The shadow

4/1/2025

It’s been a long month. A good one, but a long one. What started as being afraid of what was coming down the pipeline regarding my dad’s health became a month of pre-grief, grief, and travel.

I bought a book about trauma and read it cover to cover. While the information was helpful and useful, a lot of it was “no shit” information, like how trauma stays in the body. As someone who has been chronically tired his entire adult life, because he’s constantly scanning for the next threat, I know how trauma affects a person. I watch people use their energy for constructive and productive means, but prior to and right after work most days, I just want to sleep.

It’s not like I’m eating poorly. I’m eating well, in the broad sense, and I’m sleeping well, and trying to do the things that give a person energy, cutting down on the scrolling and the media consumption. But I’m just tired.

I think I’m in recovery mode. Now that I’m not looking across the horizon for the lion waiting in the bushes, the message sent to my body is that I no longer have to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. I no longer have to be scared and hoard my energy for that sprint that I’m going to have to undertake.

It’s going to be a long, slow climb, and one that will involve a lot of therapy and self-reflection, but I’ve already done that much, too.

I also put about 300 pages of introspection into a “shadow work” journal. Now, I don’t believe, largely, in the fru-fru nature of self-improvement, but as I started reading the book, prior to the journaling, it was talking a lot about doing the work of finding the dark corners of one’s self, the places you normally don’t talk about, or the places you run away from or ignore, and finding the ways to bring them into the sunlight.

Well, hours and hours later, I finished. And what’s come out of it, with the aid of me putting it all into ChatGPT, is noting patterns. Shame, guilt, self-punishment, abandonment, self-worth… these are just a few of the issues that I learned I hit myself with a lot.

I started to think about myself in those terms, what gets me into those patterns, and now I’m starting to see a way through the maelstrom. Developing a clear vision for my future and hope for a world where I’m not trying to constantly control everything or productivize/optimize myself into fulfillment, but where I get to enjoy the world AND what I make of the world.

I’m tired, but I’m excited. AND, I’m starting the second draft of my second feature of the year, with a lot more behind it.

Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot of soul-searching to do, and a life to build back up from scratch.

A TRip home (pt. 2)

3/13/2025

I got another call, this time from my dad’s cousin, who just so happened to be visiting dad.

It had been a week of ups and downs from the time I got home on February 22 to the beginning of March. Dad in and out of the hospital. His health improving and then sliding back.

Couldn’t get his blood sugar under control. Had issues with weakness, blood in his stool, and incontinence.

All of those were handled, and by the end of the week, they were scoping him to try and figure out where his bleeding in his GI tract was coming from. They found it, so they thought.

But, by this point, dad couldn’t swallow. He would probably have a feeding tube in some form for the rest of his life.

The words “hospice” and “palliative” were thrown around. Words that cause your stomach to drop into your ass.

Dad’s cousin calls on March 2. Dad has been removed from everything. No life-saving measures. Dad had seen his prognosis and, for whatever reason known only to him, he decided to just call it off.

Apparently dad had some sharp pain on his side. They did a scan and found a blockage. They tried to clear it, but his body had started shutting down. His digestive system was no longer working.

By the time I got there after a 7 hour drive with my wife, dad was not very responsive. He would open his eyes and quickly shut them, only if you were loud and in his face. The nurses kept him on a steady diet of morphine and Ativan. A few hours after arriving, my wife and I were falling asleep sitting in dad’s hospital room in the dark, as was my brother, who had made the 2 hour drive down shortly after finding out the news, and dad’s estranged soon-to-be ex-wife (they had a divorce hearing on March 20 scheduled) had driven a few minutes over from the next town.

She opted to spend the night with him in the hospital, which she took as a means to find peace with their situation. She said her I love you’s to him and he responded while he was still somewhat active.

The next morning, we went to the funeral home. Shit was getting real.

We spent the day, as much as possible, with dad. Nightfall came and it looked like he might be okay another 10 hours or so, and we went back to our hotel.

Approximately 2 hours after we left, dad took his final breath with his wife by his side. She called us, and we rushed to the hospital. My wife comforted my dad’s wife, and my brother and I kissed our dad’s head and relieved him of his duties.

We contacted the funeral home in the morning and started piecing together his service. We went to dad’s apartment and cleared it out, taking totems that we could use to remember him by. We went to dad’s wife’s house and sorted through things he’d left there, hoping he would be able to return via reconciliation.

My wife and I had a car packed full of family memories, as did my brother. The rest, we determined, was up to her to pitch or donate or keep at her discernment.

The service was held on Friday, March 7, and immediately, my wife and I took off and drove back to Georgia.

A simultaneous weight of sadness, a relief of not being at war with some form of tragedy, and a mid-life fright of being on the descent of life hit all at once.

I mostly feel relief, throughout the day, but I miss my dad. I bought a hat when I was in town that had the old-school logo of my university on it and wanted to show dad. I wanted to call dad last Sunday and catch up like we normally did. I stared at the transcript of his last voicemail and read his last text to me, both simply saying he loved me.

I don’t have regrets this time, and that’s something, but I miss my dad.

I’m a 41 year old orphan. Three of the 5 people I have loved most in the world are gone. Holes in my heart will never truly fill from these losses. Matter of fact, the one thing I know is that either I’ll be the next to go, or I’ll suffer loss again and again. Both of those fill me with sadness and dread.

But for now, I’m trying to find the will to carry on. To make the best of the stories I have been a part of. To love those I still have, and honor those I don’t.

And, as I look out the window of my hotel room in Puerto Rico, on a trip that was planned well before dad’s health took a dip, I am reminded that there’s much to be happy and thankful for.

And I hope that, if nothing else, I can remind myself of that.

Rest in peace, Dad

James Arthur Shank

June 30, 1953 - March 3, 2025

A TRip home

2/24/2025

This past week started with a phone call, at 4AM on Saturday (Feb 15), telling me that dad was in the ICU and that I should come home as soon as possible. Hastily, I packed a bag, including a suit, because it seemed like I was going home for dad’s death and funeral.

Once I arrived, it started getting better for him. He was in the ICU for a couple more days, then a normal hospital room, and then was transferred to a rehab facility.

In the midst of all of this, my brother and I were tasked (self-tasked, really) with getting dad’s life in order. Anything could happen, but we knew that, should he get better, he’d want to go back to a place that felt like somewhere he could live, not one that was covered in bodily fluids and looked like someone was just trying to survive there.

We scrubbed his apartment high and low. Did all his laundry. Cleaned his dishes. Threw out food that would spoil. Bought new furniture, art, and bedding. Took to looking through his myriad folders for financial forms that would let us know what bills he’d need paid while he was recovering. We handled that.

We talked to dad’s friends about making sure dad felt supported and that he had contacts for anything he might need.

It was a long week, but in the midst of it all, I found myself creatively restless. I finished a draft of a screenplay I’d been working on all month, and still had more energy.

I thought this week would make for a good story, so I started writing things down. The things we did each day. How dad was doing. Personal issues we were all working through.

Before I knew it, there was a structure forming.

This is how I manage life. I always say “Make Art About It” and this is what I’m talking about. Stories about everything going well are seldom entertaining and highly forgettable. Stories of struggle and tragedy and pain are the reasons why I read, watch movies, and consume what I do.

And it keeps my head on straight, and my morale up.