The Weight of Being by Kara Richardson Whitely

Author:Kara Richardson Whitely
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2018-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

My dad had been sick for the last few weeks, and the night before, he’d gone into kidney failure. It didn’t help that he had only one kidney after a tumor necessitated the removal of the other a decade earlier. I was considering visiting him.

Maybe it was anxiety, but I had developed a sharp pain in my right calf the evening before, after a few interviews for work. At first, I thought it was a muscle spasm. But it didn’t go away. In fact, it got worse. As the smell of corned beef filled our condo—I was making a special meal for St. Patrick’s Day—Chris and I agreed that I should go to the ER. Maybe it was a blood clot, a deep vein thrombosis, just like the ones my mother and father had had. The condition was hereditary, and I was at greater risk because of my weight. So I headed for the hospital, where the doctors did an ultrasound.

Luckily, the scan turned up nothing. But when I got home and climbed into bed, I couldn’t get comfortable with the pain in my leg a constant source of tension. Finally, I got up and searched airfares for an affordable plane ticket to visit my father. I was worried I would need two seats when I couldn’t pay for one. Even though Chris had assured me that if I felt I needed to see my father we would make it happen, I felt guilty. I was also angry. The fat that I’d gained after my father’s departure from my life was keeping me from seeing him in what were possibly his final days.

Finally, I closed my computer. I’d made a decision. I couldn’t afford two seats on an airplane. I could barely afford one. I would have to say goodbye to my father some other way.

I went back to bed, where I sobbed softly, pushing my face into Chris’s sleeping body. His warmth consoled me, made me feel comforted and anchored. I cried for the man my father was and the man I wished he was. I’d worked hard to mend our relationship, but it wasn’t ever a Hallmark bond. It never would be. The best I could do was to focus on my own children.

My father died the next day.

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