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Dear Dad (2004-07-14 - 12:11 p.m.) I don�t think I�ve ever talked about this on here before, but I really want to vent about it right now. All my life my father has been doing coke�and lots of it. Sometimes he would take off for days, even weeks, at a time, not hearing a word from him. Whenever he�d come back he�d be a few hundred to thousand dollars poorer. Now, I can imagine and possibly accept a 20something doing this, but someone who is pushing 60? That�s just nuts. I used to get really mad at my dad when he�d take off on us like that, but I�m passed that now. I�m much more worried about him than pissed. He�s a 55 year old, overweight and of shape man, who has abused his body for way too many years. When I was a kid I happened to come home from school early to find an ambulance parked in front of my house. When I walked in the door there was my father, overdosing in a chair�cops and paramedics all over the living room. They really didn�t pay much attention to me since they had bigger things on their hands. I just stood there and watched�not saying a word. Finally my mother noticed me and shooed me outside. I hid in the backyard, peaking my head around the corner of the house to see when they would come out. As they rolled my dad to the back of the ambulance I yelled out to him. I screamed �Hang in there Daddy� at the top of my lungs, and started bawling uncontrollably. Years later I found out that he actually heard me, and that he�d never forget it. I just don�t want that to happen again, especially now that he�s almost 15 years older. That feeling of powerlessness and fear has never completely left me, and when, on this past Friday night, my mother told me that he was gone it came back full force. He finally showed on Sunday afternoon, all strung out and looking way to pale. I didn�t say a word to him until Monday night...I just could look at him. But when I did, I didn�t yell, I didn�t judge, I just told him how I felt. That I was afraid that I would loose my father to coke. That he was too old to be pulling this kind of thing and that I still remembered that time when I was a kid when I almost lost my dad. I don�t know if what I said will change anything, but for the first time since I can remember, he didn�t have anything to say. He didn�t have any of his trademark sarcastic comments to retort with. He just sat there, eyes on the floor. Maybe no one has ever put it to him that way before, in a real way, rather than just yelling and screaming. I hope to god that this will be the one time that someone has gotten through to him. I just don�t know what I�d do if I lost him�especially to something you can never tell anyone about. Coke isn�t a very acceptable drug when it�s used by 50-plusers. You can�t give yourself comfort by saying that it�s the kind of thing that happens all the time. Please dad�just stop doing it. Don�t turn me into that frightened child hiding behind the house. |