For years, I longed to love my father and _____
be loved by him in return. But I don't, and am not.___________
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ________
SECOND THOUGHTS BY SALLIE TISDALE

Since my mother's death 11 years ago, I visit my father rarely, once or twice a year. I lived with him until I was 16, and I lived like an outlaw, biding my time.

My family was a heavy planet, its gravity a powerful force holding us down. Getting away wasn't easy; my big brother flew off for a while, but fell back to ground in time, and lives only 30 miles away. My little sister orbits steadily around and around, only moving out of town a few years ago, returning every month or so. They both knead at my guilt -- the inevitable guilt of being distant, absent, reluctant. "Someone's got to take care of him," my sister says, ignoring my murmured disagreement. My father, long pickled in whiskey and high blood pressure, is not long for this world, I know, but he hasn't been for more than 40 years.

Anyway, I'm going to visit next week. He declines rapidly now, and difficult decisions must be made.

My mother's tidy house, her filed paperwork and folded laundry, are long gone. It tumbles down around him now, falling into disrepair. A cleaning woman comes once a week, and he stands by, ordering her not to touch the piles of unopened bills and delinquent notices, the year of newspapers, the bags full of empty cans and bottles. She vacuums carefully around them. He grows paranoid, confused, ever more demanding.

A few years ago he was in the ICU, skirting death by way of delirium -- not for the first time. My sister and I scrambled for the opportunity to sort out his affairs. We were crossing a line in this house of forbidden corners, knowing that once we touched his papers there'd be no turning back. We snuck in like thieves.

We washed his filthy curtains, fixed the torn shades, changed the sheets, emptied the trash. We found Christmas presents he'd never opened and checks he'd never cashed -- thousands of dollars of pension and stock and insurance checks long since expired, like $100 bills thrown on a fire. We found birthday cards to grandchildren, never sent. (He was really angry with me last year, because I hadn't sent a thank-you note for the presents he'd never actually mailed.) We sorted through my mother's old clothes, still hanging in the upstairs closet a decade after her death, and found a dusty cache of memorabilia from their college days. We found several pleading letters from an accountant and querulous letters from the IRS, unopened; bank statements from distant, unknown banks. We found almost 50 books sent from a book club, still in their original wrappers, piled on his dresser and headboard like bricks in a wall.

Meanwhile, in the hospital, my father talked long and loudly about fighting fires, catching planes, missing a ship, this lousy hotel where he was stuck, and one day grabbed me as I stood by his bed. "No one," he said, suddenly teary, "no one in my family ever comes to see me."

N E X T+P A G E: Something I wasn't supposed to find