“How’s Your Dad Doing?”

It’s never been an unusual thing for people to ask me about my dad. He’s a well-known name in town having been a local cop for 25 years. He leaned into his retirement heavily. You might only catch him at the grocery store during one of his trips (he went several days a week) or maybe going to the fast food joint down the street. If he was feeling frisky and didn’t want to wait on me for a ride (due to bad choices, he stopped driving a few years after he retired), he might walk across town to Ace Hardware.

Dad went from being seen to being a cryptid, so I often got asked how he was doing. And I didn’t mind being asked about him because my answer was easy.

“He’s a pain in my ass, but he’s okay.”

I hate getting asked that question now. Because even though I appreciate that people still ask after him, now the answer isn’t so easy. There is no good answer.

“How’s your dad doing?”

He’s got lung cancer, COPD, and congestive heart failure. His condition has deteriorated since his diagnosis in 2024. He’s lost 100 pounds, is on oxygen, can no longer tolerate the heat or humidity well, uses a motorized wheelchair so he can get around the house without taxing himself too much when he actually feels like getting around, has neuropathy in his feet and hands, goes through phases where it’s a challenge level impossible to get him to eat, and he’s on the good drugs to deal with the pain. So overall, not great, Bob.

He has good days when he eats good and he feels good and he’s energetic and the pain doesn’t bother him too bad and his breathing is pretty good for him. Those days he gets around the house more, gets his own meals, tinkers with things. Now, with the electric wheelchair, I can get him outside and he can do things in the garage or go for a joyride to the grocery store or the bank. By himself. The man hasn’t been able to go anywhere by himself for nearly two years and most of the places he has gone has been medically related destinations. It’s boosted his spirits to be able to do that.

It also balances out the bad days when he’s not breathing well and he’s hurting and he can’t sleep and he doesn’t want to eat and he doesn’t want to move and just getting from his bed to the chair taxes him.

The thing is that the people asking after him aren’t asking for the nitty gritty dirt band of how he’s doing. They don’t want all of those paragraphs I just typed. Not because they don’t care, but because that sort of reality makes people uncomfortable. Most of the people asking after him are acquaintances, people he knew from being a cop. Yes, that includes people he’s arrested. Small town life. But they don’t want to know all of that because they don’t know what to say to it. They don’t know how to react to it. I don’t blame them. It’s a lot.

“He’s hanging in there,” is my go-to answer now. They just want to know that he’s still alive and kicking. That answer gives them that without all the gory detail that they didn’t ask for. It also spares me from reciting the latest of taking care of someone who went from fine to not fine in quick time and whose care has become an increasing challenge ever since.

It’s the best answer I can give under the circumstance and probably the most honest one I can give in just a few words, an answer I’m grateful to be able to give because I know it won’t always be my default answer.

He’s hanging in there.