Taking My Dad’s Ghost to the Voting Booth
My dad was famous for a few things: his ribs, his wit, and his wisdom.
He was infamous for some things too, but those are stories for another day.
Top three Randy quotes:
“Smiling like a jackass eating cornflakes.”
“It’s the principle, Jennifer, it’s the principle.”
“This isn’t my world anymore. It’s just not my world. You know?”
This last one was his constant refrain anytime we discussed politics after he found out he had cancer for the third time — the big cancer that eventually got him.
On January 6, 2021, I dropped my dad off at the hospital for a lung biopsy. We were still doing the Covid protocol thing so I wasn’t allowed to stay. I took a picture of the glass sculpture in front of the hospital because I needed to remember something beautiful about having to leave my dad there to face that awful shit alone.
My dad was a man who chewed up nails and spit out tacks. My dad was a scared little boy who needed his hand held when he had to confront big things. Both of these things can be true at the same time.
While sitting in the waiting room at my own doctor’s appointment that morning — anxiety, go figure — I watched the events unfolding in DC. All I could think was that my dad would be PISSED that he was missing the news. I couldn’t wait to pick him up in a couple of hours and watch CNN with him.
He ended up being stuck in the hospital overnight. He was feeling off after the biopsy and they wanted to keep an eye on him.
My dad died in July 2023, after a crazy surgery, chemo, being cancer-free for a year, and then having cancer everywhere. Because pandemic, he did most of this alone.
I say because pandemic, but there’s a bigger truth there I keep picking at, because he didn’t have to be alone.
On election day I think about the way politics destroyed support systems. My dad had his principles, and while some of them were…not as evolved as mine are, at his core he believed that we all had a right to go through life as we choose, and to say what we want, and that everyone deserved equal rights, and that politicians were all in bed with corporations and lobbyists to our detriment (obvs, his time at DuPont killed him). These principles were at odds with the values held by his closest friends and over the years those relationships dissolved because Trump.
He always told me nothing was ever black and white, just shades of grey. I think what he meant when he said this wasn’t his world anymore was that people lost the ability to see grey.
This picture of Tiny Trump in a cage was my dad’s profile picture on social media for years:
Someday we may see this, but it’s not gonna be today, because today we need to go and vote and make sure we can wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and every day after that, without having to open up our news app and see that man’s fucking name plastered in front of our eyeballs everywhere all of the time. He offers us nothing but stress and grief and misery, and we need to be rid of him once and for all. Then, and only then, maybe we can see this. But it’s sure as shit not gonna happen if he gets elected again. So please don’t vote for him.
On election day I also think about my brother, a virulent badge bunny Trump supporter, who now lives in my dad’s house.
I hope my dad is haunting him.
Knowing my dad, I’m sure he is, and smiling like a jackass eating cornflakes while he lives on by his principles.