I will never be a father. I made that decision a long time ago, and it comes with many reasons that boil down to my life is hard. I am overwhelmed trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with myself, and I believe it is my responsibility not to make my issues any worse by adding new life into the fold, then passing along burdens to a new generation. So I have invested my love in Jess and dogs, and that is good enough for me.
Some things in life I will never have the true perspective to understand, like what it is to see through my father’s eyes. Maybe if I had become a parent when societal expectations I would gain some insights onto the choices he made along the way. Why his wanderlust kept him moving around so much throughout his life – even after it wasn’t imposed upon him through military moves as a young child.
My father was born in Germany on a military base, lived on air force installations around the country until he was in the sixth grade and the family finally settled back down in Huntsville during the boom years of NASA’s push to the moon. I followed in his footsteps to Huntsville in my final high school years, then onward to Auburn. I never had the makings of an engineer where he ultimately found a career. He worked at several companies along the way, finally finishing where he spent his happiest years drafting machinery at Corley in Chattanooga.
When he finally retired a few years earlier than he expected, he ultimately made one last move and settled down in Bryant, Alabama where he has been since. It is about as close to the corners of Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia as one can get without falling off the side of Sand Mountain.
So when I say it is a bit of a drive to get up there from here in Cedartown, I mean it is a two-plus hour climb over the southern-end of Lookout Mountain (not exactly easy) then up Sand Mountain at one of various points. I choose Collinsville, because it is the closest spot to Cedartown across the state line to get up what westerners would call a low ridgeline. Here in the south end of Appalachia, it is a proper mountain.
One of the latest hauls up there was for a good reason: Dad got hearing aids.
We had yelled at him for a good while before we finally forced him to go to and have a hearing specialist give him a test. I missed the first appointment due to bad timing, but made it for the fitting and boy, it was like watching the lights turn back on for my dad. His face went from expressionless to smiling within moments after they were in and the volume adjusted.
I honestly enjoyed one of the best days I’ve had with him for a while after that, chatting together and driving around for errands across the area, bouncing from Georgia, back into Alabama, north down the mountain into Tennessee and then back up again to take him home.
Somewhere during errands yesterday and feeling like I wasn’t constantly shouting at my father so he could hear what I was saying, I enjoyed the warm feeling of an epiphany rolling across my brain.
My experience here with my father wasn’t a chore having to make long drives up and down looping mountainside roads and lose a day’s worth of time when all is said and done, it was a gift. These moments together are an opportunity much like ones we had before when I was a child. Dad and I took many trips together around the surrounding mountains and small towns in my childhood home in Chattanooga.
Early mornings with Pink Floyd cranked up to full volume, walks around the Chickamauga battlefield, and times in Beaufort when we would take off back to Chattanooga together for visits to longtime friends and colleagues that Dad still helped with moonlighting projects. We listened to audiobooks and every now and again he’d get talkative and I learned about his past. Mostly college stories that later repeated – tales of streaking through the quad, shenanigans with his friends, underage beer purchases and trips to the Smoky Mountains. The photo above was from a trip we took when I was a teenager out of town. I don’t remember exactly where we went, but we drove the length of I-95 in South Carolina and ended up at the cheesiest of tourist destinations: South of the Border.
Our relationship since I was about 16 has mainly been on the phone – sometimes long, meandering conversations that bring up long-forgotten memories, or chatting about whatever sports happened to be in focus for the season. We both love baseball, like to think we know something about basketball, and will forever find equal footing when our talks turn to Auburn football.
During January 2024, signs that Dad was struggling with various symptoms of what could be some form of memory loss and potential brain damage got serious. He went out in a forthcoming snowstorm to help his landlady with another property she has a few tiny towns over in Henagar prepare for the bitter cold, and on the way back home got lost after it began to snow. He followed a semi-truck and somehow ended up driving down the mountain and at a motel in “a valley.”
The problem was: he had no clue where he was at the time, and couldn’t get back home. He was completely unprepared for the incident. He had no winter coat, no food, no charger for his phone, no change of clothes, not even a toothbrush to his name. It took some time, but we tracked him down and his neighbor was able to go and pick him up after the area unthawed a little two days later. He’d already had a strange incident with the train totaling his car back in 2022, so this heightened our concerns more than you can imagine.
After that incident and another involving him somehow ruining his engine, we took the keys away from him. The intervening months of 2024 and 2025 saw little progress and few answers from neurologists other than he had portions of his brain which were showing signs of atrophy. He’s fallen a few times since the fall months of this past year.
Clearly, my father needs more help than we can give from here. So the journeys up so far have focused solely on trips to doctors and visits to specialists. The hearing aid appointment was no different in my mind. And I wouldn’t call going up a chore really, that’s a bad word for it. Helping family is never a chore, but sometimes can feel as if my life is interrupted by the needs of others. He has someone sitting with him now too, ensuring he eats well and takes his medication. Other habits refuse to die hard, so the damage is likely continuing to be compounded over time. Some people despite being told will they better quit will never stop, even if it would be better for them if they did.
I’ve always had a “how can you help others if you can’t help yourself” philosophy, even though it is hard to stick with when you’re confronted with situations out of your control, but clearly I have to step in more so now than I had before despite whatever I have on my own plate before me in the moment.
Because when it comes to family, well… what is one to do? You have to help those who have helped you along the way, and it is the only way I can operate without feeling guilt and regret in the end. No argument I could make would ever change that fact in my mind, whether it comes to cleaning up messes or making trips for a two-hour one-way drive for even a short time.
My dad has always told me “I don’t want to be a burden on you and your sister.” I don’t know where he gets this line from, but I understand the sentiment. I have never felt providing help as a burden. I feel it as an act of love, recognition that despite the mixed feelings I’ve had over the years about my father’s choices and my own life experiences that I can put those aside when what matters is making sure he has what he needs to continue being my father.
And now that he can hear me again? It’s like I’m getting back some lost time, where we can understand each other on an even keel. The shouting to be heard has been a long frustration.
But how much damage is already done is the real question. What lost can’t be replaced within his mind, and more might have already been damaged in the intervening time since his last tests. His short term memory is getting worse. He has good and bad days for sure.
When I took him for a procedure back in February, there was a moment in the hospital I was helping him put on a gown and socks. He seemed so much more feeble than I had previously considered, and I wondered whether I had missed something in the time I had devoted instead toward work. He was so much older now than he was a year or two before in my mind, but where had I been? Stuck in front of a computer screen hoping to that work would make the problem go away?
Lessons I hadn’t learned in the past are coming back now harder than before when it comes to how I use my time. I can’t pretend that news is more important than family and hide behind a computer screen typing up a storm for hours upon hours of the day and not meeting the expectations I place on myself in the process.
I know whatever decisions I make moving forward in terms of my writing life have to be subsidiary to those involving my family life. Those who love and support me have to come first, and maybe it is for the best in the long run. I won’t get a second chance during this phase of my life with my dad, and the last thing I want to do is ruin it by worrying about whether I’m sitting in a meeting or watching a football game from the sidelines.
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