‘Love is this, what you do for others’
Reflections on a last-minute visit to Dad before he died
Aunt Rema called me last month with bad news: My 54-year-old father was dying.
The original Gregory Royal Pratt, the man after whom I was named, had been in treatment for a tumor in his throat, but the cancer had spread throughout his body. In two weeks he had gone from walking with a cane to not being able to sit up in bed.
My father and I had kept in some touch over the years, through family and emails, but I hadn’t seen him since I was 5 and didn’t know he was sick.
Dad grew up in Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood but left for rural Tennessee when I was little — running away, he said, from Italians to whom he owed money and a drug problem he couldn’t escape. My parents tried to make it work but couldn’t, and instead my mother raised me in the Little Village neighborhood that’s home to many Mexican immigrants, like her.
She’s a strong woman who has worked a string of factory jobs to pay the bills and support us. The divorce pained her, but she always encouraged me to stay in touch with Dad.
Rema called me when his condition worsened, and I almost immediately headed south. His wife, Desiree, told me he asked, as each car drove past, “Is that him?”
When I got there, his legs were as thin as my wrists and he was lying in bed watching the History Channel. One of the first things he told me broke my heart.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t around,” he said. “But I would’ve destroyed your life.”
It’s hard for some people to understand, but I came to terms with his absence a long time ago. In fact, I respected him for it. He stayed away to protect me from chaos, even though it hurt both of us.
My dad lived with deep addiction. It led him to poor decisions and prison — something he could joke about after he was out. Once, on Facebook, he told a story about scaring a man away who knocked on the door late at night.
“If you open your door to a complete stranger at night time because they said they are your neighbor from down the road, well I’m not sure what to tell you beside there is a fifty percent chance he is telling the truth. But I always opt for the other fifty percent,” he wrote. “Hey, I used to be a criminal, what do I know.”
Despite his problems, my dad tried repeatedly to get sober, and for stretches of time succeeded. But he couldn’t beat the disease.
He once wrote in an email to me: “Too many demons in my past, and the more I fight them, the more they fight me.”
So he kept his distance from Chicago and his only child. I mostly accepted it as a sad fact of life, but one day in high school I became angry thinking about my mom’s sacrifices and tore into him in an email for not being around.
He responded, “I know what I’ve missed out on, but I also know that I can’t change it.”
And he signed that email the same way he usually said goodbye to me on the phone: “I love you and I think about you daily.”
Even at my angriest, I always planned to visit and clear the air. My grandma, June Pratt, is a strong 77, and I assumed he’d live long too, giving me more time to focus on Chicago and work.
The universe made other plans.
Even before I made it to Tennessee to see my dad, I’d come to believe he did the best he could with the life he had.
For years, he worked at a refrigerator factory. There, he met Desiree, a wonderful woman who had taken care of him for two decades. (My cousin is running a GoFundMe to help her pay their bills from this ordeal.)
The first morning I visited, I learned more about my dad. He kept a tremendous garden, tilling the soil for summer squash, bell peppers and okra. He also mentored my cousin, Korbon, showing him last summer how to plow, and loved to fish.
Dad was a self-taught artist, creating ceramic caricatures of people and being something of a perfectionist. The Independent Appeal, a local newspaper, profiled him in 2003, and he showed the writer a bunch of figures he spent hours crafting, as well as incomplete pieces.
“If they don’t talk to me, I set them on the side,” he said.
His figurines were prized possessions, and he gave them to me.
Dad was intelligent, quick-witted and thoughtful. When people responded to “How are you” with “I’m fine,” my dad would answer, “I used to be fine. Nowadays I’m just ruggedly handsome.”
Sometimes he could be what I affectionately refer to as a “hillbilly philosopher.” Here’s a Facebook post of his that I like:
“One more thought. We live we die. Nope, there is so much in between. Open your eyes. I have lived life on a shoe string. Walked with them tied and untied. We sometimes trip. Look at yourself, do you ever trip? Bet five bucks you say no. Lie to yourself, not me.”
Here’s my favorite thing he wrote: “Love is this, what you do for others.”
I understand why people are estranged. Staying in touch can feel harmful in
certain situations. Stepping away can be the best thing you can do, for yourself and others.
If I were scripting my life, my dad would have never done hard drugs. My mom wouldn’t be working at a factory as she nears 60. I’d have grown up to be something more illustrious than a news reporter, like WWE champion.
But life doesn’t work that way. My dad had demons. My mom immigrated here from a poor country under tough circumstances and has done what she needed to do. I like eating Doritos and am 5-foot-6.
It is what it is. Sometimes life gives you a crappy beginning or a tough middle. Sometimes, however, it gives you a chance to finish the story with a good ending.
I have regrets about my
relationship with my father. Maybe you feel the same way about yours, but it isn’t too late to try again.
If you are estranged from someone who you know you can forgive, go see them. Hear their stories. Hold their hand.
Don’t wait too long. I almost did. Days after I visited my dad, he died.
As he was lying in bed, his booming voice reduced to a low rasp, I told him, “You’ve lived a hell of a life — good, bad and ugly.”
“You got that right,” he replied.
If I didn’t get his good looks, I hope I got his wit.
I also told him: “I’m not angry with you. I am proud of you. I love you.”
And I wished him a good night. As I turned to leave, he said, “I love you and I think about you all the time.”