On Christmas Day, 6-year-old Randolph runs into the family room and cries, “Daddy!” Two men – William and Cyrus – answer his call. In his quest to unravel the mystery of two fathers, which leads to a reunion with his birth mother and the exposure of grim secrets William tried to bury half a century ago, Randolph rediscovers himself. Thirty-three years after that ominous Christmas Day, as William tries to atone from his deathbed for a lifetime of deceit, Randolph realizes that he has solved a far greater question: Does God exist? The practical implications of his answer will astonish you.

Where We Find Ourselves is a true story, told by one of those rare individuals in whom the old world and the new coalesce. In this tale of betrayal and liberation, R. Thomas Risk enlists the analytical skills of a lawyer, the savvy of an investigator and the eloquence of an award-winning poet to forever change your perception of society’s sacred institutions – the three most insidious of which are Religion, Celebrity and National Politics … a positively unholy trinity.

Where We Find Ourselves

Portrait of a Modern InfidelBy R. Thomas Risk

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 R. Thomas Risk, J.D., M.A.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-2093-2

Contents

Opening Statement.......................................................................1The Evidence: Sins of Our Fathers.......................................................9Chapter One Chase the Pain.............................................................11Chapter Two Too Much Room at the Inn–1965........................................18Chapter Three Thou Shalt Not Covetthy Neighbor's Wife..................................43Chapter Four Sweet Serendipity.........................................................59Chapter Five The Betrayal..............................................................70Chapter Six Honour Thy Father..........................................................82Chapter Seven Whispers from the Wilderness.............................................95Chapter Eight And the Truth Shall Set You Free.........................................104Closing Argument: The Modern Infidel—Renaissance of Integrity.....................121Dear Son................................................................................122Statistics—the Innocuous vs. the Insidious........................................124The System..............................................................................130The Developmental Dungeon...............................................................132On Your Parole to the Real World........................................................139The Juggernaut..........................................................................141Religion................................................................................141My Battle with Existential Schizophrenia................................................143Modern Atheism—Not Your Grandfather's Paradigm....................................162The Essential Characteristics of the Atheist Worldview..................................172The Mind as Body........................................................................172The Peculiar Parlance of Idiots and sociopaths..........................................175The Contract of Doom....................................................................178The Canine Conundrum....................................................................184Celebrity...............................................................................188National Politics.......................................................................192Atheism and Political Branding—the Devil Is in the Definition.....................207Conservatism Doesn't Know Whether it's Coming or Going..................................214So What Does It All Mean?...............................................................229Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It............................................233Postscript..............................................................................237

Chapter One

Chase the Pain

October 14, 2004

Fall in Oklahoma is a lot like the women of my past. In September a front blows through and the leaves turn, promising a welcome respite from the insane heat of August. Just as suddenly, an Indian summer creeps back from the south, shattering my hopes for reprieve.

On Saturday, September 11, my father was admitted to Mercy Hospital with severe back pain. He and his doctors surmised he had just slipped a disc playing golf and would be on his feet in a few days. With the biggest trial of my career set to commence that Monday, I devoted the weekend to witness preparation. Having heard nothing more from him or the hospital, I have assumed the best.

At 11:00 I stroll down to the lobby for a sandwich. By 11:20, I've finished perhaps two thirds of it when the receptionist buzzes to tell me my cousin, Rick, is calling. Before I have a chance to take the call, my cell phone rings. It's my sister, Cheri. Not only is Dad still in the hospital; he has been moved to the ICU with renal failure. His white blood cell count is over 6,000. I don't know a white blood cell count from a sperm count, let alone how many of either a man should have. But the terms renal failure and ICU are all I need to hear to know we're dealing with something far more serious than a slipped disc.

I've spoken to my father only once in three years. As my faithful pickup and I roar down the highway, I search for a feeling. All I can find is fear. When your dad is a doctor, you see a lot of sickness. But your dad is immune. He is the hero, patting tremulous hands and reassuring frightened faces. I don't want to see him on the other side of those hypoallergenic sheets. At the hospital, I push through the gargantuan ICU doors. As I near his room, I can hear him hiccupping loudly and painfully. Rick stands at his bedside. The nurse informs me he has come down with an infection known casually by the acronym MRSA. Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus is one of those new, antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cropped up in the late 1990s. When a patient has such a virulent infection, every visitor must wash his hands and don surgical gloves on entry, then wash his hands again on exit, not so much for his own protection (MRSA is not an airborne germ) but so the contagion won't spread to the other patients in the ICU, whose immune systems are already compromised.

As I wash up at the lavatory just inside the door, I catch my first glimpse of Dad. Unshaven, with his white hair growing out from beneath the desultory store-bought coloring, his eyes are clinched in pain. Periodically, he mumbles unintelligibly. Occasionally, he grasps at something invisible, then punches the air with his index finger as if to dial an imaginary telephone.

"Need to get ... man's x-ray."

"It's all right, Dad. I'll take care of it."

" ... mfsdiofiahjoghif demon man ..."

Rick looks at me. "Did he say demon?"

"I'm sure he was talking about me."

The nurse shoos us away so she can bathe him and draw some blood. Rick and I stroll to the waiting room to indulge in its perpetual supply of free coffee, where Cheri awaits. While she makes small talk with Rick, I draw a checklist in my head and begin to populate it with names of people I should contact. Then it hits me like a runaway bus—just months ago, I agreed to be Dad's proxy in a Power of Attorney for his wife, Verna.

Verna had been suffering from Alzheimer's for a few years. By then, it was so advanced that he was going to have to put her in a nursing home, but she had neglected to prepare an Advance Directive or any other estate planning documents. As though the events that had estranged us had never occurred, he asked me to draw up the papers. Ever the dutiful, guilt-ridden son, I complied. As it turns out, he didn't just put her up in any old nursing home. Dad's been shelling out three-grand a month for a geriatric Waldorf-Astoria. If my prediction of years ago proves correct, I'll be lucky to find that Dad has two dimes left to his name, so I will have to move her to a more affordable facility.

Cheri is ready now. We go back through the big doors, don our surgical gloves and reintroduce ourselves to the echo of a man who hasn't recognized anyone all afternoon. Every time he moans I think, I won't die this way. I'll take matters into my own hands long before I get this debilitated. The nurse brings word that the pastor at Dad's church wants to see him. Cheri and Rick are out the door before I have time to react.

From the day I was born, the only preacher I knew was at all, loud-mouthed old coot named Archie. I both feared and admired Archie because of the intensity with which he approached every situation life threw at him. I expect the same from Archie's replacement. What I meet instead is a buffoon, half my age and more awkward than I was on my first date. Though the nurse has instructedhimonthehand-washingandgloveprocedure,Ihavetore-instruct him. He stands there motionless for an interminable amount of time.

I finally say, "Dad, look who's here."

Dad mumbles something in gibberish. I try to make lighthearted conversation with the pastor, but to no avail, and he finally does the only thing he knows how to do.

"Let's ... why don't we pray?"

When he has finished his scripted prayer, he asks if he can do anything for me.

"Do you think God can do anything about his hiccups?"

He returns a panicked stare, then hastily retreats.

Before I can rejoin Cheri and Rick in the waiting room, the E.R. intake nurse who admitted Dad in September pulls me aside. After handing me a plastic baggie containing personal effects they removed from him on admission, she takes my arm.

"Mr. Risk, one of your father's employees drove him here because his back pain was so intense he could barely stand. I'm sorry I can't remember her name. But she gave me some background you need to be aware of. Dr. Risk showed up at her doorstep one night in July, carrying a garbage bag with some shirts, underwear and two pairs of pants. His son Greg had stolen everything else and your dad was afraid for his life."

This account is eerily similar to a story I wrote years ago about a little boy running away to escape an abusive father. The boy had wrapped his most prized possessions in a knapsack and was scurrying down a dirt road. I modeled the scene after the only story Dad had told me about his childhood: that he had fled Norwood, Missouri to Oklahoma, where he later watched his mother die in an insane asylum known then as Central State Hospital. Dad was an underprivileged child who became a doctor. He financed a big house, took his family on vacations and bought his kids everything he himself never had. Now he comes to the end of his life carrying the sum of his worldly possessions in a trash bag, afraid, not that his father will beat him, but that his eldest son will kill him. How do I make sense of this?

Home at 8:30, I pace and reflect. The sum of my father's worldly possessions that hold any value occupies two square inches on my bookshelf. There is nothing I can do to change his life, to undo the choices he made. I can not fathom what were his hopes, his dreams, when his life was brand new. William Louis Risk, M.D. was my first hero. I expect hundreds will lament his passing. I don't know how Cheri will react. I suspect our brother Greg will be emotionally oblivious to it. I will be relieved for Dad. I hope his death will release him from his demons. I will mourn the loss of what his life could have been.

What can I do for him now? Months shy of my 40th birthday, my divorce eight years past still haunts me. Though I have no wife or children, or even a pet, I seem to have barely enough time in a day to stay on top of my life. But, as I steal these rare moments of quiet before going to bed, he lies in an antiseptic cubicle, being fed from one bag and emptied into another.

I climb into bed some time after midnight, staring out my open window and fighting the urge to get up and drive back to the hospital. I finally make a deal with myself—I'll close my eyes and, if I'm still awake in an hour, I'll wash up and go.

October 15 8:50 am

Like my boyhood home, the face of this hospital has changed dramatically since the 1970s. As I meander through the labyrinth of Lower Level looking for a mail drop, I stumble upon the cafeteria. I suddenly know exactly where I am. This Lower Level escaped the marble and statuette makeover of the main floor. This is the Mercy Hospital I remember from so many early mornings and late nights as I followed Dad on rounds to get a break from watching Verna or some other relative convalesce in some upstairs suite. Walking these hallways brings back memories, and they are fond ones. As austere as my childhood was, it was all I knew. Those days seem like they are a lifetime away and, though I know I was a far more angry, confused and fragmented person back then, those days somehow seem brighter than these. I suppose that's just the false light of nostalgia.

As grim as Dad looked yesterday, I hope he will have just one more lucid moment, so he can see me smile at him one last time, so I can take his hand and tell him I love him. Then I want him to let it all go. I want to let him go. I want the disillusionment and rage of my childhood to dissipate with his last out-breath.

12:30 pm

Two of Dad's employees came to see him just now. I've barely finished pouring another cup of waiting room coffee when one of them taps my arm.

"Dr. Risk is awake. He's asking for you."

I close my eyes and lose myself for a moment in a soothing gulp of coffee. Time now to face the biggest fear of my life, the day I had hoped would never arrive—the day my father would be dependent upon me. Braced by another shot of hot coffee, I march again through the big doors. Outside his unit I don the gloves, muster a nervous smile for a passing orderly and turn the corner.

One of his golfing buddies is sitting with him. As with most people who have nothing to say, I joke with him for awhile. Though laughing appears to cause him pain, I can't resist the urge to make him smile. Maybe it's payback for all the stupid jokes he told me when I was sick; or maybe the urge to make hurting people feel better is one gift this man passed on to me despite himself.

When the laughter subsides, his friend asks him, "Do you want to be alone with your son?"

Damn! What the hell am I going to say to him after all this time?

Before the man's shadow has left the doorway, Dad begins to weep—that guttural type of upheaval that tries to suffocate you. I cup his shoulder in my hand, afraid to squeeze too hard because the infection has made his skin and joints sensitive.

He begins to murmur, "Oh, God ... oh, God," occasionally casting a wide-eyed stare in my direction, then returning to his closed-eyed chant. It doesn't take a genius to realize the body can be wide-awake while the mind is light-years away. After what seems like half an hour, I'm beginning to wonder if he is conscious at all. Then, as suddenly as they began, the gutturals subside. He turns to me, smiles and takes a painful swallow.

"I'm sorry. Son, I'm ... sorry."

He gazes at me, shaking his head and pursing his lips to speak, but he can't seem to catch the words. Or perhaps he just doesn't know where to begin.

"I'm sorry."

Damn my luck. Why couldn't he have started this conversation long before now?

There comes a time when we all turn to face the boy we once were ... when the older self is called to account for all the times he was afraid to say what he meant. It is at this juncture that we realize self-absolution can only be found, not in punishing those we allowed to intimidate us, but in summoning the fortitude to forgive both them and ourselves for our past weaknesses. It is at this moment when the son becomes his own father. That time for me is now. The day I have lusted after has finally arrived—an invitation for me to unbottle three decades of father-son frustrations, to rehash every last act and omission that drove me to renounce the man who had raised me. But when I peer down into my emotional catacomb I find to my surprise that nothing is left there to dredge.

Besides, what would I gain from such a tirade, and at what detriment to him? The fact is that all the evidence at hand suggests I will outlive him. Even were I to die within mere seconds of his demise, those few seconds would be time he did not have to imbue his life with meaning. Whether or not I make sense of it all smells of secondary importance. This is his moment. Father-son roles aside, it would be immoral for me to withhold what his concession seeks from me—simple charity.

"Look, Dad, you and I are okay. We make choices. We make them without any rulebook to follow. Past is past. What matters right now is that I'm here and you're here."

When I tell him Cheri was here yesterday, and is coming by later, he smiles again. Just when I think I've calmed him down, another friend of his walks in. Gary is the music minister at Dad's church. He and his wife are two of the sweetest people I know. Like my father, I have always been fond of music makers. So Gary is one of the rare church folks these days I am sincerely happy to encounter. Unfortunately, the sight and touch of Gary set Dad off on a new surge of weeping. He goes on and on about how this moment is a miracle. I figure he's referring to the fact that he survived yesterday's crash. As usual, I'm wrong.

"I haven't lost my son after all."

I avoid looking Gary in the eye, because now I'm fighting an emotional surge of my own. On the one hand, how can I doubt the sincerity of a man who just returned from the brink of nothingness? On the other, how do I stack this up against the way he lived his life?

After Gary leaves, I decide to take advantage of this window of clarity to get down to business, perhaps return the favor for how honest he was with me all those years ago about my favorite uncle, Floyd. To my surprise, Dad is fully aware of the MRSA infection. He reviews his vitals aloud, as if he has separated himself from his predicament, as though he has managed to both be the patient and observe himself as a doctor at the same time. He asks me what decisions I am facing. I explain the three possibilities the nurse laid out for me last night. And I put it to him straight.

"I don't know the pain involved with dialysis, but you've seen it a hundred times. If that's an option, do you want it?"

He considers the question as calmly as if he were lining up a putt on the golf course. "Only if it'll really help, not just drag things out."

He grows quiet. I contemplate the gadgets across the room on a built-in table, happy to share in his silence. Before long, he begins to weep again.

"There's been a lot gone by, son. I don't ever want anything to come between us."

"I don't either. I don't either."

As he drifts back into semi-consciousness, I reflect upon the long journey that brought us to this room.

Chapter Two

Too Much Room at the Inn–1965

When I opened my eyes for the very first time, my mind bore no hopes, no fears, no memories ... not the wispiest inkling that I had experienced anything before. It was at this moment that my conscious life, or my self, began. The world I encountered consisted of tangible things I could see, smell, feel, hear and taste. And I got along with it just fine. When I was hungry I cried, and a big person fed me. When I poked the rattle, it rolled away from my finger with equal velocity. When I smiled, a big person grinned back. In no time at all, I discerned a simple and reliable recipe for how life worked:

Expression of Need = Fulfillment of Need Action = Reaction Pleasure = Do That Again Pain = Don't Do That Again

(Continues...)

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