Birthday Catch Up

To the grandchildren of my father,

I am hijacking today’s letter from you guys to write out one to your granddad. It will be a long letter, so as you guys find this when you are older, I would understand if you skipped it. Just some mushy emotional recaps written to a person who has no way of reading these words. Not even sure why I feel compelled. But I do hope you guys understand.

Sincerely with love from your dad,

Leo

To dad,

Happy heavenly birthday. You would have been 74 today. Hard to believe it has been five years and a couple months since you left this earthly existence. I miss you most every day, or at least when I can find time to quiet my mind and ponder the important things in life.

Mom is doing surprisingly well. She is lucid and mentally stable as of recently. We made some adjustments on her med list and one day she just came around again, ending a ten year plus battle of what we figured was the end slide down dementia lane or Alzheimer’s hill. I know that you spent a good amount of your final years worrying about her and trying to get the doctors to take the decline seriously. I spent a good amount of my years after you passed doing the same. The doctors have noted the drastic improvement, but can’t really explain the change that made the difference. Cassie and I have our theories, but it is really was pure happenstance that we took her off a few meds that were screwing her up and found one that works wonders for her. Did you have any influence up there?

I mean mom still has her difficulties. She has a bunch of medical issues still. We have tons of doctors visits and such to keep in our busy schedule, but at least the trips contain an awake and aware companion now. And mom is still mom. The meds didn’t change any of her personality difficulties, but I try my hardest (some days harder than others) to live up to my promise to you to be nice to your wife. 

The hardest part for Ro is very few people visit her. She is lonely without you. But now with her increased mental acuity, your granddaughters spend a good amount of time enjoying her company. She is doing puzzles with them and teaching them card games.

Cassie misses you plenty as well. She often ponders what life would be like for us and our kids if you hadn’t gotten brain cancer. When I think of you and her, what comes to mind is the image of you with a tear of joy in your eye telling me how you always wanted a daughter as well as a son and how you were so happy she was in our lives and you worried if you would know how to be a father to a daughter. Well if her love for you is any indication, you did a fine job.

Cassie’s bone cancer is still in remission, at least according to all the scans and doctors following it. Still, she is in pain most days of her life. The doctors say it is enthesitis due to her Crohn’s disease and say it has lesions on the spine and hip areas. She often soldiers on through the pain and pretends we can’t see. She is such a strong woman and a loving wife and mother and daughter-in-law. Even through the pain, she is the glue that keeps the family together and sane. Definitely one of my better decisions in life to marry her. A blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

Your oldest grandchild has been having a hard time of it late. He got this coughing thing that kept him out of school for almost the entire month of April. The latest from the doctors is that it started as something, probably viral, may have went on to become bacterial, and then cleared and now his spasmodic cough is a learned behavior. So now we are treating with just throat lozenges when the coughing fit occurs. He still has coughing fits, just had one two nights ago. Not the three hour ones like before but even watching your child struggle like that, with breathing, for 15 minutes is difficult. I worry that he might have this his whole life. Not sure I buy the doctors’ assessments. Think they are selling us some BS and just don’t want to admit that they should look deeper. I guess all their years of medical education and training has tired them out and they just want to deal with the easy things they already have answers for. I am not saying I don’t trust doctors or medical science because then I’d be joining a sadly large part of today’s society who follow conspiracy theories and hateful misinformation. All I am is saying is that I better understand those people especially when you meet those egotistical doctors who have to be right and who forget that science is the search for answers and must be questioned and challenged at all time. Though I am jaded, you raised me with enough common sense to not fall for charlatans selling bleach cures and horse dewormers and off label use for other meds like malaria cures.

Other than that Tommy is doing pretty well. He loves all things musical. He still plays the sax and is learning piano and hopes to sing his self into a high school magnet school in a year and a half when he goes for 9th grade. He is just finishing up seventh grade now. He is also such a kind hearted young man. I worry that he is a little too kind and a little too naive to carry on the Downey name. We have had enough people in our Downey line who realized that some people deserve a good pop in the nose and would use that technique and so few people in life that have tried pure kindness with no backup plan for violence. Maybe it is time to try that manner for the Downey men.

As for the girls, well you would have had some fun with them. And they would have enjoyed the heck out of you. They have such fun personalities, or at least that is what I realize when I take a step back from the times they are frustrating me as a parent. You know that instinct I mentioned Tom is missing? That instinct to resort to mild violence to settle things? Well they sure have that Downey thing. I try to do what a parent should do by stopping it, it is just hard when my own instinct is to laugh because the other twin deserves what she got! But lord help anyone else who messes with one twin, because the other is right there at her defense. Even when I try to discipline one for hitting the other, I get it both barrels back from the twins.

They go to pre-K 4 next year. They are attending with Tommy at St Agnes School because T wanted one year they attend the same school. Not sure what we will do when it comes to kindergarten. Sort of depends on how that school rebounds when it gets its next principal. But for now, I get to dread that the two of them walking into a Catholic school and deciding on vigilante justice for a stolen toy or an accidental push. Lord help us. Hehe.

As for your only son, well I am doing. Trying to quit smoking again. I picked it up again a couple a years ago with some bullshit lie to myself about stress and growing up with you and mom smoking as my example. Just rationalizations that don’t stand muster. Taking a med called Chantix right now. A side effect is it takes any and all fleeting thoughts and emotions, mixes them in a large salad bowl, and serves them up for your dreams. Flashbacks and fragments come to me when I wake. Somehow, last night during my dreams, you were driving a jeep (maybe on a a safari?) and I was in the back and you said something that pissed me off and told you I wasn’t above punching you straight in the head even while you were driving. You (being a dream) said “Good luck with that. See how that works out for you.” The dream continued in multiple directions and at the end we were not at odds, but like I said only fragments come back.

Other than that, I really miss you. I am so proud to be your son and try to live up to the caliber of man that you were while still be true to me. It is difficult. Life is difficult. When ever I complained about things being hard, you’d say, “Don’t worry it will get worse.” Not sure if you were trying to be funny, or pointing out that complaining didn’t help, or foreshadowing the eventuality of death. Probably some of all three. But you always said life is hard. 

You made it seem easy, at least from my vantage point growing up From this point in my life, I realize all the things I did to make it difficult. Don’t know if I ever said sorry for those. I miss you dad. Feel free anytime to stop in to my crazy dreams or just to come down and be present in our lives and in our hearts and look out for us from the great beyond. I love you. Happy birthday.

Sincerely with love from your son and father to your grandkids,

Leo