Sleeping sitting up

Over the past weeks and months, my son has been having some issues sleeping. This follows more months of him not wanting to go to bed or having very difficult bedtimes. This combination of me spending a lot of time at night in his room as he sleeps or doesn’t sleep, along with the recent virus that he so thoughtfully gave to me, has led to me thinking a lot about how my dad slept (or didn’t).

Congestive heart failure runs in my dad’s family, but over the years, due to injuries and his weight, his sleeping became increasingly more fraught. He was always a snorer, and his mother also had to spend the last decade of her life sleeping at an incline (courtesy of a plywood wedge that was built to slide between her box spring and mattress) due to snoring and congestive heart failure.

My father was born with a hip deformity that was exacerbated by a brace that was put on incorrectly by his doctors. That led to back and knee issues that left him in pain for his entire life. It might have been manageable pain had he not chosen to keep livestock (and dabble in the rodeo) as a hobby, and then become a union forklift driver as a profession. Subsequent injuries sustained in his 20s, 30s, and 40s, combined with less-than-advisable surgeries to correct those injuries, resulted in opioid addiction. His pain contributed to his weight gain, which led to him having a combination of sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and nightly drug stupor to varying degrees. But the pain never ended, even when he was dosed with hydrocodone.

For many years, it wasn't uncommon for him to fall asleep sitting up. After being prescribed and obtaining a CPAP machine for his sleep apnea, he found himself completely unable to wear it; a combination of discomfort and claustrophobia ended the experiment within the first month, which afterwards meant two things: the first is that he became only capable of sleeping sitting up, and the second is that his sleep apnea continually caused his heart to lapse into atrial fibrillation, which every six months or so would necessitate an outpatient procedure of defibrillation, which would put his heart back in the correct rhythm and leave him with huge, deep bruises on his chest and back from the defibrillator pads.

In short order, his sleep apnea – a great, rolling, ursine snore that would halt and then be expelled some many seconds later accompanied by a pained wail that could be heard four rooms away – would knock his heart out of rhythm again. Around and around it went.

I am like my father in many ways that I am unhappy about, a few ways that I don't mind, and likely many more that I'm unwilling to admit to myself (or maybe only to others). I also struggle with my weight and have sleep apnea, and it took me too many years to get that diagnosed. I have a CPAP machine of my own, and I use it every night ... in fact, it's nearly impossible for me to sleep without it, which I suppose is a good thing. I struggle with my weight, which is beginning to cause me pain, which makes it difficult to lose the weight. Around and around it goes.

Recently, with my son's sleeping problems and his insistence that I stay in his room with him on the occasion he wakes up in the middle of the night, I have found myself in a rocking chair, struggling with how badly I want to sleep and how impossible I find it to sit upright and doze off. I think about my father, and how his discomfort kept him in a fog where sleeping and not sleeping were just as excruciating. I think about the impossibility of existing in that state, at the end of a life where consciousness and pain were inseparable, before even getting into the regret and bitterness he felt at the unfair breaks he had been dealt; the opportunities that evaded him.

I sit in the dark and I think about my father, who never saw me gain a profession as a writer, never saw me get married, never met my son, never got to read my book, never got to see the comics I wrote, never watched any of the movies I scripted, never got to see my Emmy. I spent the first 16 years of my life wanting to be just like him, and I spent my 30s hoping I didn't turn out like him.

Sometimes I sit in the dark, existing between sleep, and I feel an overwhelming sadness because I know we are the same. And then a second sadness, because I wish he was here.

COMING SOON: A TO Z

Taking a page from Dan Ozzi's amazing newsletter, starting with the second post this week, I'm going to end each newsletter going forward with a capsule for an album and/or movie from my far-too-large physical media collection for each letter of the alphabet. (Beginning with A, obviously.)

If this goes well, maybe I'll take another lap around the alphabet when I'm done. But I'm looking forward to digging in the crates and writing some reviews of these big, big libraries that I've been building for most of my life. I don't even know what the A entries will be yet. I'm excited to find out!

See you all back here later this week. On Ghost! Hurray!