“I don’t know if I can do this,” he says. “It’s so hard.”
“I’m here with you,” I say quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
As we enter the bright little room, I see his mother, who is frail and delicate, lying like a china doll in her bed. Pat reaches down to hold her in a warm embrace, then sits beside her, stroking her arm. His father is sitting in the corner, updating us on how she’s doing lately. She appears so weak. I speak softly and gently, standing above her as Pat holds her. Trying to think of something she might like, I pull up a bunch of pictures of her son to show her on my phone.
“Oooh,” she says, touching a picture of Pat holding a mic on TV, smiling broadly. “Will you send me that one?”
She touches her delicate porcelain finger to the screen.
“You promise?” she asks.
“I will,” I say. When I look at Pat and her together, I get an idea. As part of getting sober, I studied Reiki, a form of energy healing that is all about channeling prayer and love to someone through touch and intention. I want more than anything else at that moment to love on Pat’s mom. I’m nervous about looking like a fool, but I go ahead and ask anyway.
“Hey,” I say quietly to her, “would it be okay if I rub your feet?”
She looks at me with a fragile smile.
“Okay,” she says in her sweet Southern voice.
I move to sit at the edge of her bed, lift the purple wool blanket off her legs, and begin rubbing her feet gently as I listen to Pat and his mom talk.
Old friends and memories are mentioned, but his mom is confused a lot. People who suffer from Alzheimer’s frequently ask about “going home.” They regress into younger states. They want to see their parents, who are, of course, long dead.
“Can we see my mother in the other room?” she asks.
“Let’s do that later,” Pat says. “Why don’t we catch up right now?”
“When can I leave?” she asks. “I keep trying to figure out how to go home.”
“I’m here, Mom,” Pat says.
A yellow star hangs above her bed. I glance at a nurse’s chart and see that it stands for “falling star,” a sign to the nurse on staff that she might not be able to walk on her own.
“I love you, Mom,” Pat says. “I miss you.”
When we leave at the end of the night, Pat and I are quiet for a while before we reach the rental car. He turns to me, and his face shows a kind of love deeper than any I’ve seen before.
“You rubbed my mom’s feet,” he says. “That’s, like, some biblical shit, Mandy. What made you into that kind of person?”
“Childhood stuff,” I say quietly. “I think my primary love language is touch.”
Pat pulls me into his arms and squeezes me tight.
“I would never put you in a home,” he says quietly.
Only a few months later, Pat flies down to be with his mom in her final days. He brings her that photograph she asked for in a small silver frame and places it next to her.
Surrounded by family, Pat sits next to his mom, holding her hand one last time. His father and his brothers and sister and a roomful of relatives are there with him, too. He calls me after she passes, his voice breathless.
“She’s gone,” he says. “It was peaceful. I love you.”
His mom’s passing makes me want to introduce him to my family all the more.
“I’m honestly looking forward to it,” Pat says. “And I hate meeting parents.”
We plan a trip to San Diego a few months away, and in the meantime, I give Pat my dad’s phone number so the two of them can talk. But I don’t know that I expect him to actually call. I don’t want to be disappointed, so I kind of forget that I even gave it to him.
Before they do connect, my dad and I have a conversation on the phone one day where I am gushing all about my relationship—but before too long it ends in screaming and tears.
“I really love Pat,” I tell my father at first. “I’m so excited for you to meet him.”
My dad is silent.
“Dad?” I ask. “Aren’t you excited for me? At all?”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he says.
“Dad, don’t you see that if that’s your only reaction . . . just . . . can’t you see how hurtful that is to me? How negative it is?”
“Okay, well, I tell you what, Mandy,” he says, his voice rising in anger, “you tell me what to say and when to say it and how to say it and I’ll forget being honest and spontaneous.”
I am shaking. I am so far regressed back to my childhood place of fear and anger and sadness I can’t see straight.
“It seems like, you know,” I begin, my voice shaking, “I’m trying to tell you about something I’m really proud of, and your reaction is, ‘I’m just afraid that it’s going to go away.’ Do you see how that’s immediately just like a lump of coal in my stocking?”
“I’m sick of being the family asshole!” my dad yells. “Fuck it!”
He hangs up the phone, and I throw my iPhone across the room. I didn’t detach with love. I engaged with a whole lot of expectations. Honestly, my father’s negativity addiction is so all-consuming sometimes I don’t think he sees how it affects others. But I just know that if I weren’t dating Pat, my dad would be asking me if I was dating anyone—and now, when I do find someone, it feels like he won’t give me the approval, celebration, and support I so deeply crave.
Later that night,
