My first chapbook, All in the Family, is about relationships within my family and is divided into three sections: Mother, Father, Sister. The Father section of that collection talks about my dad’s kidney disease, how I’ve dealt with it, and how it’s affected our relationship.

December 1979

More recently, my poem Hear-After, was published by Whurk magazine. It too talks about my father, about his recent hospitalization.

Amidst all these poems about my dad’s health, I wrote a poem that was a bit more hopeful. Jarfly Magazine included this poem, I’ve Planned Your Death For Years, in their Issue Two. And while I realize the title makes it sound like a terribly depressing poem, I assure you, it’s meant to be a hopeful poem. After years of planning for my father to die, I finally stopped planning because it seemed, he kept beating death and he would be around forever.

My sister, Kirsten, my dad, and I – summer 1993

<insert creepy music that tells the viewer something bad is about to happen…this is really overt foreshadowing…>

When I returned home from my recent trip to Tunisia I turned on my phone and had several messages, two from my father. The first was just him calling to say hello. The second went like this:

“Hi Courtney, it’s your dad, Dennis. Saw the doctor today, kidney function is down to 30% and he’s given me two years. Call me.”

First, WHO THE FUCK LEAVES THIS MESSAGE FOR THEIR DAUGHTER?! Apparently, my father. Second, yes, my dad really does identify himself both as my dad and state his name. IN EVERY SINGLE MESSAGE HE LEAVES ME. Never mind the fact that I only have one dad so he doesn’t need to give his name. Or that I recognize his voice. Or that I have his number programmed into my phone so I can see when  he’s calling…

I returned his call and talked to him and he’s very much at peace with this. He won’t go back on dialysis and he’s likely too old to receive another kidney transplant. I can’t offer him mine as I’m saving one for my sister, who has the same disease he has, Polycystic Kidney Disease. And he said he doesn’t want it anyway, he’s lived a full life and he’s okay with it ending sometime soon-ish.

I’m trying to be as accepting of this as he is. I have a complicated relationship with both my parents but my dad and I have done more to repair it than my mother and I have and the idea of losing him…well, it fucking sucks. And the doctor says two years but who really knows, it’s a total crap-shoot. But the real irony is I learned of this just days before the poem was published in Jarfly Magazine. Suddenly, my hopeful poem didn’t seem so hopeful. Suddenly, all those poems about my dad dying are coming true.