Today has been a bizarre and emotionally stressful day. If you’ve stumbled upon this post, feel free to skip it. I’m only writing it to process everything swimming around in my head.
It began with my drive up to Houston to see Bill, this time in a rental car. Some “wonderful” person back at my previous apt. decided to key the whole left side of my car, leaving gouges deep enough to rust. I couldn’t ignore them, so off it went to a body shop, and USAA set me up with a rental car to use in the meantime.
When I got to Houston, I found Bill more talkative than he’s been the last few visits. While he still asks the same few questions every 15 minutes or so, I was happy to see he was more alert. His mind, however, was rooted in the 60’s and 70’s, asking about doctors and dentists who passed away decades ago. As usual, he asked about Wil and Shelly and our animals; sometimes using their names, sometimes not. But then things got a little bizarre.
For the past few weeks, he’s been asking about a 3rd and sometimes a 4th child. “The ones we recently found,” he says. I always say they’re ok, hoping he’ll move on; but today, he was fixated. He doesn’t remember their names, who their mother is, where they live, or much of anything else other than he thinks it might have happened when we were having a rough patch in our marriage in the 70s.
Then he very looked at me very seriously and said, “I need you to do something for me. I want to have a meeting, maybe go out to dinner with you, Wil and Shelly, and the other kids I must have had when I was messed up. I want to apologize to all of them for being a terrible dad.”
After a moment of silence, I agreed, again hoping the topic would change, but it continued to circle back until I got a phone call from my car rental saying my car was due back today. USAA was only paying until today, but my repairs won’t be finished for another week. Of course, when I tried to call USAA, all I could get was automated robots or an answering machine that promised the correct person would “get back to me within 24 hours.” I decided to go home. Too much drama.
On the drive back, my mind kept spinning around this idea of “other kids.” Could Bill really have kids I don’t know about? Why is it coming out now? Did they contact him? How? What am I supposed to do with this information? Do I even want to know? Not really.
Or is it all in his imagination – something stirred up by a story from a fellow resident? I mean, he did claim to be an explosive expert a few weeks ago, so there’s that!
It’s all baffling and a bit unsettling . . .
Dang.
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