The first time Dad fell was on a pebbly beach on the coast of Nova Scotia. I was still reeling, broken, trying to figure out how to be a whole person after a young and painful divorce. Mom and Dad had welcomed me home, a home that had gotten smaller since four kids had grown and moved on, but that still had room for me. Unbeknownst to them, a second failed fledgling was soon to find his way home—the boomerang generation strikes again.
It was amid this flurry of repeat adolescence that Dad’s legs started to fail. We had camped our way across New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Dad was already using a cane, one that he would hide behind him for the photos, disgruntled by its necessity in his still-young fifties. They had made the trip alone the previous three summers, enjoying the newfound freedom of a pair of empty-nesters. Then, I moved in. Suddenly, their spare room housed the shell of their youngest daughter, sleeping on a $20 yard-sale futon, manifesting a crisis of personality with an unfortunate hairstyle and an odd obsession with Irish indie rockabilly bands. They endured my efforts to learn to play the guitar with the patience only loving parents could have, comforted me through the entire spectrum of trauma and divorce-fueled breakdown, and supported me more than just financially throughout the resultant bankruptcy. And when it came time for their annual road trip, unwilling to leave me home alone in my unstable state, they packed me into the back seat and brought me along, emotional baggage and all.
I still have fond memories of that trip. Long, slow days of sunshine and sea air, miles and miles of breath-taking coastal scenery, the three of us each night huddled around a crackling fire with no expectations, no pressure, none of the anger and anxiety that had dominated my life for far too long. It went a long way toward starting to heal wounds I didn’t even know I had. For as much as it was the end, though, of what I thought was the hardest thing I’d ever been through, it distinctly marked the beginning of a new trial, the likes of which none of us had ever confronted.
For as much as it was the end, though, of what I thought was the hardest thing I’d ever been through, it distinctly marked the beginning of a new trial, the likes of which none of us had ever confronted.
We stopped at the beach to stretch our legs. We were on our way home. It was just a small cove, one of hundreds of little places where you could pull off the highway and watch the Atlantic waves crash raucously ashore. We meandered along the water’s edge, looking for little shells and sea glass amongst the tiny pebbles. I was walking ahead of Mom and Dad when I heard a cry behind me. I turned back to see Dad, fallen, the waves pounding his back, pushing him over even as Mom struggled to pull him up. The next few minutes were a panicked blur of unrelenting surf that sent us staggering every time we thought we were gaining ground. The pebbles shifted underfoot with each new wave, sucking us backward, making it even harder to get Dad’s unsteady legs under him. When we finally dragged ourselves back to solid ground, Dad leaned against the car to catch his breath and held out his hand. When he uncurled his fingers, there, clutched in his palm, was the tiniest piece of sea glass. He had leaned over to pick it up and lost his balance. Dad nearly drowned, scared us all half to death, but he held on to what he’d locked his sights on through it all. That tenacity would come to characterize Dad’s personality through all the then-unknowns that lay ahead.
It’s a special kind of hell, watching a loved one slowly ravaged by an unidentified disease. Gradually, with ever-increasing pain, Dad found his left side weakening. A dragging foot begot a cane begot a walker begot a wheelchair. A constant battery of medical appointments and tests ruled out one thing after another. Not a stroke. Not multiple sclerosis. Every ruled-out condition brought a peculiar mix of relief, fear, and frustration. A couple of years passed before they settled on “lesions on the spinal cord.” From what? They couldn’t say. Will it get worse? They didn’t know. By this time, my brother had moved home, nursing bruises of his own from growing up and learning things the hard way. He learned the family business, eventually taking it over when Dad was forced into early retirement by his deteriorating condition.
Things seemed to settle for a while, with a suspicious sort of calm. My brother got married. I ventured out on my own again, cautiously. Mom and Dad found a new empty nest at the shore of Lake Huron, and with it, they clawed back some of the independence that had been slipping through their fingers. The soul-healing waves rolled in beneath pastel sunsets, and life carried on and found a new rhythm in that way that it does when you’re not looking.
Come back in three weeks’ time for Part Two. . .
Holding on to Happiness was first published in the June 2022 issue of Blank Spaces Magazine
Aly Writes 
One thought on “Holding on to Happiness – Part One”