Why Do We Think it’s Our Job to Care?

My dad had an accident and suddenly is feeling his age.

Photo by Bruno Martins on Unsplash

I’ve just landed back home from a trip to check in on my pa. It’s a relationship that I haven’t written much about, because it’s hard and while there really is an anthology worth of stories in there, it’s not the right time to delve too deep. My old man is alone, almost entirely in this life and has, since the pandemic, become more isolated. I have watched the impact that age and alienation from the world have wreaked upon him, and it is heartbreaking. It is, however, not the first time he has pierced my heart.

It's a funny thing this combination of being both hardened by experience while at the same time feeling your strings pulled in exactly the same ways they ever were. It’s like a kind of emotional doublethink where you censor or correct your instincts in real time. I am not soft with my dad, but it’s because I can’t be. Forty-one years of water have gone under the bridge and we have the best bond we possibly can. It doesn’t mean that I’m an ice queen, nor that we don’t share love, becasue we really do.