Sunsets

Do you know what scar tissue is? According to Wikipedia (which, yes, I hate citing), it’s tissue that replaces normal skin after injury. It’s a sign of healing but also a reminder of damage.

People often ask me what keeps me up at night. What I fear most. To be honest, it’s the thought of standing on 9th Street in Chester, Pennsylvania, fully surrendering to the fact that there was nothing I could have done to save my father.

Every day, I live in the in-between, held by my father’s legacy (see blog post Legacy) and his kryptonite, crack cocaine. It’s like a sunset.

I’ve always loved sunrise and sunset, the sacred moments when night and day meet. Sunset holds a kind of complexity. It carries the weight of the entire day; its joy, its sorrow and eases into night. It reminds us of life’s duality, the and/both of existence. A reckoning that no moment, no person, no experience is ever all sun or all night. My father’s legacy is the complexity of the sunset: the love and brilliance of a father and the struggles of addiction that will never detract from his care, presence, and support. 

The Call

John: “Leeja, have you talked to your dad?”

Me: “No, why? What’s going on?”

I knew something was wrong by the tone in his voice. But I had been bracing for this moment for years—since I was 16. Even then, I sensed I would outlive my father. I feared I’d get a call saying he was shot, sick, or gone.

By 16, I understood my father was struggling and in college, our relationship deepened maturing from father to best friend. We’d have three-hour conversations post my track meets to talk performance, life, and relationships. I remember vividly a male track team member asking my then boyfriend “she talks to her dad on the phone like that?” Referring to the amount of hours I would just talk to my dad. He was my best friend, he was present, and there. Yet sometimes things seemed off. Once, during a bus ride with my track team, he called me late one night, slurring, yelling, “Leeejaaaa… hey… I’m messed up.” I knew.

On July 9, 2008 after two days of unanswered calls, I drove to his apartment in Chester. I knocked. No answer. The door was unlocked. I walked in.

He was slouched in his old red shag armchair, drinking water. The air was heavy with heat. He looked thin, maybe 15 pounds lighter than just weeks before on Father’s Day. On that day, he’d been agitated—angry we didn’t take him out, angry that someone asked him to call his estranged father, sick in the hospital. “How dare they ask me to call him? He should call me!”

Now, he was rambling. He said he couldn’t do life anymore. That living next to a crack dealer made resisting impossible. I had seen the signs before. Two years earlier, I tried a surprise visit. I worked across the Ben Franklin Bridge, a short drive. When I got there, I heard voices inside. The blinds were drawn. I knocked. I heard him whisper, “Sssh… it’s my daughter.” I peeked through the blinds and saw him hide the pipe.

He came to the door and said, “Oh hey, I wasn’t expecting you.” He didn’t invite me in. I didn’t push. I just left. And as I drove away, I felt another brick added to the emotional wall I’d been building for years.

Goodbye

Back in that hot apartment, he kept talking about regrets, loneliness, disappointment. Then he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Leeja, you’re tough. There’s no doubt. I raised you… you’re tough.”

Why did he say that? Why now? I didn’t feel tough. I felt scared. But I think he knew he was dying. He was saying: You may hear things about me, good and bad. You’ll miss me. But I made you tough. You’ll make it.

He wanted me to be everything he wasn’t: successful, loving, fulfilled. He believed toughness would help me get there. Maybe he was right.

Superman’s Kryptonite

I stepped outside and called my uncle. “He’s not right,” I said. “He’s rambling, his eyes are rolling back, he’s thin.” My uncle said, “Leeja, I think he’s having a stroke.”

I was 24. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me admitted the truth: my father was a crack addict. A doctor had warned him the previous year as we sat in the ER for what he thought was bad allergies, “William, you’ve got to stop the cocaine.” He hadn’t. His kryptonite was winning.

I went back in. I told him we needed to go to the hospital. He refused. I left, got in my car, and called 911. I also called a close friend to check in on him. I drove back to New Jersey.

I left him alone. I was afraid. Afraid to witness the death I had always feared.

I carry this scar tissue. It is complicated as it rests within the legacy (see blog post Legacy) of my father’s final words on love and:

My father was an addict.
It wasn’t my fault.
It was never in my control.
There was nothing I could do.

I wasn’t meant to save him.

This is my scar tissue, beautiful, healed and damaged. Seventeen years after my father’s transition, I see his adult life as a powerful duality: both pain and purpose. I share his legacy, and my story, in the hope that it brings healing and peace to anyone standing at their own sunset navigating the complexities of love, loss, and everything in between.