My dad and I never shared our feelings. Then, he nearly died

This First Person article is the experience of Joel Rodriguez, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

My father measures his oxygen saturation as we both sit at the kitchen table with the afternoon sunlight flooding the room. My dad watches the machine with anticipation as it beeps and punches out a reading of 97. He glances up at me and smiles. The reading is good news, and serves as a reminder of how much my father has recovered because he no longer requires oxygen assistance when resting.

But those readings are just one aspect of his well-being. Every couple of months, the hospital sends my father a survey about his long COVID recovery. As I read and translate the survey into Spanish for him, I feel like we're venturing into unchartered territory. 

"Have you ever experienced guilt for your hospitalization?" 

"Has your physical condition been a cause of anxiety?" 

I'm curious whether he will be receptive or even willing to discuss such topics. My father seldomly vocalizes his emotions, and the older I get, the more I realize that his reluctance to speak on such topics stems from a cultural perception of mental health. To some degree, he fits the Latino father archetype of a stoic figure who is reserved with his words and withholds sharing his feelings. As a child, I would tell my father I loved him and he would always respond in the same manner: "Don't tell me you love me, show me" — a phrase that has been representative of our relationship. As I grew older, I took my cue from him and became reluctant to express my emotions with him. Instead, I gravitated toward my mother when I needed to vent my frustrations or share my anxieties.

All of that flipped dramatically two years ago when my dad fell ill with what we initially thought was a bad seasonal cold. A week later, he couldn't breathe, was admitted to Etobicoke General Hospital and diagnosed with double pneumonia from COVID-19. I was the one who called the ambulance, and from that point on, I became the main point of contact between the hospital staff and my family. I found myself wanting to embody the stoicism that I had seen my father carry his whole life. I wanted to be an anchor for my family in this moment of distress and I tried my best to prevent my emotions from interfering with the role I had to play. 

As my dad's health deteriorated, he was eventually placed on an extracorporeal life support machine for 56 days and each hospital visit became increasingly more difficult. I would sit next to my dad, observing the plastic tubes that connected the artery in his neck and his windpipe to a machine on the right side of his bed that acted as his artificial lung. He was fully sedated and his face slightly swollen. The stoic me didn't say much, but I held his frigid hand in a feeble attempt to transfer my energy to him. 

As his vital sign numbers appeared on a machine over his hospital bed, I wondered each time if I was experiencing my final moments with my father. I asked myself whether I was content with our relationship and although I knew I wouldn't get a response, I felt the urge to tell him I loved him one last time.

The loss of parental love — even a potential loss — can dramatically reconfigure the emotional space we occupy. I felt a range of emotions from emptiness, loneliness, guilt and even anger take hold of me during those months. And it wasn't until my father was transferred from the intensive care unit to a rehab centre that I finally let myself feel all those emotions I had been reluctant to embrace. 

It had been five months since his hospitalization and I found myself crying for the first time since he was admitted. It was a cathartic moment that challenged my perception of how to experience and express my emotions.

When my dad finally returned home from the hospital, he made rapid  strides in his physical recuperation. His oxygen capacity went from 40 to 60 per cent within the first couple of months. But as his physical recuperation plateaued, I could see that my father was having a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that some aspects of his recovery were out of his control. I felt an urge to remind him that his dependency on others wasn't a sign of weakness.

So while that twinge of awkwardness or reluctance re-emerges when we come across a question about his mental well-being on his hospital survey, I push past it. I genuinely want to approach our relationship from a place of honesty, and that's helped my dad also open up about his feelings. 

Sure, our conversations regarding his emotional well-being stem from the perspective of his physical recovery, but it has ultimately led our family as a whole to more openly talk about our feelings. 

"Even on my good days, I tend to overdo it," my father says in response to one of the survey questions. "I'm learning to navigate the internal battle of wanting help versus thinking I'm burdening others." 

Then, he pauses and looks up at me. 

"But my lack of independence isn't a worry to me since I know I have an emotional support system. In moments of need, I know I can be honest," he says. As I mark down his answer, I return his smile with genuine happiness.

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