait until after my cousin’s wedding that was happening in the coming weekend. I am glad she confided in me or else the cancer that I am sure lingers in her would have been watered by the suppression and been allowed to grow. I ingested their secrets letting them become mine.

My Mom and I walked down the narrow halls littered with chairs, walkers and IVs and busy with slow patients and nurses. When we got to his room his bed was empty. We looked to his roommate for an explanation. “X-rays” he said.

My mom and I sat down in front of his bed. Looking at the empty bed was harrowing. My dad is a large man but through my mother and my brother and sister I had heard that because he wasn’t keeping food down he had lost a lot of weight. I tried to imagine before he came in to the room what he would look like in the bed. How much space he might take up now.

After a few minutes of catch-up conversation to establish a sense of normalcy my Dad was wheeled in. He was smaller. His skin looked like his own Dad’s skin did not many months early before he died. His nose was redder. He was weaker. He made his way to the bed, a nurse came in and unknowingly flirted in the way young women who don’t know how precious their young female energy do. Through barley veiled questions my dad tried to find out if I knew any secrets. I am good at keeping secrets from him so he was satisfied and none the wiser.

Sadly and mercifully I shine in times of awkward conversations. I am good at avoiding the elephant in the room, I am good at diverting attention- I think it is a skill people who realize they are different at a young age pick up early with earnest.

My dad feigned tiredness and pretended to fall asleep, easier than avoiding the elephant. My Mom and I got and started to leave. She touched his foot and said good by- a touching moment that almost made me loose it for the first time since I found out he had cancer. I followed suit and touched his foot- one of the first times I had made physical contact with him in years. He opened his eyes and said, “I am sorry we didn’t talk”. “That’s okay” I said, “We’ll talk next time” He closed his eyes.

Once out of the hospital while I waited for the bus with my Mom, my bike in hand, she said “you know what this means” to which I said “What?” waiting for a cliché yet truism roll off her tongue and down my back. “That we will have to have a family meeting to plan how we are going to deal with this.” Not coming to the hospital, not hearing the secrets, not seeing my shrunken Dad had given me anywhere near the same pit in the stomach reaction that I had after what she just said.

As I found myself somehow biking down 101st street this time going towards Commerce Place I found myself once again thinking about the action connections between my Dad and I. In reaction to the idea of family, togetherness, accountability, familia vulnerability I flinched, balked, and attempted to rationalize away. It was in this moment that my Dad’s cancer seemed so unfair to me, too much for me to handle. It was here at this moment when my family needed me and I wanted to abandon them, wanted to flee, look out for myself first that I become most like my father.

After grabbing a coffee and cookie I sat down in the Commerce Place atrium watching all the people go by and began to wonder what I could do differently than my father did.

Ted