Five years prior to this very day, my father laid in the cardiac intensive care unit of Calgary’s Foothills Hospital, his chest cavity splayed open by a metal grate, unconscious and kept alive by multiple sophisticated machines. I viscerally recall the essence of that ward—blinking and beeping robotic devices, beige-colored blinds segmenting a multitude of freshly devastated families, blank-stared and weary physicians rushing around, delivering life-altering news to shocked and confused people. Just a week before, he was a jovial 57 year old man ripping down ski-slopes, his infectious laugh bellowing into lively evenings spent with friends and neighbors. Such a drastic change was tough to process; everything unfolded with such vigor, such immediacy, creating a breathless survival state for myself and family. We prayed, we believed, we bargained with God and the universe for one last chance, an opportunity for my dad to address his health, to give up his lifestyle and live long enough to become a grandparent. Not all stories have happy endings, unfortunately; this film flickered past my eyes seemingly in slow motion, every moment more heart-wrenching than the next, until reaching its bitter finale, all of our hopes and positive thinking stomped on, crushed.
Life has a curious way of invoking profound change. My father’s death proved to be the most substantial stimulus for growth in my entire life, completely altering the course of every subplot, every relationship, every belief that I held—about myself, about family, about health and about faith. He was the strongest man I have known—a gentle soul with a hardened exterior, charming, funny, and emotionally young. Never, in the months preceding his downfall, had he revealed even a hint of physical discomfort; however, an autopsy uncovered a wide range of organ dysfunction, including fatty liver, prior strokes, and corroded kidneys. His sudden passing came as a complete shock; looking back, however, there must have been visible symptoms. As I once did, the man enjoyed his libations, drinking to excess on many occasions—he viewed himself to be invincible, unbreakable, as did my own eyes as a young child—he was superman, a protective cape strung around his neck while driving us along treacherous, snowy and dark roads, safely to our destination, always. My father nurtured a deep sense of safety in me, in everyone he met, and was described by many in memorium as larger than life—perhaps larger, metaphorically speaking, but not above the laws of, as we all found out in painful style.
So what happened, exactly? Being the toughened, excessive man he was, my father exercised hard. I possess a video of him towing a 4-door Jeep Wrangler, thick ropes in either hand, up the ramp of a parking garage as his trainer sat tapping the brakes and cackling. Evidently, his bodily decay did not deter him, and while training in a Canmore gym one fateful January day, he finally encountered his match. He suffered an aortic dissection—essentially, a fundamental part of his heart exploded under strain, rupturing a segment of his ascending aorta and decimating a valve. After years of sporadic partying and gluttony, his organ-walls had sacrificed their natural thickness, eroding so much that any exerted pressure created a risk of damage and in this case, death. The survival rate for such a condition, at the moment of occurrence, is 50%. Half of the people who suffer an aortic dissection die on the spot—no chance of redemption. My father, already defying odds, instantly realized something was wrong—really wrong—suddenly indicating his inability to walk. For this man to admit any sort of weakness would require something catastrophic; totally averse to doctor visits, this showing of physical vulnerability sparked serious concern in his gym mentor. After a brief visit to the Canmore ER, a small-capacity hospital with limited resources, he was strapped into a speeding ambulance for the hour-long trip to Calgary, the specifics of his severe internal injury still alluding those who were treating him. Coincidentally, two of the most prominent cardiac surgeons nationwide were residing in Calgary, and my dad was fortunate enough to receive surgical care from both. He survived the drive, miraculously, with a partially-destroyed heart. The famed physicians were waiting.
Around this point, I received the news, and in a heartbeat everything changed—my life, as I knew it, was ripped out from beneath my already unsteady feet. I had been battling my own demons for years, taming the menacing beast of alcoholism I had known for so long, losing nearly 100 pounds and transmuting my life in a significant way. Days prior, I had committed to sober living, fresh off an unorthodox academic advancement, a journal paper published which was brimming with novel theory I had developed, ready to forge my way into a new and healthy life. If I know anything, its that nothing goes as planned. Abruptly, I found myself wrapped in perilous, immobilizing fear, clenching every inch of my body as I sat solemnly on what seemed like a never-ending road trip, completing the 3-hour drive from Edmonton into Calgary, utterly sick to my core as a stumbled into the doors of family-friend’s house. The operation was underway and it was risky, dangerous, lasting almost 12 hours, said to be one of the more complicated procedures ever to challenge these veteran doctors. How could this happen? Weeks before we were gathered for Christmas; my father had accompanied me to buy snow-tires and using his typical charismatic charm, enchanted the salesman into doling out a stellar deal. He kissed my cheek in our final moment together—something he would rarely do. Did he know something was wrong? How could he not tell us? A million questions raced through my mind simultaneously, a constant, inescapable feeling of dread pulsing through my being.
The following days are a blur. To revive every detail is impossible—the act of reliving this has proven itself to be a telling ordeal—certain points, however, I cannot forget. He emerged from surgery still alive as his family assimilated to create a semblance of hope, infusing the atmosphere with shaky optimism. Four days were spent in this nightmare—for four days we pushed our every waking thoughts to be as positive as possible as my father fought tooth and nail against his inevitable demise. Hooked up to probably every form of life support, he existed basically as a cyborg—tubes shoved down his throat to artificially maintain oxygen circulation, bags collecting excrement, a pump set-up to perform what his kidneys were meant to. Extremely unstable, his chest remained wide open, covered with a sheet yet horribly obvious, necessary for routine checks on his newly repaired cardiac-system and unexpected revisits to the operating table. We were informed of a massive blood clot in his leg which had prompted his flesh to become rigid and hard, like a flexed muscle covering his entire body. Soon, that leg was amputated, sawed off mid-thigh to avoid a rampant crisis due to electrolytic imbalance.
As quickly as his limb was removed, our expectations adapted—he would live as an amputee, sharing his harrowing story to inspire his peers, a statistical outlier turned health-fanatic, clean and sober in the face of unfathomable hardship. It would do—it hardly mattered if he had both legs—we wanted his life, our father, the nucleus of our family. Sadly, it often does not matter what you want, or how intensely you want, God takes away with impunity, harshly so as to disrupt the foundations of faith. There was yet another risky operation—it happened fast, reigniting the flames of felt impending doom, a volatile grasping at order in a chaotic, fast-moving landscape. On the fourth day, the situation looked encouraging. Our hopes were heightened—the resident doctor, a blunt fellow, carried some exciting news. My dad was stable—finally, enough so that the metal cage in his torso could be momentarily extracted for an MRI to be done, to examine his brain function and provide a realistic outlook on the mental debilitation he would need to live with, once he recovered, we told ourselves and each other.
An important element was excluded from this tale thus far—perhaps for dramatic effect, perhaps because it is the most painstaking detail of all, the hardest to stomach even 5 years beyond its happening. During the journey from town to city, somewhere along the Queen Elizabeth highway, my father had entered cardiac arrest. Before even reaching the OR, blood supply to his brain was squelched for a total of 30 seconds, and the entire days-long battle was contingent upon an unknown variable—the damage done via stroke to his neurological storehouse, the home-base of his personality, his love and care, his living sense of vitality. As it turns out, the stroke had left him braindead. He won’t be able to wipe his own ass, we were told. The absolute nerve of that professional to say those words, directed at people just barely surviving, hanging on with every fiber of life, forcefully instilling idealism into a dark world, just to be told it was all meaningless. All of it, pointless, endured torture based on a shred of hopefulness, a wishful dream that he would pull through and still be able to remember our names, wasted suffering just to be obliterated by some emotionless, desensitized doctor. Never have I felt such an urge to strike someone as I did in that moment; it was supposed to be good news, not this, this was worse than anything—why did we put ourselves through this? Why did he not just die the day it happened, like every other person would have? Simple: that is who he was. He would have fought longer had he been given the chance, but that was no longer the natural plan. There was nothing left to hope for, no rational motivation to continue on that dreadful path. We were urged to finalize the decision—take him off life-support and say goodbye. He would not wish to be alive in total mental handicap; the choice was obvious, not easy but plain and straightforward. No more uncertainty. Minutes later, I was sitting at his bedside, watching him still fight long after the tubes were removed and the machines shut-down. He took an abnormally long time to succumb, his essence resisting as it slowly drifted up and out, moving on to whatever lies there beyond the cliffs of physical life. I phoned his longtime friend and confidant; I can still hear his grasping voice, his desperate sobbing, pleading, followed in memory only by my own screaming, locked away in some tiny bathroom where no one would hear me.
I managed to remain sober through the entire hospital stay—yet another miracle, mandatory for my loved ones who needed me to be present. Afterwards, all restraints were lifted. The allure of abstinence was gone and so began a new chapter, one marked with intense grief and wild drug abuse, largely in solitude. Relative to before this tragic course of events, my life now looks dramatically different—in many ways, my father’s death shaped my character, catalyzing a chain-reaction of difficulties so immense that I had no choice but to adapt or perish. At times I have longed for his presence—most particularly in tricky situations which begged for a protective paternal figure’s rescue, to liberate me from whatever mess I had generated, leaving a sharp imprint of abandonment.1 The grieving process has been complex, sometimes labelled with numbness, in others by an abyss of deeply-crushing sadness, historically facilitated by drugs and alcohol. As I write this, I feel it; it gnaws at my insides, activated by the churning process of writing it all out for anyone to witness. On some days it lies dormant and layered with acceptance; on others it stokes a distinctive internal fire.
Grief of a loved one does not simply end—it carries into every edge of one’s life—just as a river flows, carving its banks for all of time. If I have learned anything from this loss, its that I cannot, will not, do the same to my own family. My father’s death, ultimately brought on by his own life’s decisions, fragmented our core family in a way I find hard to describe. His spirit—his passion for living—acted as the glue which contained us, holding us in place as a real, united whole, perhaps illusory but reassuring nonetheless. I know, in my heart, that his presence remains in some formless manner—certain experiences have initiated and evolved my spiritualism—a subconscious coping strategy through one lens, a peculiar base of scaffolding through another. My father did not tend well to his health—this is no secret—and at first I was infuriated. Now, I hold a far more compassionate stance; he did not have the emotional wherewithal to push his way into a state of genuine wellness, and for good reason—he grew up without a father, his own dying before his eyes at an impressionable age. Oh, how fortuitous it was to have grown up with my father intact. Forever lives on his memory—proudly, I wear his jewelry in celebration of his cut-short life—he is cherished, understood, thanked and missed very dearly.
James Alexander Perkins.
October 28, 1961 - January 22, 2019.
On this note, however, I am fortunate to have had a father figure in my life, in recent years, who has helped me out in many cases, and if he reads this I hope he knows how grateful I am for him.