This Needs to be Said

You’re an a**hole.

It’s a hard truth. Nobody wants to accept it, least of all you, and second least of all me, because I’m your son, and no son wants to think his father is an a**hole, but I have 55 years of experience with you, and in those 55 years there has been very little evidence to the contrary.

You invited me to a meeting with your palliative care team, because you have “dementia,” which has only given you license to be a bigger a**hole, for your actual personality to shine through, because you have an excuse now — you have dementia — and people with dementia have issues with cognition, issues with emotional regulation, but I can tell you with authority, what happened yesterday at the meeting was not dementia: that was you, because you are an a**hole, and you have always been an a**hole.

Remember when your wife was dying of cancer? It was one of the last family trips we took before she passed, to the St. Louis Zoo, all of us together, where we took that nice picture of the family, one of the last photos of all of us together. I showed up at your house to head to the zoo, and mom was putting her shoes on, and she was a bit confused about which shoes to wear, maybe having something to do with her stage 4 lung cancer, and the cocktail of drugs she was taking, the futile chemotherapy she was enduring, and you, in all of your infinite wisdom and patience, told her: “Put your fucking shoes on.”

I know you complained to your palliative care team that your family does not come to visit you, that…