Conversations From the Road – Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down

Thirteen years ago today, my dad died. I still miss him more than ever, and I still hear his voice in my head when I need it the most. And if you think after thirteen years (it’ll be twenty-two years since my mom died come this October), my grief should have eased off, then I don’t think you understand that grief has no timetable nor should it. Because things will set it off, and sometimes you’ll see it coming, and sometimes you won’t.

I woke up this morning to read about last night’s Presidential Debate between our eighty-one-year-old President and his opponent, a complete and total fucking monster who spewed nothing but lies all night long. President Biden has a stutter so he has to take it slow and easy sometimes when talks. The other bastard just spews out whatever shit is in his mind and doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. He wants to burn it all down because he lost the last election and his coup failed. President Biden ran for President because he wanted to start repairing the damage of forty years of trickle-down economics and to fight racism and restore our standing as a light and a beacon of hope to the rest of the world. I honestly don’t know how anyone can’t see this but whether or not they’ll pull their heads out of their asses is something NONE of us are responsible for dealing with.

So yes, reading all this stupid bullshit about a kind and intelligent man having to be on stage with a garbage-spewing monster hit me poorly when I saw what the date was and what happened thirteen years ago. In some ways, I’m glad my dad isn’t here to see this because trust me, I’d have to talk him down out of a giant sequoia of a tree if saw anything like last night’s debate. But I miss talking to him about things like this, and most of all, I miss being able to see and hear him tell me, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

My dad wasn’t perfect and like my mother, he would be the first person to tell you that. But he always seemed to have the right words at the right time, an extraordinary gift even if those sayings were colorful and profane at the same time. I learned my colorful and profane language at the feet of a master like him, like he learned from his father though I don’t ever remember my grandfather being so colorful or profane (dad did tell me my grandfather had mellowed out considerably by the time I’d come along).

After my mom died, my dad and I circled the wagons so to speak. We closed in on ourselves and each other. My dad had very specific wishes he wanted carried out and he trusted me to do so and he gave me the power and the authority if I needed it. And I fulfilled his wishes as I did for my mother with absolutely no regrets at all. Yet over the years, I felt like I had done something wrong, and so had my father. This was a conversation we had multiple times after my mother died- the isolation and feeling like we were too closed off when in reality we were just holding on to our sanity, and our feelings in order not to break down and shatter into a million pieces.

So yes, watching a bullying monster like Trump rage against a man trying his best to create good public policy and help people brings up a lot of old shit that I’ll always be dealing with for the rest of my life. It’s like watching someone raging at you for not living up to some bullshit ideal of being perfect, but not in a good way. It feels like someone is raging at you saying that any good you try to do is nothing but a lie and weak as shit, too. I used to be afraid of standing up to shit like that, but not anymore. Especially when I heard my dad’s voice in my head tell me, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Shortly after my mom died, my dad sort of pushed me away from him for a while. I didn’t feel like I could talk to him and maybe he needed to time to get his head on straight and work through his grief. Yet one time in a pit of despair he asked, “Why am I still here?” I managed to tell him though my throat was tight as hell, “Because I still need to hear what you have to say to me.” He never talked like that again. Instead, I felt like he tried to tell me as much as he could with the borrowed time he had left.

One big thing he always told me was that no matter how many times I got knocked on my ass, or I got knocked across the chops, was to get back up and keep going. And I was better at that than he was because right before my mom died, he physically collapsed and everything fell on my shoulders. I was the last one left standing over my mother, and then over him. This is not pride talking, but strength that I will NOT apologize for at all.

So if you’re still reading this, and you get knocked on your ass or knocked across the chops, get back up and keep going. You will piss someone off by doing that but they can go fuck themselves straight to hell where they belong. Because as I’m fond of saying, and yes, I did sort of get this from my dad, your job in life is not to pull someone’s head out of their ass for them.

My dad told me someday I’d be an elder, and I would say I have never felt ready for that kind of responsibility. But I had a good teacher like him so I’ll do my best.

And as he would say to that in his sarcastic and profane way, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”