The Ghost Who Raised Me

It was early July, the air thick and swollen with heat, as if it had swallowed too much sun. My uncle hadn’t called me himself — he wasn’t man enough for that. Instead, he called my ex-wife to tell her my father was dying.

We hadn’t heard from him in years. Not since the last time my father was at death’s door. But blood demands appearances.

I packed my boys into the car, and we drove. A straight shot from Austin to Indianapolis. Sixteen hours of highway unraveling in front of me — fields blurring into rusted-out towns, old wounds casting long shadows on the road. A friend offered us a place to stay. We dropped our bags and headed straight to the VA hospital.

He was pale, almost gray. Tubes and wires twisted around him, machines beeping in a half-hearted rhythm. My boys said goodbye. They tried not to cry. Then I stayed behind, alone with the ghost of the man who had raised me by absence.

He had denied me once. Told my mother I wasn’t his son. Another man paid the child support, and I carried his last name for most of my life. No father’s hand had wiped the blood from my nose when I was hit. No arm had swung around my shoulders after a scraped knee or a bruised soul. He had never looked for me. Never said my name like it mattered.

And now, I was the one looking at him.

He lived through the night. They moved him to a nursing home, kept him breathing with methadone, his veins swimming in sedation. He had been a drunk once, but drugs were his first love. They pumped him full of Xanax to keep him from withdrawing, and each night he drifted somewhere I couldn’t follow. He never knew I was there. Or maybe he did, and it just didn’t matter.

I watched him slip into his stupor. It wasn’t sadness that clenched me. Just a familiar numbness. A boy’s heart buried under years of frost. I had spent my whole life invisible to him. What had I hoped for now? That he would see me with clarity for the first time in his life? That was foolish.

I stayed anyway.

The Fourth of July came. My friend invited me to her party — fireworks by the river, cold drinks in coolers. But I couldn’t face people. I sat in a dark hotel room instead, feeling the weight of things I didn’t know how to carry. I didn’t want my life to be a reflection of my father’s — alone and unloved, with no one to blame but myself.

The next day, I flew to New York. My father wouldn’t last the week. My friend gave me a ride to the hospital, but her patience had worn thin. She said I was selfish. Said I used her. She was angry because I had missed her party. Her words hit me harder than anything my father ever said because she wasn’t wrong. I had learned how to survive, but I hadn’t learned how to love. The walls I built kept everything out — not just the bad.

I didn’t argue.

When we reached the hospital, I sat by my father one last time. His body was there, but his mind had already drifted too far. The nurses dosed him up, and he disappeared again — fading without words, without recognition, without regret.

I didn’t cry. There was nothing to cry for.

He died days later, and no one called me. They buried him without me or my boys. My boys didn’t ask why. They already knew. Some things don’t need explaining.

When you grow up unloved, you learn to carry your grief like a stone in your pocket. Heavy, but familiar. I don’t drink. I don’t run to pills or powders. I take the pain as it comes, and I live. That’s all.

Love never came easy to me.

But I’m still here. Still standing.

And maybe, that’s enough.