My Dead Dad

My Dead Dad - John Morris Ross III - (when he was alive)

Jesus Christ, look at that face. Imagine coming home from school and having that face glaring at you from across the room. It's a face that, without a question slipping from it, could strong-arm you into confessing all of your wrongs. The ever-furrowed brow asks "What have you done," as the mustachioed stiff upper-lip simultaneously doles out the harshest retribution.

Luckily for me, I never really had to face that face too much. He was in and out of my child-life like a fad due to his love of heroin and parole violations. I understood from a lot of my close family that my father never really had a job and had intrinsically been groomed by his mother's enabling, to be taken care of, be it by the California State Pen or by whichever woman was willing.

Despite what he looked and seemingly acted like, he was a good man. My mother relayed to me once, that he was the only man to never hit her. My mother on the other hand, never pulled any literal punches with any relationship she was in, including her kids. This fact about my father was one that allowed me not to hate him as much as I wanted to. She also told me that he was very particular. He liked his socks and underwear rolled up a specific way and things had to be in order. I'd imagine that came from the years of incarceration. It's funny to me that that specific tic could be also seen as a result of military discipline. Fine line I guess, prison and military.

Considering the neglect that I felt, coupled with the terrible situations that occurred throughout my childhood, I still consider him a good man. Even though I would probably kill myself if my neglect caused my own children to suffer the way I did, I still see that face as a good one. Maybe not a good one, but at least a human one.

During my brief seven or eight year relationship with the imaginary Jesus and friends, I was constantly being told that I needed to forgive people, so that God could forgive me. What a fucking weird hangup for the Creator of All Things to have.

"You must forgive everyone for fucking you over, no matter how hard they've fucked you over, or I won't be able to forgive you." - God

Once I removed myself from that specific brand of trapped thinking, I discovered something way more powerful than forgiveness; understanding. Understanding that my parents didn't start their lives as complete fuck-ups helps me to get past the mistakes they've made and move on with and from my own fuck-ups. Also, part of that gives me hope that my kids will show me the same grace.

It's been about eight months since my dad died and nothing really has changed. Being that we didn't have much of a relationship, his passing was pretty tame. I had him cremated (cheapest way possible) and still have him boxed up and sitting on the shelf in the tech room of a small venue I run (STAB! Comedy Theater). I didn't buy an urn and we didn't do a funeral. Fuck, we didn't even do a memorial. I wrote a nice thing on Facebook, but that was about it. It's kinda/absolutely hilarious to think that on the same platform I've celebrated my favorite tacos and pitched one-liners on, I've also memorialized my goddamned dead dad.

On the day of his passing, his hospice nurse gave me a call letting me know that he had passed. Although I expected the call, the call was unexpected. That evening I was with the kids down at the venue. We were in the middle of DIY construction and the call came at the end of the day, so we were all beat. I asked the nurse when his body would be moved to the funeral home and she relayed to me that we had about three-hours to come see him if we wanted to. Once a body is relocated to a funeral home, it costs a couple hundo to have them pull it out and show it to you. I guess it's like a restocking fee or something.

I told the nurse we'd come down and see him at the home, because I'm cheap. So for the cost of gas money, my three older children and I raced against the clock and down to the hospice care facility to see his awkward life-less body lay in a bed, in a room we had visited him in over the past year. On the way there I had to prep the kids, because other than mine and their mother's marriage and a few pets, none of them had ever been in the same room as something dead.

Everyone opted-in to take a look at our expired family member. As we entered the care facility, we were met with the smell of "almost death." It pretty much always smelled like warm, old, soup and shit in that place. You got used to it after a few breaths, but the initial waft always left a mark. I'd forget every time I'd go visit. We knew which room he was in, so we walked the long corridor through the care home, trying not to make eye contact with the soon-to-be deceased. It was almost like it we didn't have time for everyone else's end of life problems. We had our own person to grieve over damnit! All of them were the closest thing to a real-life zombies that you could get. The doors along the hallway are also always cracked open just enough to view the horror beyond. It was usually just old people sleeping with their mouths agape, but every once in a while you'd witness the grotesqueness of old age.

As we entered his room, we saw him laying there, just as we had witnessed many times before. But this time he wasn't going to wake up. We weren't going to have to go through the whole song and dance of wondering if he'll remember who we were, asking for forbidden cigarettes (which I snuck him months before), or asking where his dead wife was. It was just him, knees awkwardly pointed inward toward one another, mouth open and eyes sunken deeper into his head more than I'd remembered. He didn't look peacefully asleep. He looked dead.

My father and my Aunt Sandra at the care facility...illegally smoking. Such rebels!

 As we stood there, observing his corpse, a wonderfully sympathetic East Indian nurse entered the room and began doing busy work. She said, "The ears are the last thing to go." A lie she told, in hopes that we'd believe he could still hear us. We knew better, but appreciated her attempt to allow us closure. I always wondered if that line was suggested "policy." But instead of getting into a debate, I kindly said, "Thank you." She then approached my father's body and said, "Yeah his mouth won't close." This statement horrified me, because that meant they had tried to close his mouth. And it wasn't that his mouth kept falling open, it meant that it was stuck in fucking place, like a stiff-legged schnauzer on the side of the road. At that point she decided to illustrate her point, as if we didn't believe her and needed a second opinion, by grabbing ahold of my dad's chin, like a handle, to try and wrench it shut. I'm not joking when I say that this woman was nearly on her tippy toes, putting her full weight in to sealing my father's gob. Deep, boneshaking, tear-inducing, inner laughter was the only reaction I could have at that moment. I wasn't even mad at her. That moment is one of the top five funniest scenarios I've ever found myself in.

Finally she ran out of energy or something and ceased with "tug of waring" against rigor mortis. At that moment another nurse entered the room with a loud boom, exclaiming, "John Ross, your family is here to see you!!!" There was a moment of confusion, as my name is also John Ross. She was a large Jamaican woman with a head full of hair and a lazy eye, who wobble-limped into the room with the joy of the Lord in every step. She noticed my youngest daughter Lily (9 years old) was uncomfortable. She then bent down to get into her face and said, "Don't worry baby, everybody dies, every...body...dieeeeessss...." I'm sure a quarter of Lily's discomfort was because of her dead gramps was laying there, but the rest had everything to do with this woman's boisterous entrance and demeanor. I was actually a little scared.

Eventually the nurses gave us some alone time so we could say our goodbyes. I guess they had other people to freak out. Once the bustle rested, we just stood there as motionless as he laid there. For about 10 minutes we would cry in intervals. Because none of us know the best way to deal with death, we broke up our crying to gossip and laugh about what had just happened with the nurses.
Following about 15 minutes of silent-ish grieving my son Elijah (12) suddenly pops his head up from chest and excitedly says, "Oh, so this means I can watch Rated R movies now, right?" We all busted up. I love the thought process and logic that somehow seeing a dead body is a conduit to seeing boobs or hearing the word fuck. Fucking hilarious, that kid. Also, I'm not sure what he was talking about, because he already watches rated R movies.

When the kids went out into the hall and left me alone with him, I just couldn't bring myself to talk to a dead body. I just tennis-matched my eyes between the floor and his face. I did touch his leg as I walked out, as if to say, "see ya later" but that was it. I cried a little, but wasn't able to conjure up the amount of emotion I felt like I should've. I've cried harder at commercials. I feel like if I were being interviewed on camera about my dead dad, the viewers at home would suspect I murdered him. "Oh he's guilty, like Scott Peterson, just look at him." I still feel a little bit guilty about not feeling more for him, but forcing it would be weird too. Maybe that's all there was to feel I guess.