To Love a Time Bomb
Friday, July 14th, 2006I’m sorry to cut short my theme of the month. Certain pressing matters came up, and I am simply unable to find the spirit to continue. For those of you who are trully looking forward to its continuation, have no fear. I will conclude it at a later date.
On to pressing matter #1. I’ve already said my piece to the respective party members and am simply waiting for a response.
Pressing matter #2. This is a biggie. About a month ago, I had an idea for a theme of the month. It came to me after my father told me a chinese fable. I disagreed with the morale of that fable so much that I wanted to make an entire month worth of blog about it. Unfortunately it never materialized, but today I want to at least bring some part of it to light.
Do you know what it means to love someone? I don’t. I do have some ideas though. First of all, it means that you don’t want anything bad to befall them, but that’s kind of a general feeling for people you know anyways. Second, You want them to succeed. Again that’s also somewhat general. Third, If something bad does happen to them, you’d rather it happenned to you instead of them. That one I know is especially true compared to the others. With these 3 things, a corollary follows: The enemy of the one you love is your enemy as well.
I love my father. That’s a given. Nothing that happens, has happened, or will happen can change that. unfortunately, thanks to that corollary I just came up with, I also hate him. I want my father to succeed, to be happy, and, If I can, to be able to take the brunt of whatever bad things to happen to him, but he is also the reason he is so unhappy. My father lives a somewhat nomadic life. His house is in LA, but his business is in the greater Bay Area. Every weekend or so, he would drive back to LA or back here from LA. I don’t care how strong you are, but a life like that would take a toll on anyone especially for someone who is over 50 years old. More over, He takes any and every job that comes along his way. It didn’t matter the logistics of the job. He just accepts them and works it out later without any thought for his own sake. He once took a job that involves him driving back and forth for 16 hours everyday without any real breaks in between. He did this for a month and a half. It nearly drove him insane. Once that was done, he did it again. The job moved to LA. He went there and did the same thing again. Everytime he tells me these stories, I get confused. I know why he does it, and that’s why I love him for it. The fact that he does this to himself is the reason I hated him so. I couldn’t tell him to stop. He’d keep going because his beliefs won’t let him stop.
His beliefs is another point for confusion in how I feel about him. To say that his beliefs and views are conservative would be like saying that sticking your hand into a woodchipper while it’s running is bad. A woman’s place = at home. Gay = bad. Black people = hoodlum. Breadwinner = the man of the house. Stuff like that. Being a person raised by San Franciscan ideals, we get into some scuffles about this and that. Although I disagree vehemently with just about anything he belived in, I can’t help but admire how hard he works for his ideals, the driving force behind every insane thing he does for his business.
My father brings up this one question that haunts me daily. How do you love a man who is incredibly self destructive? You love him, but you also hate him because he’s also the reason he suffers. Everyday, I fear he’s going to just drop dead of exhaustion. I believe that’s exactly what happened today.
Somewhere between 12 PM and 1 PM, one of my father’s co workers found my father slumped over the steering wheel of his car. The paramedics couldn’t revive him. The preliminary report suggest that his heart simply stopped beating. The investigator I talked to mentioned that if he had gotten help a little bit earlier, he might have survived. The truth is, I don’t think that would have mattered. Whether it was today or tomorrow or next month or anytime after that, this was the way he was going to go. He wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop this life of his for his ideals were simply too strong to let him. I love him for doing everything his body would let him do to strive for his ideal to support his family, but he was still the architect of his own demise. Now. Now the hate has left me. He can no longer harm himself. Now he can rest. Now I love him without a shadow of doubt.
