"Fire"

Yesterday my father set his apartment on fire, caught himself on fire then had to fling himself from his second story apartment. He burned at least thirty five percent of his body, and breathed in a dangerous amount of hot soot, burning his throat and lungs. The doctors stabilized him by drugging him unconscious and stuffing a breathing tube down his throat, otherwise his lungs were liable to swell from inflammation in which case he'd asphyxiate. My wife, who works at the hospital was alerted, a friend of his was alerted and lastly I was, on his wishes, before he was knocked unconscious. I left work, went to the hospital and waited for news.
The thing here is that I'm not close to my dad. We haven't been very close in a very long time and talk only a handful of times each year. My dad is only in his mid-fifties but looks like he's seventy. He's a drunk, a pill popper, a pot head and possibly other things I don't know about. He's been this way in one form or another since I was a kid. The fire that ate him up was more or likely caused by a joint or a lit cigarette he left sitting somewhere, probably an overflowing ashtray or a bit of ash in his carpet. We won't know until the fire inspection returns with its findings. Suffice it to say, I had no doubt he was responsible for the fire and almost killing himself when I got the first phone call.
My dad isn't the kind of man who could kill himself outright, he chooses to slowly pickle himself with cheap booze and dozens of prescription pills that whittle away at years he may or may not have, living in squalor and degradation taking the addicts way out, which is slow and lonesome.
I don't hate my father, even though he's given me more than enough reason to but at this point I'm a full grown man with his own family and dwelling on the past doesn't solve any problems. The beef I have with my dad is in essence about what I don't want to be. My fathers' side of the family is named "Blankenship", which is the name I carry, the name I'm going to give my son, a name I've wanted to change since I was a young boy, and a name that sits like a curse on my head, always reminding me not only of who I am, but what I could easily become.
The Blankenship's come from a tiny logging town that got even shittier after the mill shut down when my dad was a boy. Like his family and friends he started drinking and doing drugs because what else are you going to do in a little town where nothing happens? I have more drug addicts and alcoholics on that side of my family than I even know. I have an uncle in prison who's been there since the 70's and another uncle who has an on again/off again relationship with "Speedballs"(a mix of heroin and crank) and more booze hounds than you could ever need in all of my cousins/second cousins/cousins-once-removed. My dad isn't alone, he's just one of the many, just like the rest and in that way I can feel for him because it isn't his fault he's fucked up every aspect of his life. Being a fuck up has been expected of him and (an accepted inevitability) from every Blankenship since well before I was born.
For me the weirdest part of everything was having to be the oldest son who looked on with indifference in the emergency room. To me it makes total sense that we were all there being told what we were being told. It's like math: one barely functioning alcoholic/drug addict + lit cigarettes X a small cluttered apartment = big fucking fire. So the fire itself wasn't shocking in the way that you hear about "someone being flung from a roller coaster due to a seatbelt malfunction", but shocking in the "someone who's standing in front of a train being run over by said train" way. I've seen the cigarette burns all over his couches and chairs and tables, it's a wonder this hasn't happened sooner.
Having to stand there and look at him with his face blistered and bright red, his little fat feet popping out of the bottom of his sheets.... It was sad, I guess, in a helpless pathetic way. But what no one understands is that this is how I've always seen my dad: sad and pathetic, utterly helpless to do anything about his life. I know that he loves my brother and me, but he never knew how to show it properly because he's always hated himself, and you can't expect someone who can't love themselves to functionally love anyone else.
Like most addicts my dad has always been the center of his own world and these last few years trying to navigate the maze of his lies, delusions and confusions has been too much for me handle. There's this slow descent with addicts where what they say at first makes sense in a crazy way, then makes no sense in any way, then becomes too incoherent to entertain in any capacity. And I haven't understood the world that my father lives in for a very long time.
In a way I'm sad. I feel bad for the suffering he's going through and for the suffering he's going to go through on his long road to recovery, but to me this situation like his whole messy life, could've been avoided. The sadness and loneliness, the physical and mental deterioration, this all could've been side-stepped years ago if my father had the strength of character to say "no" and see the bigger picture: the one where his wife's or his parent's or his son's or anyone else's happiness fit into his life. But my dad did what alot of weak men do, and ran away from responsibility right into a bottle or bag to ease their guilt.
I've had my dad look at me, knowing full well what the answer was, and ask me, "I've been a good father, right?" hoping somehow that the answer was different than the one he knew deep down in his heart. I always shrugged it off, never really answering him.
Yesterday I got to stand over my fathers' unconscious body and think about my unborn son. What's he going to think someday when I'm laid out on a table and he looks down at me? I hope that if I ever have to ask him if I've been a good father he can answer me honestly, something I'll never be able to do with my father.