Not apparent
“Are you sure you want to move to San Francisco?” my dad asked me as we drove home from the electrical supply store.
“It’s where all the jobs are, and where all the interesting stuff is happening.” It was 2012 and I was three days post-graduation and a week and a half away from moving across the country to California to start my first “grown-up” job.
He grimaced slightly, then sighed. “Well, promise me you won’t catch HIV. Your mother would be devastated.”
My dad was not perfect. Far from it. I knew what he meant, but the words burned for years to come. They hurt because in that moment, I’d been reduced down to my sexuality. Of all the things I could be harmed by—I was still the klutzy teenager who’d needed help freeing myself after somehow closing the car door on my hand—this was the thing that was top-of-mind for him.
I didn't know that my parents had a dear friend from when they were teenagers that later succumbed to AIDS in the 80s. My mom had, in fact, been devastated, and losing my brother or I would be something almost irrecoverable for her. In 2012, though, HIV wasn’t a death sentence, not that my dad knew that.
I knew he wasn’t good at expressing himself. He’d rather say nothing than say something that he thought he’d be judged for. But this was important to him, clearly, and he said it despite his obvious reservations.
My dad bought me my first power drill. Not a good one, but a sufficient one. He bought me lots of tools—it was a way that he could show his love through something he understood.
In 2013 he pressured me to buy a car, then bemoaned my decision to buy it new—and the touring model at that. His gentle mocking became jealousy over time, and he bought nearly the same thing less than a decade later.
In 2017 after my terrible experience at Uber, I was sharing the news about my job hunting: I was interviewing at Airbnb, Stripe, and AWS, and the interview process was going well.
“Why aren’t you applying to work at Google?” he asked.
“Google is old and boring,” I said, “and I already interviewed there almost five years ago.”
He was shocked at my reply. “But they have good jobs!”
“Dad, Google is almost as old as me. I’d might as well get a job at IBM or Xerox.” He hadn’t considered Google wasn’t a sprightly young startup anymore.
While I worked at Stripe, his health started to deteriorate. He was severely overweight and diabetic. He’d retired after he started to struggle to get from his car to his desk at work.
During the pandemic, both of my parents caught COVID. I was grateful that it wasn’t bad enough to warrant either of them going to the hospital. Not that they could—their local hospitals were full.
Around the time I bought my house in 2021, he was diagnosed with a form of leukemia. Misdiagnosed, actually. He began treatment, but it was too much for his kidneys. He’d been on dialysis before and he refused it in the hospital. After weeks in the UPenn ICU, he was sent home and put on palliative care.
On August 19, 2022, he passed away in his sleep. He’d been adamant about my mom not making a big deal out of his passing. “Just throw my body out in the yard!” My mom wanted a full Catholic funeral and burial, but that just wasn’t in the cards (do you know how much it costs to die these days?), and so we opted for a viewing in a rented casket with a short prayer. He was cremated the next day.
Rewind.
I was born on a Thursday in January of 1990. My parents had struggled for so long to conceive. Years of trying had finally yielded them a child. There’s a photo album filled with hundreds of pictures snapped on disposable cameras taken at the hospital, at the house, at my grandparents’ house—everywhere you could pose with a newborn.
My dad beamed with pride in many of those pictures alongside my maternal grandfather. My dad’s own father had left when he was a teenager and died not long after. When my parents met as teenagers, my mom's dad (a full-blooded Rooney) had taken my dad (a full-blooded Italian) in as one of his own. It was a point of pride that my grandfather got to see his son-in-law become a dad himself.
One year after I was born, my grandfather suffered a massive stroke.
The stroke left him completely paralyzed and unable to speak. My grandmother worked out a system for him to communicate by holding up a cardboard sheet with the alphabet written out, divided into three. She’d read off “First half, second half, third half”1 and he’d nod his eyes up and down when she got to the correct row of letters. She’d read off letters until he nodded again, then mark that on a legal pad covered in sentence fragments. Eventually, he’d have given her enough letters that she could guess words and sentences.
She drove every day to his nursing home—rain or shine—to take care of him. She’d puree food that he could gently eat.
My younger brother and I would be shuffled in every week or so to visit. We’d tell my grandfather how we were doing in school or show off things we’d made. The brain damage that he’d suffered caused him to be very emotional, and he’d often cry with joy or sadness at the news. We’d kiss him goodbye on the forehead, but there was no kiss back.
I remember a lot from my childhood. I remember flashes of memories vividly from ages where people aren’t supposed to remember things. I remember sitting in my living room on the floor while my mother swaddled my brother in her arms. I remember sitting on the stairs and saying goodbye to my dad as he stood in the doorway—my mom was upset with him.
I remember walking with my mom as the sun set through the Jewish cemetery at the end of our street, my brother holding her hand. I remember thinking I didn’t look like my brother, or my dad. I looked down at the ground and asked my mom, “Was I adopted?”
“Why would you think that?” she snapped, “I have an album full of pictures from the hospital when you were born.” She scowled and grumbled something about going through childbirth.
Until my brother and I were pre-teens, my mom would take us to church with our grandmother each Sunday. My dad did not attend—he was decidedly not religious. My mom would drag my dad for holidays and our standard Catholic sacraments, and while he clearly resented going, he never put up a fight.
My dad quit smoking in 1997. 1997 was also the year that his sister passed away in a tragic house fire. I can’t remember which happened first, but it was a difficult year for him. In 2008 my dad secretly started smoking again. Work was too much. But he quit again soon after—he couldn’t keep it a secret. My mom was visibly pained when it came out.
In 2013 I bought a 23andMe test. This was back when they’d tell you all of the diseases you might have. The results weren't particularly interesting, and the deviations from what I knew about my heritage left me unimpressed.
Later, I got a message from someone around my age who 23andMe claimed was a half-sibling. She was cordial and wanted to know more about me, and said her parents admitted they’d used a sperm donor. I explained that I'm not “going to place much faith in a $100 spit test on the internet.”
Some months later, I got another message from someone else around my age. He asked if I’d spoken to any other half-siblings on 23andMe. I told him I had, and he confirmed that it was the first person I’d spoken to. All three of us were showing as half-siblings of each other. That's more than a coincidence.
I messaged my dad. “Hey, weird question but were you ever a sperm donor?”
“Why do you ask?” I explained 23andMe and how I’d gotten in touch with two folks who were ostensibly my half siblings.
“That sort of thing is supposed to stay private.”
My dad was principled, and I figured if he had been a sperm donor, he probably didn’t want to get mixed up in talking with a bunch of kids he never knew. If my dad didn’t want me to know, he didn’t want my mom to know. And I didn't want to upset my mom.
I slowly started to meet more and more siblings (“the sibs”). I found there were probably over forty of us spread across the country. There were Facebook groups. This was eating at me.
I visited my parents for Christmas that year. One night, after everyone else had gone to bed, I got my mom drunk on Moscato and explained what I’d found. She paused and looked into her cup.
“Your father made me promise not to tell you boys this until after he died.”
My parents had struggled to conceive. After many tests, the doctors found that the fertility issues were from my dad. My parents chose to use a sperm donor. My mom made me promise not to tell my brother. “He’s not as mature as you,” she’d said, “I don’t know how he’d take it.”
My dad's kidneys began to fail at the end. He became less and less lucid. He was always surprised to see me. The toxins that were building up in his blood made him itch desperately, and I’d use a stiff-bristled brush on his arms, legs, and chest to offer him some relief.
He hadn’t eaten or drank anything substantial for days. He’d ask for orange juice or a Coke, but he’d only manage a few sips. I walked down the street and got him a milkshake from our local ice cream parlor, and he gleefully ate four or five spoonfuls—the most he’d consumed in days.
The hospice nurses entrusted us with administering morphine, but he hated the taste. My mom couldn’t get him to swallow it—he hated the taste, and would press his lips shut while turning his head away. I would take the syringe and calmly explain that it would make him feel better. He’d open his mouth for me and I’d be ready with a second syringe of soda to help mask the taste.
After the funeral director came to take away his body, my mother was inconsolable. “I just can’t believe he’s gone,” she repeated. Family drifted in and out of the house. There was nothing to say or do except wait for the arrangements we’d made to come to pass.
That night, sitting on the front porch, I told my brother what I found out years prior. I told him how I found out. I told him about all of the siblings. I’d met many of them: one had lived twenty minutes away from me in California, another lived literally a block away from me in Chicago. He was unusually quiet and pensive as he listened. I took care to remind him how much Dad had loved him, and that knowing this didn’t change anything.
The next few days leading up to the funeral moved by at a wretchedly slow pace. I woke on the morning of the service to hear my mom on the phone, though that wasn’t unusual. I poured myself coffee as she talked.
It was my brother’s best friend. He was asking where my brother was. His car had been seen by complete chance—totaled—at an impound lot. Not just any lot, at the end of our street, next to the ice cream parlor. My mom was hysterical.
“I’m sure he’s fine, if something had happened we’d have heard. I’ll go to the lot and see if the car was Mark’s.”
I put on my shoes and walked out the door, trying to hurry without looking like I was hurrying. As I passed the neighbor’s house, I broke into a jog. I could see a mangled lump of metal. I could tell it was his car.
“When did that car come in?” I asked the manager.
“Last night, after midnight.”
“The owner is my brother. Do you know what happened to him?”
“I don’t know what happened after, but he was walking around when I saw him.” Thank god.
“Do you know where he is now?”
“An ambulance took him to the hospital. He rolled that car in a turn. He’s lucky.”
I thanked him and left, dialing my brother’s friend as I walked out. As it happened, Mark was being discharged and needed a ride. He was too proud to call family.
The next time we saw him was at the viewing. He was dressed in black and walked with a cane. His face had scratches. Nothing was broken.
The night before, Mark had been drinking with his friends. He had too much. He decided to drive himself home. He took a corner too fast, flipped the car.
He never faced any consequences.
My mother called it a drinking problem, but I’d never seen him drinking.
Rewind.
My dad’s mother was crazy. Not diagnosed, but emotionally manipulative and conniving. She drove my dad’s father away. Legend has it that as he packed his suitcase to go, she repeatedly tried to light his clothes on fire.
When I was a kid, she always seemed grandmotherly to me. Full-blooded Italian, like my dad. She’d host Thanksgiving and cook a massive turkey, served alongside a heaping plate of antipasto. She didn’t speak Italian save for a collection of words that she’d use to emphasize a point or swear with.
She’d fight with my parents. On one occasion, she threatened to jump the chain link fence around my parents’ house if they locked her out when we went on vacation. On another occasion, strong words were exchanged and the front door was shut in her face. She called to my brother and I to come see her on the porch. My mom closed the blinds.
She began a slow decline when I was a teen. She had always brought us food as any good Italian grandmother does. But her famous sauce became inundated with basil—enough to scoop it out with a fork.
She’d sending way too much of one particular kind of food. I can’t eat gnocchi to this day because she once sent so much that we’d had nothing but gnocchi for two weeks. I begged my mom to ask her to stop; I couldn’t eat anymore. “Noni" would repackage Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies into plastic shoe boxes, layered with wax paper like a big cookie lasagna. Pounds and pounds of cookies.
When I was in college, she started having episodes…“mini strokes,” or at least that’s what the doctors seemed to think. I think it was probably complications from dementia. She passed while I was in college about fifteen years ago. My dad seemed unaffected.
My maternal grandmother couldn't be more different. She took care of my mom frequently, driving her around to take care of errands. My mom lost almost all of her vision to a rare case of glaucoma as a teenager. For reasons I don't understand, we lovingly called her by her full name: “Grandma Rose Rooney”. She taught me how to drive and took me for my driver's test.
As she aged, she moved to a nursing home herself. I'd bring her Chinese food (her favorite). My uncle had a daughter—her fifth and final grandchild, thirty years after my next youngest cousin was born. She started to lose her filter. “I don't care, I'll be dead soon," she'd say.
She passed away abruptly, but I didn't get to attend the funeral. My connecting flight out of Newark was cancelled because of the Canadian wildfires. I was stuck: no flights were leaving, and there were no rental cars. I laid on the floor of the terminal listening to the sound of distant vacuuming and the rhythmic thump of a moving walkway, the metal clasps of my backpack pressing shapes into my face.
I was exhausted and confused and anxious. I couldn't bring myself to cry, but I wished I could. I wished I could call my dad. I wished I could sleep. Instead I drafted the words to this blog post, over and over.
By the time flights had resumed, the funeral was over. I flew back to Raleigh.
Rewind.
Mark was always the athletic one. At one point he was in track, basketball, and football at the same time. I was the president of the AV club, vice president of Future Business Leaders of America, and the secretary of Key Club.
I knew exactly what my career would be: I had a job at a local tech company when I was old enough to get a work permit. Mark got a degree in business.
He worked as a recruiter, and later as a salesperson for a document shredding company. He made a modest salary and bought his home a few miles from my parents at the same age that I bought mine 400 miles away.
Mark developed a love for golf. He flew to Arizona to golf in the middle of summer while the travel was cheap. He had a loyal group of friends from college that he stayed close with.
He never had the best taste in women. One girlfriend had mental health issues that were exacerbated by drinking. She'd call my mom and tell her that she'd raised a terrible son. She'd accuse Mark of doing awful things—stuff that I later learned she'd done to him. Her parents were kind people, and called to apologize.
Christmas of 2023 was tough. My grandmother was always a fixture of the holiday. My mom would host all of our relatives, but almost none were left. I invited my mom and my brother to Raleigh to celebrate so they didn't have to celebrate Christmas alone. I went all out: I had every meal catered, we drank wine, we enjoyed the city. It was the best Christmas we'd had in so many years, and it was good to see Mark. I'm not sure I'd seen him since the funeral. He had a bit of a belly on him.
A couple months later, Mark had abdominal pain and rushed to the ER. They got him a room. My mom stayed with him. He got up to use the bathroom, and on his way across the room, he collapsed.
When Mark was in college, he drank a lot. And as it turned out, he never really stopped. We had no idea. Before going to the hospital, he asked his best friend to clean the hundreds of cans out of his basement because he didn't want us to find them. He had been drinking and vaping more than anyone should.
Mark's heart stopped when he was on the floor. My mother was hysterical. The hospital staff managed to resuscitate him about a minute after he collapsed, but it wasn't soon enough.
My aunt called. “Get on a plane," she said. I don't remember when I got there, or how I got to the waiting room. I sat with my uncle. People came in, doctors talked to them, they'd leave. My uncle told me about his journey to sobriety. My mom arrived, but I don't remember when or how. The doctors took us into a room to talk, and I tried to ask thoughtful questions. I found myself at Mark's house, taking pictures of supplement and pill bottles to show to the doctors. I sorted mail and threw out food from the fridge.
The connection from Mark’s pancreas to his liver was severely inflamed. He hadn't gotten fat, the belly was his swollen liver. The pressure on his organs was too much. The vaping meant his lungs weren't working well, he was already under-oxygenated. That minute his heart stopped would have been fine for most folks, but Mark was already dangerously low on oxygen.
He was in the ICU for a long time. As he began the slow journey to recovery, he was nonverbal. His arms and legs would spasm. His mood would swing and he behaved erratically.
Eventually he was discharged to a nursing home, after his health insurance decided he was too expensive. My mom and I learned about guardianship and started navigating Medicaid and social security disability. The state appointed an attorney to represent my brother in court. We filed service tickets with his employer’s HR team.
Mark has a condition called Lance Adams Syndrome. Most commonly it occurs in people who try to hang themselves and fail. He can't say more than a few words on a good day. He can read a little bit. He scrolls tiktok and watches TV with his roommate Dan.
Every day, my mom takes the county van from her house to the nursing home. She spends the day with him. She makes sure they hook him up to the feeding tube at the right time. She makes sure he gets showered and cared for.
He's the darling of the nursing home: the nurses bring him Christmas and birthday gifts and come by his room to chat. His friend group still comes to visit him, and even his old manager reaches out.
Pause.
Every happy ending is succeeded by a sad one. When my brother was in the ICU, the doctors said his organs wouldn't recover from the stress and damage. The LAS won't get better. He's on borrowed time, and my mom and I don't talk about it.
My mom is getting older, too. If she's anything like her mother, she'll be stubborn and mobile into her nineties. If she's anything like her father, even a catastrophic stroke won't claim her. But she's slowing down and little health concerns build up.
I became active with my HOA, partly because I want to keep my eye on homes in the neighborhood that go up for sale. Eventually my mom won't be able to take the county van by herself, and I can't let my brother rot in a nursing home at the mercy of nurses and social workers and the private equity company that owns the place. Moving them to Raleigh someday is the only thing I can do to keep my family together, short of picking up my life and moving back to Pennsylvania.
Life is a fractal of struggle, beauty, and surprise. Until you zoom in on it and make progress, what comes next is not apparent.
I asked why it wasn’t “third” and not “half” and got an unsatisfying answer. The system was imperfect and inefficient but neither of them had anything else to spend their time doing.
Wow. I read the whole thing. Just wow.