On grief, acedia, and the Wendy's #6 combo
A longform writing exercise
Four years ago today, kind of, my father died. Kind of.
A week after suffering a massive cardiac arrest on May 5, 2020, my family was informed that my father would not be able to recover from the amount of brain damage, and that all further care would be futile. My brother and I, his next of kin, agreed to remove life support.
The following day, May 13, my father technically made the decision for us by going brain dead. How this happens, I do not know — my only real memory from the conversation with the doctor was the way I skirted around telling the doctor where I live,1 and also confusing him when I rattled off some of the various tests to determine brain death.2
With his sudden decline in condition, he was now eligible to be an organ donor, which meant that my aunt (his sister) and I had to have an extremely in-depth interview with the lovely woman from New England Donor Services about…everything. A highlight was the woman saying “what did he DO?!” after I rattled off like 20 countries he had visited in the past.3
Anyhow. As New England is small, Maine doesn’t4 have a dedicated organ procurement surgeon person, so there was this indescribable feeling of “is my dad still technically alive?” for the following days. I truly had no idea how this process worked normally, and These Unprecedented Times of May 2020 in Maine meant that now, more than ever, absolutely nothing was allowed to be normal.
As it turns out, in lieu of those “honor walks” that go viral every so often on YouTube and TikTok, where the family of the soon-to-be donor gets escorted to the OR with hospital staff paying their respects, during the Covid Era, the (...I don’t even know. Nurse? Doctor? Rep from New England Donor Services?) will call the next of kin (me, in this case) before the procurement begins to confirm that, yes, they are in fact okay with their loved one getting their organs removed and transplanted into other people.
I was mainly just confused by this, as I had assumed consent had been given during the aforementioned in-depth interview about everything my father has ever done, ever, but I guess they needed a final “okay” from someone before beginning.
That conversation happened on May 15, which was the third and final day which could be considered as the day my father actually died.
Somewhat naively, I had told my then-boss that I would try to come back to work that day. I was craving for some sort of normalcy, and figured the workday would be good. Turns out that working is nay impossible when you have the sudden experience of giving the “OK” for someone to essentially dissect your parent.5
I did not file anything that day. Sorry, Ed. Thanks for understanding.
But flashing forward to 2024, I find myself in a very different place than On This Day in 2020.
The grief and sadness is still there, for sure, but it has been joined by a new character: acedia. Apathy. Spiritual sloth.6
I broke my foot during an Irish dance class in January. I’ve been clomping about since then, first on crutches, then an iWalk peg leg thing, and now finally just a boot. I’ve been out of dance class since then, and as it turns out, apparently the only thing that was keeping me sane was doing jigs for a few hours a week.
The first few weeks were painful, but mentally fine. I’d be back by St. Patrick’s Day, I thought, doing jigs on sticky bar floors to entertain drunk people in exchange for a beer or two.
Yeah, that did not happen.
All was going fairly well, I thought, until on the sixth week-a-versary of my injury, when I found out that during the first five weeks of “recovery,” my foot simply did not bother to actually start getting better.
I’ve never felt like this before — I felt as though my body has absolutely betrayed me. Bones, one would assume, should want to heal themselves. The body should desire to return to a state of not being broken, and yet, here we are, many, many, many weeks later.
After that fateful day in late February, something in my brain just broke. I was just existing. I couldn’t cry or actually emote anything. I had no motivation to do anything productive.
Work? Nearly impossible.
Cleaning my house? Not a chance.
Laundry? Hah. Good joke.
Without the constant prodding of my cats to, you know, feed them and tend to their various needs, I’m sure there would have been days where I simply did not leave my bed at all.
Spiritually, it’s also been a challenge: after so long of feeling like your prayers are going to nowhere, it’s hard to stay in it. But I’m trying, and I guess that counts.
As of this afternoon, I’ve been given permission to go sans-boot, but not dance just yet.
Bring on physical therapy, I guess.
So it’s been very weird trying to grapple with the grief associated with the anniversary of my father’s sudden illness and passing and also deal with just… not feeling any emotions or having any motivation at all.
The headline promised a discussion of Wendy’s, and dear reader(s),7 I would not leave you hanging.
I’ve written in the past about how I had no appetite whatsoever in the immediate days after my father got sick, but how after we were told that he was not going to get better, I immediately began craving a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy’s.
I did not, however, immediately get one. And now the Wendy’s in my hometown is closed.
But since then, it’s been a weird tradition of sorts that I’ve gotten a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy’s. Today was no different.
I don’t know what it is about Wendy’s, but that spicy chicken sandwich just…hits, man.
At the time, it was illegal for me to leave my house in Maine as I had not quarantined for two weeks upon arrival. The doctor, trying to make conversation outside of my father’s ICU room, asked me if I lived near my father. I replied that I grew up in Scarborough. While that is not incorrect, it was not the answer to his question.
Such is the life of a reporter who heavily focused on euthanasia reporting, I guess.
Merchant Marine
Didn’t? I admittedly don’t keep up with organ procurement specialist assignments.
Even weirder when this conversation happens while you’re sitting in your childhood bedroom
I wonder what color character acedia would be in Inside Out.
I’m not presumptuous.
Man, I’m sorry you are going through this rough time. Does it help to know that your writing is a gift to the world? It is, and I hope that brings you some hope.❤️