Saying good-bye to Walter Patrick

Last week I had to something completely unexpected: I had to step foot on United States soil before June 1, 2015. And it was to do something I had expected but still thought would never come: My step-father, Walter Patrick, passed away. When I left for Colombia, he was on hospice care and a decent amount of morphine, but he was still cognizant most days, and when he wasn't, I normally chalked it up to the massive amounts of painkillers he was taking. I can't promise you I'm going to get the details right, but his problem, as I understood it, was basically advanced emphysema made worse by a back injury he sustained after he had a violent coughing attack one night, and then further complicated by a devastating case of pneumonia. After fighting with the pneumonia for some time, he was eventually rushed to the hospital, where they induced a coma in order to allow his body to rest, and when he was taken out of it, his physical therapy proved to be so taxing that it sent him back into another coma. When he awoke from that one, his care was switched from restorative to the ease-your-suffering variety. All this happened while I was away, still living in New York, and it was one of the things that influenced me to come back early.

I officiated their wedding.
On the left is his oldest son, Wally,
and behind my mother is
my sister Samantha.

Walt and my mother met and got married after I had already moved out of the house, and I only saw him on visits back. A week here, another there. And slowly, over time, we got to know each other. Toward the end of his life, he told me he viewed me as a son. I think I would have viewed him as a father if I had known exactly what that meant. My father and mother divorced when I was about five, and when I was about eleven, he moved to Colorado. I didn't see him much after that. I don't really know what a father is. I get clues and hints, through my relationship with my Uncle Steve and without a doubt through my relationship with Walt.

In the month before I came to Colombia, I was living with him and my mother in Indiana. She needed help taking care of him, and I wanted to see my family before I left for a long time. It was in that month that I grew even closer to Walt. I helped care for him when my mother was tired, getting him Pepsi and Kool-Aid and those brownies he positively addicted to, he bandaged my ankle for me when I twisted it so badly running that I walked with a limp, we had heart-to-hearts, watched Bunnyman, and I even remember giving him a stern pep talk when he was starting to get down on himself and life, asking me and my mom what the point of planning was when there was so little time left or why bother to leave the house to his beloved casino when all it did was making him sleep for the rest of the day. I found myself, in idle moments, trying to plan the viability of a trip back to the United States around Christmas time, if I could afford it, when would good dates be, maybe I'd go a little bit before Christmas to not disrupt other plans but we'll check the prices and see...

According to him, it was
the very definition of ambrosia.

And then that message came. And there was no more hope of seeing him at Christmas. There was no hope of seeing him again. The message came, and for me, it was as good as hearing he had already passed. I would never see him again. When I left, he told my mom, "This might be the last time I see Adam." When she told me, I said, "Maybe. We just don't know, I guess." But deep down, I had believed he wouldn't go so quickly. My mom told me he was outside in his Hoveround, washing the side of the house a few days before, and when I had left, he seemed to be able to walk farther and farther using his walker. On good days, he had been able to stand himself up.

Ever see a guy in a Hoveround spray a house
with a high powered hose? It's a sight to behold.

He passed only a few hours after my sister's message. And this time I wasn't in New York but in Colombia. I felt so selfish and so helpless. Selfish for being here when maybe I should be there and helpless that so far away, there was so little I could do. I've been trying to teleport for years (don't ask) and that would have been the perfect moment for a break through. But alas, this is real life: I don't have mutant powers, teleportation is not (yet) possible, and when people die, they don't wake back up. I left to Indiana a few days later.

I spent a week in Indianapolis. After a twenty-two hour door-to-door trip, I arrived home, stayed up with my mom talking way past bedtime, and the next day we had to be at his visitation. When I saw his body, I went into a state of shock and disbelief, which dammed up my emotion and isolated me from feeling the emptiness of the house without him in his bed in the family room, without his wisecracks and wit, without the constant stream of Cops and People's Court on the television. And that shelter of emotional dysfunction is where I stayed until the funeral, when the fact was no longer deniable, when I had to face that Walt was gone.

I'll miss you.

Click here to read his obituary.

Wherein Adam says his good-bye

My time in New York is coming to a close. Ten years ago, if you had told me this day was coming, I wouldn't have believed you. I wouldn't have imagined a day that I would willingly leave, and now I'm ready to go and have been for the last year or two. And despite the love affair turned bitter-marriage-kept-together-for-the-kids, I'm having a hard time leaving New York now that the time to go is right before me. 

I didn't have a Toto
to bring with me though.

When I came here, this place was my haven and refuge. At seventeen years old and out of high school for a little under a month, I came here to begin my adult life. To begin forgetting and healing from the childhood I still prefer to forget rather than remember. This place helped me learn that all the things that made me feel so disjointed with where I grew up were something that other people would find fascinating and worth encouraging. It let me forget parts of who I was, so I could start to become who I wanted to be. It protected me. It pushed me by always threatening to break me but never really made good on those threats. It made me tough. And by making me tough, it taught me how to be compassionate. It showed me all sorts of wonderful people and things. It made me feel alive. It helped me to stop being afraid. Of everything. I learned how to think on my feet and turn my mistakes into their own solutions. It endowed me with a sense of self that will be my beacon and guide for the rest of my life, despite my self being far from a static entity.

And as I go and remember all the things I loved about New York while seeing all the reasons it's no longer working out, I can't help but feel jealousy when I see other people here in New York, continuing on with their lives, some of them living the life I wish I had found. Or once had but grew tired of. I'm still not sure which. I became disillusioned at some point, and I'm not sure if I'm going to bounce back from that lack of faith without time away. Wishing and jealousy won't change that. Jealousy, by the way, is a new thing for me. That doesn't happen often, which makes it harder to deal with, and of course, makes me feel crazy. But as we established last week, I'm not really feeling myself these days. Whatever that means.

^^New personal mantra^^

Unlike the last time I went abroad, going to Colombia isn't just a break in my life to do something new and then return home. When I come back to the United States, there's not much to come back to. There are my family and friends, and I don't mean to downplay their importance to me, but I feel a bit homeless again. Indiana is only my hometown in name, and New York has always felt like home but now it's a home that no longer fits with me. I guess maybe that's why nomadism has started to appeal to me: to find a new home, wherever in the entire world that may be.

Something that I'm learning is that no matter what kind of time you have and no matter how you planned it, there are always loose ends when you leave a place. There's people you wish you had gotten to know better, there's places you wish you had visited, and things you wish you had done. Good-byes you wish you had said or somehow sadistically wanted to feel grander, bigger, more emotional, and not as if you were going to see each other the next day because it's hard to imagine you're not going to. One last run in Central Park, one last visit to the Bourgeois Pig, one more trip to Jones Beach, one more day to... But time ticks by, things end, they change, and they have been changing. Kate's Joint closes, you resign from running a theatre company you built out of nothing with one of your best friends, the monthly metro card raises another twenty dollars. And you have to say good-bye and you have to let go because you risk ruining everything you once had.

So... Good bye, New York. It's been real. It's been beautiful. I hope we can meet again someday when we're both ready.

To New York and Back Again

So I normally don't full on give away the next entry, but I'm going to. Next post is a bit like my goodbye to New York. Or at least my coming to terms with leaving. I've had a lot of awesome memories made with amazing people. I selected songs for this minimix that represent, to a degree, the arc of my relationship with the city. From coming free full of hope and hungry from freedom to a more mature outlook to a bit of disillusionment and questioning and then the beginning of a new realization of what home means. 

I hope you enjoy it.

And this is a bonus video. It's the version of "I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City" that I wanted to include but couldn't find the full version on line. The monologue in the beginning captures the kind of magic I first felt when I moved here.