Traces of Life in his Cognitive Dissonance

He lurches at me, yellowing eyes rolling in delirium, cane in hand as he rises from the couch, a distended disheveled shell in olive workman's slacks of fury staggering my way. I run through the kitchen down the back stairs, slamming the hallway door to the basement shut. 


"You goddamn sonuvabitch, you little shit!" 


Wham!  Dad falls against the door and throws it open, but I am already down the stairs and out the back into the yard. He is in no condition to follow - he couldn't even make it down the steps without collapsing; he knows that, even in his feverish state.  In the backyard, the rain soaking me through, I look up at our breakfast nook window and his face appears. "You stay out there, you bastard!" And then he's gone.  Back to the sofa and his bottle.


I don't remember what set Dad off in this particular instance. I might have turned the TV on or slammed a door or otherwise somehow disturbed his stupor.  He won't remember it in another hour.  It is the spring of 1977.  This cycle will repeat itself a couple more times over the next few months, the last of his life.

By the time my Dad lifted off this mortal coil in August of '77, he'd long since departed in all the ways that really matter.  A Francis Bacon painting congealed into jaunice-tinged whiskers, my Dad bled degenerate exhaustion onto the fabric of his couch.  The sheer energy of dying a slow death had finally caught up with him.  Only when whipped into confused fury directed my way did he perk up.  Perhaps I represented in too sharp a focus all those he'd disappointed.  Maybe in his feverish moments he foresaw my future and it reflected himself back like a mirror, unleashing his anger for the poisonous pieces of him that were to engulf me.

I look back fondly on those times Dad chased me enraged through the house, for at least in those moments he seemed coherent at some level, even if the cognition he displayed reeked of cognitive dissonance.  Still, he was awake, showing traces of life. After all, he didn't live much in 1977.  Not really. Until he wasn't alive at all.