I Love You Dad

One of the most important lessons that prison has taught me about life and being alive really has very little to do with prison per se. And that is, we all need to say the important things that need to be said, for we never know if it’ll be our last opportunity to say them. For me, this means always making sure that the people I love know how much I love them and how grateful I am for all the help they’ve given me over the years.

Certainly I realize that I didn’t exactly turn out to be the kind of son that couples typically dream of whenever they begin to consider having children. Hell, I might even cause a few of them to rethink their decisions, or at least regret them. I haven’t always been the easiest child to love. If my parents, therefore, are disappointed in the man that I turned out to be, both of them have been too kind and too considerate of my feelings to say so out loud.

And if the truth be known, my life didn’t exactly turn out the way that I imagined it would either. Whenever I sit back and reflect on these things, in my mind’s eye I always see life as a river flowing through the valley of time. We never really know what we can expect whenever we ’round the next bend: whitewater, falls, rocks, a junked out Pontiac, or maybe just the doldrums. How did that old song by the Zombies used to go? “Life is funny, skies are sunny, bees make honey, tell me where there’s sanity.”

When I was a kid I was really close to my dad. I sought out his approval in everything. Growing up, I played a lot of sports: baseball, basketball, football. I’ve always considered that period of my life to be the best part of my childhood. Sports was something that we all did together as a family. The old man was the closest thing I had to a hero. Therefore it just wasn’t a good game — whether we won or lost — unless my dad approved of the way that I had played or carried myself.

After these many years in prison, those memories are gold. There have been times when they were the only thing that got me through the night. My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2016. For the most part, its advance has been a slow one. Lately, however, it seems to be picking up the pace. Putting a little move in its groove, as we sometimes say in here. He can no longer travel (the last time I saw him was on 05 March 2020 while at the Ramsey I Unit, just before all the Covid lockdowns began), he’s forced to use a walker to get around, and it’s at times becoming increasingly difficult to understand what he’s saying. Already there have been times while talking with him on the telephone that my stepmother has had to intervene.

I’m just not sure that I can put into words how much this saddens me. And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure that I want to. The worst part is that there’s not a single goddamned thing that I can do about it except watch it happen from afar. We email each other regularly and in those he still sounds the same as he always has, like the same guy that I’ve always known. So I know that whatever else is going on, he’s still in there. Just hiding. Sometimes I’m almost able to convince myself that it was all just some shitty dream and that we’ll be back out on the field in no time.

I believe in God, that He’s in control of all things and that He knows what He’s doing. But sometimes I just can’t understand His reasons for allowing these things to happen. The Parkinson’s isn’t a white elephant in the room, but neither do we sit around and dwell on it. I’m just grateful that my dad is still here with me. And I think that He’s grateful to still be here too although I believe that he’s getting scared.

I think things are worse than he’s letting on and he can hear those falls just around the next bend. I know that I’ll probably never see him again, at least not on this side of the veil. And as many gripes as I have about the Texas prison system, I’m thankful that they issued us the Securus e-tablets when they did. Otherwise, I’d probably never get to talk to him again either.

No one gets out of Parkinson’s Disease alive. It will eventually kill him and we both know it. Before it does, however, it’ll burn him to ash. All of the things that I’ve always loved about his personality erased. Or at least shrouded: his overly loud Slaymaker laugh. The way that he used to always give gag gifts. Just as you were starting to think, “What the Fuck!?” he would backdoor it with something special, something that he knew you wanted or needed. And the way that he would sit around in the evening after he got home from work, wearing only his drawers, watching TV and chewing his jaw (yeah, that one’s kind of hard to explain).

He always tells me that he’s taking things one day at a time. Having a prison cell of my own, this is something I can understand. And I guess that taking it one day at a time is really all that any of us can do when we get right down to the nut cuttin’. All of this, however, does give me pause to think about his wife and that part of my family. I mean, he’s the bridge that connects the divide between us. What will happen when that bridge is no longer passable?

Some of them I haven’t seen (or talked to) in almost forty years and others I’ve never even met. Since I’m unable to go to them, will they come to me or will they just up and disappear “like the smoke from that torpedo” as Ralph and David Bellamy used to say?

There are many more things that I simply have no control over, much less life and death. And I think by now we’d all agree that the world is a little sadder place because of it. But the one thing that I do have control over is my ability to say the things that need to be said while there’s still time to say them. I can still let my dad know that I love him, that I’m grateful that he’s been a part of my life for as long as he has, and that I’m unusually blessed to be able to call him my father.

I remember how, back in early 2016 — even before the Parkinson’s diagnosis, TDC started making noises like they were actually going to turn me loose on an unsuspecting public. I’d been down here for almost twenty-five years by that time and had long since resigned myself to the idea that I was down for the long haul. So I was having a little trouble wrapping my head around the concept of getting out. I was talking to my dad about it and he told me not to worry, that “I’m going to take care of you, Jay.”

And the smoke from that torpedo will never fade. But, Man! how I wish I could be there for him. I love you Dad.

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J.S. Slaymaker #04078087

Alfred Hughes Unit

2101 FM 369

North Iowa Park, TX 76367

 

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