The Decision

Daddy & Jennifer: May 2008 on the front porch of our home in Lansing, North Carolina

As I rode in the front seat of the ambulance carrying my critically ill father to Durham on Easter Sunday, I tried to come to terms with the fact that my life was in the process of changing forever. I live in New York; my parents live in North Carolina. Prior to Easter Sunday, my father worked two full-time jobs: attorney, and caretaker to my mother. Suddenly both of my parents were invalids. As I sat in that ambulance and listened to the driver talk about Duke basketball, I recognized that at some point in the near future I was going to be faced with making a decision that would affect the course of my life.

For many years, this has been my greatest fear: something terrible would happen to my father and I would have to give up my life to take care of my mother (and father, if he survived whatever terrible thing happened to him). I thought my brother was going to be my ally in this struggle, but when he walked away from my parents the Friday night before Easter and then disowned me in a text message the next day while I was trying to get a flight down to NC, I knew that this had just become The Jennifer Show. (We patched things up shortly thereafter, but the name of the show remains the same.)

Since Easter weekend, I have been trying to hold on to my life in New York while I live in North Carolina. I have been trying to keep my job in Manhattan and pay the rent and utilities for my apartment in Brooklyn. My employers took me off the payroll at the beginning of April and have remained incredibly supportive of my situation; my apartment has become an incredibly expensive storage unit. I have been living in limbo.

About a week and a half ago, I accompanied my father on yet another trip down to radiology for yet another Upper GI study. While wearing a protective iron gown, I tipped the cup containing the nasty contrast solution into my father’s mouth and saw with my own eyes the results on the x-ray screen: the 4th surgery didn’t work. He still has a leak. The contrast liquid spilling out into my father’s body looked like ink being released by a squid into the ocean. It would have been kind of neat…if it didn’t mean what I knew it meant.

I joined the ICU nurse sitting in the control room; she had taken care of my father a few times during his lengthy stay in the ICU, and she had been the nurse assigned to take my father down to radiology that day. I told her what we had just seen on the x-ray screen, and said: “I do not think this is going to end well.” The nurse started to cry. She got up from her chair and held me while she cried.

It was at that moment that I made my decision.

Every time I have imagined going back to New York and going back to that life, I have been offended. The very idea is offensive to me. I have imagined myself getting up every morning, commuting into the city, working that job, commuting back to Brooklyn…and being resentful and angry every moment of every day. I could not find a way to pitch that idea to myself in a way that made it make any sense. There is absolutely no way that life in New York could be more important to me than the trial my father is going through in the Durham Regional Hospital. I tried to imagine not being able to walk into his hospital room every morning…not being able to be his advocate as I talk with his doctors and nurses…not being able to go with him down to radiology and pour that nasty contrast fluid down his throat so that a complete stranger doesn’t pour that nasty contrast fluid down his throat. I can’t imagine it. And when I try to imagine it, I am offended by the mere exercise of imagining it.

So I decided on a compromise. I came up with a plan that feels right. My heart likes this plan, my mind likes this plan…intuition tells me it’s the right plan. In some ways this plan scares me, but it’s the only plan that makes sense.

I called my employer last Friday and quit my job. I called my landlord last Saturday and gave notice of my intent to vacate my apartment. Next week I am flying back up to New York. I will spend a week packing up my apartment and storing 95% of my material possessions in a storage unit somewhere in New York. I will ship a couple boxes of clothing n’ things down to North Carolina. I will stay in North Carolina for the summer. My father’s care will be my full-time job. Everything else in my life will just have to figure itself out.

I declare this: The Summer of North Carolina.

I would like to be back in New York in time to celebrate my birthday at the end of October. I don’t know if that will be possible, but that is my hope. I am trying to think optimistically as I begin executing this plan, and I hope that this summer will be a summer spent helping my father recover, rehabilitate, learn how to sit/stand/walk again, etc. That is my hope. That is my plan. I would like to stay by his side until he is at least 80% recovered.

But I know that a plan is your plan only as long as the universe wants it to be your plan. I know that there is no way to anticipate the road ahead. I know there is a chance I will never make it back to New York.

But when I tell myself the story of my life on the day that I die, I want to be able to tell myself that I made my decisions based on love and not based on fear. The decision to go back to New York right now would be a decision based on fear – fear that I wouldn’t be able to find another job, another apartment, etc. The decision to leave New York and come down to North Carolina was made purely on love.

I did not make this decision based on duty, obligation, or guilt. No one asked me or instructed me to do what I am about to do. I do this because I have a gigantic E.T.-like heart that glows brightly through my chest every time I walk into my father’s hospital room, and that gigantic E.T.-like heart told me not to worry about getting back to the mother ship until I have seen this situation through to its conclusion.

And at some point I realized: I am not giving up my life. I am not putting my life on hold. This is my life. This experience is already shaping and changing who I am, so to try to pretend like I am the same Jennifer Blevins I was before that ambulance ride on Easter Sunday is absurd. I don’t know the Jennifer Blevins who is going to emerge from this experience, so I have no way of knowing what she’s going to want. I hope she’s going to want to go back to New York. I love New York and New York loves me, so I hope when this is over I decide to go back. I am sending out a lot of lifelines to ensure that I can be pulled back in if that is what I decide. If nothing else, I will have to make a trip up there to get my stuff. I hope the journey to reclaim my stuff serves as a reminder to myself that I had a life before this tragedy that did not involve being my parents’ caretaker.

To my New York friends:

I may or may not be able to see you while I am up there, but if I do see you, please:

1) Do not ask me to explain the entire narrative of this experience to you. It has been traumatic and horrible; let’s leave it at that. I may feel like talking about it, or I may not. Please do not ask me what went wrong; we do not know what went wrong.

2) Do not give me unsolicited advice. Do not tell me what to do. If I want your advice, I will ask you for it. And I will definitely ask you for it if I want it.

3) Do not tell me you “know how I feel” or “know what I’m going through.” Just because you went through a traumatic experience with a loved one at some point in your life does not mean we are suddenly members of The Trauma Club and/or brothers-and-sisters-in-the-cause. Your traumatic experience was entirely unique, as is mine. No one in the world “knows how I feel,” and only a small handful of people who know the situation intimately can even come close to “knowing what I’m going through.” There is only one person in New York who has any idea; that is Jen Katz, my friend who flew down to NC and spent a week with my family. If you would like to know “what I’m going through,” ask Jen Katz.

4) Love me. Tell me I’m pretty. Help me find a storage unit, movers, boxes, etc. Buy me a drink. Tell me about beautiful and happy things going on in your lives. Make me laugh. And if one day I decide to come back to New York, please help me. Let me sleep on your couch or hook me up with a job interview or feed me dinner.

Thank you. I will miss you like hell.

To my North and South Carolina friends, please:

1) Adhere to #’s 1, 2, and 3 as written above.

2) Play with me this summer. Help me remember that I know how to be happy. Find ways to get me out of the hospital. Help me make The Summer of North Carolina as magical and wonderful as it can possibly be.

3) Kick me out at the end if I ask you to do so.

I am dreading my trip back up to New York next week, in part because I am dreading having to pack up my apartment. I am also dreading the conflict with my landlord. While my employer was very kind and understanding about my decision, my landlord is bullying and threatening me and trying to charge me for two more month’s rent. Because he “knows how I feel” and “knows what I’m going through” because his 90-year old mother spent time in the hospital before she died, he thinks he has every right to be an ass. I’m pretty sure he’s taking advantage of me, but I don’t know anything about landlord/tenant law and I don’t have enough juice left to fight him. If any of you happen to be landlord/tenant attorneys, I would love some advice (see, I do ask for advice when I need it).

I believe in karma, so I believe this will all come back to my landlord someday. But seeing as how I’m Jennifer Blevins and he’s a Bay Ridge goomba who wears a diamond earring and a fanny pack, perhaps karmic justice has already been dealt.

Explore posts in the same categories: Major life changes

Tags: getting out of NYC, North Carolina, taking care of your parents

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