A Hundred Times Stronger Than Morphine

I started to write about a spiritual experience in a cenote, a natural deep water well in Tulum. I was pregnant with my daughter. It was meditative and fresh.

I’m going to instead drop you into a moment where my latest healing journey began. And truthfully, healing happens in dark times more often that in beautiful ones.

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I’m sitting on my bed and it’s about 5pm on Thanksgiving. My mom and coach left after bringing over turkey and sides, Andrew is walking the dogs, and I’m holding both kids as we watch Word Party on Netflix.

We are planning to go to a Thanksgiving party in a bit, but since I have a few moments I think I should call Pop and ask what the deal was with him being in the hospital. Of course my brother would find out through a friend of a friend that Randy went to the emergency room. He’d never tell us himself but these things have a way of surfacing one way or another.

His face appears on my phone.

“Are you okay?” It’s a pleasantry at this point.

“Is anyone there with you?” Trepidation in his voice is something he conceals well but not enough for my empathic tendencies today. Especially after having the kids it’s like all my chakras are on fire.

“No, Andrew’s walking the dogs. It’s just me and the kids.” When you brace yourself for impact you think that’ll help but really you should just not disagree with gravity. “Just tell me.”

“I took fentanyl.” My dad confesses. But I’m no priest, god or friend.

And in that moment I’m a parent, holding her two small babies as they watch a blue elephant and purple panda sing about shapes and colors. I’m a child of someone very sick, and it feels in that moment like I’m letting go of my dad so that I can keep two arms securely around my kids.

Andrew is still walking the dogs.

I’m devastated and unsurprised. “Okay, let me call you back. I’m really sad and I don’t want you to see me cry” It’s like I’m protecting him from the salt that my tears would pour onto his already damaged wounds.

I’m not sure if I’m crying for him, for me, or for my kids that might not have a Pop someday to ride bikes with.

Calling him back after I swallow my sadness, I ask about the logistics, timing of events, and listen to him joke.

“I’m invincible.” He promotes. “Now I know why people don’t take that stuff. I don’t want to die.”

The words are as flat as the characters on the TV screen, caricatures dancing and only representing a slice of life that isn’t reality.

I just want Andrew to come back so I can feel home again, even if I am at home.

I eventually hang up with Randy. There was actually a time after his second or third or fourth arrest that I didn’t save his phone number for a year. Just 650-XXX-XXXX. It’s like I didn’t want to make him permanent.

But today as I look at my children, and hear his voice affectionately calling them his coined nicknames “Goobie and Junior,” I feel the tightness of my muscles and fatigue of my heart soften and rest. Seeing them, even knowing they’re in the next room, is seeing a ribbon of color streak the sky after it rains.

I love my father. And if you are reading this I know you do too. Not my dad, but your own.

I don’t have all the answers to the questions you might ask yourself about your life, your trauma, your disasters that will eventually become your art. Just want you to know we’re all in it.

Maybe sometime I’ll share the cenote in Tulum story, it’s a bit lighter but for now there are some shadows for you to sit with.