Dear Old Dad

Life with my father, Bernard No-Middle-Initial Rigney, could be a challenge. He drank a lot, though according to his definition–“can you get to work the next day?”–he was not an alcoholic.

Shortly after I finished college, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. That means he heard voices and was convinced coworkers and relatives were out to get him. For about fifteen years, this was his life: commitment to South Dakota’s Human Services Center; treatment; discharge; time in a rundown apartment, the only kind that would accept him for long, or on the street; arrest for refusal to leave a location due to noise or lack of cleanliness; recommittal, and back again.

Finally, in 1997, he went back to the HSC for good, where he received excellent, loving care until his death in 2002 and where he gained a bit of notriety for challenging all the way to the South Dakota Supreme Court the state’s authority to force-medicate him.

Even before mental illness overtook him, living with Dad was no picnic. He was the most competitive person I’ve ever known. When I was eight or so, I went up to bat at a ballgame, with Dad at shortstop for the opposing team. “Easy out, easy out,” he sneered, staring at me. And of course, I proved him right. He taught himself chess, then taught it to me when I was fifteen. One day, I almost won. He laughed, and told me I was getting better, but so was he, and I would never, ever beat him. It was the last game of chess I played for thirty-five years.

Yes, I’ve got some dad issues. I work on letting go and sometimes I’m successful. Sometimes, I’m not. But I had an ah-ha moment a couple weeks ago when some friends and I began talking about near-death experiences.

My closest moment to death so far came when I was about four years old at the wading pool in my hometown. Somehow, I ended up in water over my head. I suspect my parents were watching my sister, who would have been about a year old. I remember struggling, and then sinking to the bottom of the pool. And then, CRASH! A chambray shirt and dungarees  entered the pool and raised me to the surface, swearing a blue streak at two teen-aged lifeguards as he stepped out of the pool, me still in his arms, and took me to the car.

When we got there, Dad was the one who wrapped me in a towel and deposited me in the backseat. Whatever else he did or said that day, they were the right things. I had no fear of the water the next time we went back to the pool, and I learned at a fairly young age, eight or so, to swim well enough to save myself in a pinch.

No, Dad wasn’t a nurturing, patient, kind man. But he was there when I needed him most.