# Chapter 2: Dad's Addiction ## The Knicks Bear It was a sunny afternoon in 1998. I was outside playing wiffle ball with some kids from the neighborhood who were a year or two older than me. I considered them friends even though they bullied me at times. I was nine and eager to make a good impression on the older kids on the block. Nick had a dark-haired crew cut, braces, and multiple beauty marks on his face. He reminded me of a rodent. He spoke with a sinister lisp and teased me any chance he could. His best friend Joe was a gentler boy with light brown hair and a robust torso. He was supposedly an excellent pianist. We were negotiating who would get to keep my wiffle ball when I spotted my dad walking toward us from the top of the block. He must have been coming home from the train station. He was carrying a large stuffed animal. I was never sure which state of mind he would be in. As he came closer, I noticed the stuffed animal was a bear wearing a New York Knicks jersey and headband. The bear had a basketball stuck to its hand by velcro. I started to feel embarrassed that my dad was coming to give me a stuffed animal in front of my friends. > [!quote] Dad's Gift > "Hey Mikey boy, look here. It's a Knick bear. For you." His watery eyes slumped toward the floor. > > "He's a good luck charm for tonight's game and he... he loves you." My dad was almost stumbling standing still, and his words came out in a slur. I knew he was on some kind of pills. I was used to this side of him being all clumsy and incoherent. As a nine-year-old, I didn't understand his dual nature or why sometimes he made sense and seemed 'put together,' while other times he was all wobbly and silly-sounding. I had come to accept him for who he was, and when he came home intoxicated, I felt I needed to take care of him. "Thanks, Dad. I love him too." > [!heart] Love Through the Haze > I took the bear, held it in my hands, and looked over its fuzzy features. I felt so special in that moment—really loved by both the bear and my father. My initial embarrassment faded and I filled with admiration for my dad. > > I didn't know where he came from or what he was doing, but amongst his day, he thought of me. He thought of me enough to get me a stuffed bear with a basketball jersey because I loved basketball. "Meet me inside later, Mikey, and we'll watch the game." "Sure. Thanks, Dad." I hugged him and kept the bear as he walked toward the house. Nick and Joe looked dumbfounded. They were both silent and stopped teasing me about the wiffle ball, which I didn't even care about anymore. Now I had this bear, and I wasn't going to let anyone try to take it away from me. Even though my father was drugged out on pills, he never hid his heart or his love from me or my grandmother. I cherished that bear for years, and even today it sits in my old bedroom at Grandma's house on the top shelf, overlooking the remnants of my childhood. --- ## The Last Night Dad died a year later. The night before he died, we were playing pool in the basement. I was sore at him for beating me, even though I was just ten and probably shouldn't have expected to beat my father in pool. I stormed upstairs and started playing video games. He came up and told me, "I want to learn how to play. Can you show me tomorrow?" He was perfectly sober at that moment. "Sure," I replied, accepting his peace treaty. The thought of playing Tony Hawk with my dad made me happy. The next day, my grandparents found him dead. He choked on his own vomit during sleep from taking too much. --- ## Life After Death My life changed when my father died. I had a story now—the boy whose father died from drugs. The boy who had no dad and no mom. At ten years old, I was grappling with the meaning of life, death, and identity. For me, death just meant that my father was in heaven now. He was still in his body, but only now he was ephemeral and in some spiritual realm I didn't have access to because I was still alive and he wasn't. I kept telling myself: *"He'll never come back."* But in this weird, indescribable way, I never thought he was gone. His image in my mind and the feeling of love in my body was always still there. --- ## The Funeral I got a big dose of church throughout the funeral processions. The wake was filled with relatives and friends who treated me like a victim of a tragedy. The funeral was morbid and glum. We all stood around in black, surrounding a six-foot-deep ditch where his body would eternally rest. We threw red roses on the coffin. I infused my rose with as much love as a ten-year-old could fathom as I tossed it in the hole—a final goodbye to the earthly embodiment of my father. From now on, he would only exist in the interior world of my heart and mind. With this new relationship to him as a spirit rather than a body, I started growing in a more introspective way, wondering: *If I was here—alive on earth—then where was he?* The thought of not existing at all anymore never occurred to me as an option. He had to be someone, somewhere, which meant he was still my dad. --- ## Philosophical Aside > [!thinking] On Memory and Existence > My idea of my father—who he is, what he looks like, and how he feels—is a subjective perception that only exists within me. In other words, my grandmother has her own perception of her son, which looks and feels completely different. > > In this way, my father, and everything I perceive about him, exists only within me. There is no separate entity floating around in time and space, or else it would be beyond my perception and experience. > > The fact that my dad is within the realm of my experience means we are bound together. > > I can't say for certain if I believe there is a separate entity named Dad who is still having unique experiences within the same universe I am perceiving. --- *Next: [[Ch 3 - Shedding my Suburban Identity]]*