I remember the call: my father had been rushed to the VA hospital in Phoenix.
He had been in and out of the hospital a lot lately, and each visit seemed worse than the last.
It was late when I arrived. By the time I pulled into the hospital parking lot, it was already dark. The tall parking lot lights cast that harsh yellow glow hospitals always seem to have. Everything felt quiet in the way hospitals do at night; like the world outside had paused.
I walked through the corridor toward the psychiatric unit with a knot in my stomach and asked to see my dad. My parents had divorced when I was twenty, and as the oldest child the responsibility for my father had somehow landed on me.
This wasn’t my first time dealing with a situation like this, but it was the first time I truly felt the weight of it.
A staff member directed me into a large room with a few chairs and a phone sitting on a small side table. It was clearly a lounge where patients and their families could visit.
But that night the room was empty.
Empty except for my father.
He was sitting next to the phone, waiting.
As soon as I walked in, he grabbed me.
This was unusual. My father had never been the type to hug or show affection. For a moment I thought he was pulling me into an embrace.
But then I realized he was running his hands across my stomach and around my waist.
Frantically searching.
Then he looked at me and asked,
“Where are the bullet holes?”
I froze.
Confused, I asked him what he meant. But he kept feeling around my body, as if he expected to find gunshot wounds. I eventually had to step back.
At the time I was still young. I didn’t fully understand the depth of my father’s mental illness.
“Dad,” I said, trying to reason with him, “how could I be dead if I’m standing right here?”
He looked at me, completely bewildered.
Then he told me about the shootout with the police. In his mind it had been real. There had been gunfire. Chaos. I had been caught in the crossfire.
He said he watched them carry me away in a body bag.
And now I was standing in front of him.
None of it made sense to him.
That was the moment it hit me.
The realization was like a punch to the gut, knocking the air out of my lungs. Until then, I had never fully accepted the magnitude of my father’s illness.
I couldn’t imagine living in a world where something so terrifying could feel completely real.
And then another thought struck me just as hard: losing his children must be one of my father’s greatest fears. For it to haunt him like that, it had to be.
My father has always had a hard time being convinced that something did or didn’t happen. You can spend hours telling him the voices aren’t real. You can explain that no one is conspiring against him.
But you will never truly persuade him.
To him, those things are real.
There have been other moments like this.
Once he believed that all four of his children had died in a car accident. He told me he had received a call saying we were gone. At the time my brother was stationed in Afghanistan, and the rest of us were scattered across different places. There was no possible way we could have been in the same car together.
But schizophrenia doesn’t follow logic.
It allows the mind to believe what it wants, and there is often no convincing it otherwise.
My father didn’t fully believe we were okay until he saw us for himself. Even then, it took time for that reality to settle in. Today he will tell you proudly that all of his children are alive and well.
My father still has hallucinations and moments of paranoia. But taking his medication correctly helps keep those moments to a minimum.
Even so, I often find myself afraid for him.
Afraid that one day his illness will pull him into a level of madness he won’t be able to come back from. I don’t want him living a life where fear and confusion are constant companions. I don’t want him trapped in a reality that only he can see.
At least for now, he still has moments of clarity.
And I know he longs for his mind to be free.
I see it every time he tells me that God has cured him and that he doesn’t need his medication anymore. A part of me wants to believe him. I want to believe with my whole heart that he is finally better; that his mind is no longer haunted by such terrifying thoughts.
But I also know there is no magic pill. No sudden cure.
I know it every time I receive another call telling me my father has been admitted to the hospital again.
We may never understand why this illness chose him. What I do know is that he would never wish it on another soul. He is too kindhearted for that.
This is simply the life he has been given.
A lifetime of experiences many people will never understand.
All I can do is hope and pray that his episodes become fewer. That he no longer sees me being carried away in a body bag.
That I never again have to stand in front of my dear, fragile father and say the words that break my heart every time:
“I’m not dead, Dad. I’m standing right here.
I wish I could help you.”
