Complex Numbers

Endgame

My dad's not getting any better - though he doesn't seem to be getting any worse; and today, the doctor - if you can call a 28 year old resident punk (think Dr. Chase from "House," only taller, darker and handsomer, so I have to keep him away from my wife) a doctor - was going over my options, rights and responsibilities as the person who has to make all his health care decisions.

I don't think it's going to come to that this time around, but I need to know these things just in case - and so I can make informed decisions when the time does come.

I don't talk about this stuff, much. Especially not online. I do this online thing because of the anonymity of it all, but there's not much anonymity here. People know me, or think they do. It's hard to talk about some of this stuff - not because of the people who know me, but because of the ones who don't, or think they do. So I withdraw behind session privacy and IM blocks, for now. It's nothing personal. Nothing personal, that is, for any of you, but very personal for me.

Dad was like that - kept personal stuff private. He liked to play his cards close to his chest. Actually, he didn't like to play cards at all, though he taught me the basics of poker along with how to catch a fly ball - which, when I look back on it now, is very odd, since he never showed any interest in sports whatsoever - and bait a fish hook. You know, those things that fathers are rather obligated to do when they have sons, and it might be a better world if more of them did.

No, Dad's game of choice was chess. Chess has boundary conditions and rules. There's no element of luck, unless you consider "hoping the other guy doesn't notice where my rook is" an aspect of luck. The rules are fixed, set, and not subject to modifications or interpretation. He taught me chess at a very young age, and I don't think he ever "let" me win, but it got to where we'd play just about every night and I got better and better until most of the time I could win, or at least force a stalemate. I remember once after a long winning streak on my part, he checkmated me and I was just young enough to get mad about it. I walked away and punched the wall, leaving a dent that's there to this day.

But I was just old enough that the next night, I was back across the table from him. I don't recall who won that particular game, but I do know I was never a sore loser again after that. It wasn't that he punished me for the dent in the wall; no, it was his disappointment that I couldn't take losing like a man. I think I was ten or eleven at the time, maybe.

Life, however, isn't a chess game. It's not a poker game, either; it's not a zero-sum game, or even a game at all, as much as I'd find it amusing if someone put "GAME OVER" on my future tombstone. No, life is more like the picture at the top of my blog - fractal, generally unpredictable, chaotic. We know about taxes and death, but not how much or when, and everything else is pretty much optional.

See, a little while ago, I was talking about my dad in the past tense. But that's because the father I knew left long ago. He left when the Alzheimer's started to kick in. I know they all say that even those with Alzheimer's respond emotionally, but what good is that? Dad wasn't the emotional type. He was a sea captain, and a chemist, and an investor in the stock market; an intellectual whose response to the chaos of the sea or the fluctuations of the stock market was to stay the course, avoid storms and play it safe. Emotions were a luxury for men of his generation. If he can't engage in rational, intellectual discourse, he's not himself.

To me, Alzheimer's is the ultimate argument against the existence of a god. Where other people might turn to their faith to get them through situations like this, I ask, "what kind of god does this to people?" And don't give me shit about being tested, or never being given something we can't handle, or life as miracle crap; it won't wash, not after I saw my mother suffer through years of dementia, followed immediately by my father's decline. Still, however, and nevertheless, I found myself wishing I had a rabbi to talk to about all this. When I examined why, the answer came back in several parts: One, to satisfy myself that my father's religious beliefs (such as they were) are being accommodated; two, because I've always thought Jews have the healthiest relationship with death; three, because I feel like talking to someone about it, and all the blogs and shrinks in the world don't quite do it for me.

Well, it doesn't really matter, not right now. Chances are, he'll pull through this bout of illness on the courses of antibiotics prescribed by his doctors (it turns out he doesn't have the flu, probably), and go back to living at the Alzheimer's care facility where he's spent the last five years. But he wasn't diagnosed five years ago; no, it was closer to nine years ago that the diagnosis was made, and the average lifespan after an Alzheimer's diagnosis is seven years. Nine is remarkable. 14 would be amazing. 16 would be a miracle, if I believed in miracles - let's just say "statistically unlikely in the extreme." So, sometime in the next seven years. Sometime before I'm 49.

Dad was 49 when I was born.

So the board has become sparsely populated; many of the pieces have been captured. I'm not sure how many moves before checkmate, but its inevitability hangs over the playing field.

Aw, fuck the damn metaphor. The whole point is that I have to face facts, and steer a course through the rough waters to-

Okay, enough with the metaphors. In addition, my back isn't improving very quickly, and I'm still in pain nearly all the time. Plus, I've got business worries (thanks to the housing slump, since housing drives my industry), and I have my father's finances to deal with in addition to his health care - and that demands much of my attention right now, so I can try to keep his land intact instead of selling it or developing it to pay the damn taxes.

Still found time to vote in the Virginia primary today, though I still dislike all the candidates. But my dad would have, so can I do less?