Pinball Wizard

 

My life is like a telenovela without the mariachi interludes or chickens.  

The last post in this space found me at rock bottom with my dad.  It was sink or swim time, I had to make a choice.  After much agonizing, it seemed like a skilled nursing facility was the only place he could receive the kind of care he needs.

Getting to the point of making that decision was one of the hardest journeys of my life.  The metaphor of being a silver ball trapped inside a pinball machine is how I’ve felt since last summer.  Confined, reacting instead of acting, powerless to stop the momentum.

Things got worse when I found out the hospice still considered him rational enough to make his own decisions.  I explained that he was on his very best behavior for the psychiatrist, that he’s not stupid.  But the fact that he was sly enough to know when to be on his best behavior is the deciding fact.  If he’s in a right enough mind to con the shrink, he’s in his right mind.

I’d like to argue with that, but can’t really.  They are correct.

For a while there, I was bereft.  I felt powerless to influence my own life, trapped by my love for my dad and obligations I thought were owed.  This little silver ball was exhausted, emotionally drained and permanently bruised from being slammed into bumpers.

Pinball was one of my first true loves in life.  I still get excited if I walk into a new place and see a pinball machine, I want a Martian Revenge machine in my living room.  When I was a kid, very few people could beat me, my skills were MAD.  But 30 years later, I somehow got under the glass, I became the ball and not the wizard.

Somehow in the morass of despair, I remembered something important.  Being the pinball or being the wizard is a choice.  

So I chose.

I officially resigned as caregiver to my father.  He has a roster of caregivers at the hospice, if he wants to stay at home, he will have to play by home-care rules.  If he chooses to ignore their instructions, I won’t run interference anymore.  My choice was to stop enabling his less desirable personality traits and put him back in charge of his own life. 

So much peace came with that decision.  The invisible weight fell off my shoulders, my lungs expanded and my jaw un-clenched for the first time in months.  I can no more cure Andy’s belligerence than I could cure his cancer, neither of those things are my job.

My job is to be his daughter, to love and support him as his child.  Three days ago, I was angry, furious.  With him, with  myself, with life in general.  The responsibility of being his caregiver overshadowed our relationship and I didn’t want him to die with us being angry at each other.

Visiting him yesterday was a uniquely peaceful experience.  He listened to what I had to say, he agreed it was best for us.  My impatience for his usual tricks was restored to its normal setting of generous tolerance, there wasn’t any yelling.  At all.  Which might be a first, because even when we’re not angry, we usually yell at each other.

We talked yesterday about letting go, releasing our iron grips on objects, dogmas and fears.  We are both combative by nature, perhaps now is the time for peace.  The battle is over, it’s time to tend our wounds and tell the stories, to wait for the bittersweet endings.

Andy only played pinball once or twice, to bond with me.  He never understood how it was I could be so graceful, athletic and reflexive at this one stupid thing when I can’t even catch a Nerf ball lobbed gently right at me.  Seriously, I suck at hand/eye coordination in real life.   Whatever, he respected my skills, he still talks about it.

He’s worried about my future after he’s gone.  It’s natural, parents never stop worrying about their children.  He wants to provide for me, the sweetness of that breaks my heart, and grills me endlessly about my estate management plans.  I’m not to blow my inheritance on shiny cars and fast men named Julio.

I think you all know what I’m going to buy.  Yep, a pinball machine.  Life is too short not to play the one sport at which I excel.  It will be my link to Andy, my tangible reminder of a great dad and a reminder of my great truth.

I am not the pinball.  I am the wizard.

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