Friendship 1

I spent Saturday with my dad.  Or, at least I spent the day looking at him while he was in a methadone-induced stupor.  He’s lost some more weight, and he was having a particularly rough day because he was up all night with constipation so bad that an emergency hospice nurse rushed over after midnight to help “break up the mass” he was trying to pass and then administer an enema to prevent a repeat scenario.  Poor thing.

To make matters worse, my dad’s best friend Tommy was visiting from out of town.  Tommy’s retired and drove cross-country from Washington state to visit with my dad In NY.  All this constipation stuff happened while Tommy was there, which is lucky for my step-mother because she had help, but humiliating for my father who had to go through people poking and prodding his anus in front of his best friend.  Once the nurse left, the situation got even worse because of leakage and all sorts of other fecal horrors involving Tommy and my step-mother carrying my dad back and forth between the bedroom and bathroom.  By the time I arrived the next morning, there were two Hefty bags full of “soiled” clothes, sheets, towels, and bathroom rugs needing to get to a laundromat (or an incinerator, if I was in charge).

Tommy, a 3-time Vietnam vet, was unphased by it;  matter-of-fact in his retelling of the night’s events, steady in the way he helped my dad without thinking much of it.  I was thankful for him, impressed by him, and wondering if I had a single friend I could lean on like that.