From the Archives: About Bob
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This episode is brought to you by The Hartford, a leading provider of employee benefits and income protection products that is dedicated to standing behind U.S. workers to help them pursue their goals and get through tough times. For more information about The Hartford, visit thehartford.com slash employee benefits. We've also got a link in our show notes. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot,

Shopify helps you do your thing, however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer. Um, how are you? Most people answer that question with fine or...

But obviously it's not always fine, and it's usually not even that good. This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain. To just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life. And guess what? It's complicated.

Hello, it's Nora. It is summertime and the team at Feelings & Co. is not taking a vacation. We are working on the next few months of episodes and planning out the next 12 months of work for our team. So while we're out there finding and producing new stories for you, we are also going to be sharing a few of our older favorites, including this episode. We'll be back with brand new episodes the first week of August, first Tuesday of August, and we are still putting out bonus episodes on our premium feed.

You can get the full archive of Terrible Thanks for Asking and bonus episodes anytime at ttfa.org slash premium. Quick warning that this episode contains strong language. One day, Laura was at work doing what you probably do at work, pretending to work.

Just kidding. Laura was actually working, unlike you. She was typing, emailing, Facebooking. I'm kidding. Laura is, she just seems like a responsible person. She works at a law firm. She would not waste company resources like that. Laura's employer, if you're listening. So Laura was at work and her phone rang, which is something that tends to happen when you're at work, and she ignored it.

because that's what we do when we're working. Got this random voicemail from a woman who says, in this kind of like thick Boston accent, if you're Robert Gracie's daughter, Laura Gracie...

please call me back at MassGen. And I'm like, well, I am that person, so... Do you know at this point what MassGen is? No, no. I mean, I Googled it. It's a hospital. It's just a hospital in Boston. And so I called back from the office, and she basically tells me your dad fell asleep in the snow and has severe frostbite.

And I'm just like, you know, in total shock. Kind of sat there stunned for a minute. Hung up because I told her I'd call her back. I hung up and I just started crying. The shock here was not just that Laura's dad had severe frostbite. Though, yeah, duh, that's very shocking. It's that her dad was alive to get frostbite. When Laura got that phone call, she hadn't seen her dad in several years. She had actually assumed he was dead.

But now, suddenly, in the middle of just a regular workday, he wasn't dead. He was alive and really hurt. Laura pulled herself together and called back. A nurse answered and got her all caught up on what was going on with her not-dead dad, which is that because of the frostbite on his hands and his feet, the doctors needed to figure out whether or not to amputate his hands and feet.

They tell Laura that if they don't amputate... He'll die because he'll get an infection and die, or we amputate it and he'll survive. But, you know, obviously that's devastating because he'll have no hands or feet at this point. So do you think he'd want to live that way? They're asking Laura to make this call for a man that a few hours ago she didn't even know was alive. Let him die or cut off his hands and feet and save his life.

This is one hell of a question, even if you're close to your dad. Even if the two of you have, by chance, happened to discuss hypotheticals exactly like this, or if your dad has a very specific health care directive. Laura has no idea what her dad would want. Would she want to live without hands and feet? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't even know what to do with this. It's so awful.

And I started going to weird places like, how's he going to pee? Who's going to tie his shoes? Yeah. Oh my God, he doesn't need shoes. I'm Nora McNerney, a very observant person. And this is Terrible. Thanks for asking. It's Father's Day or around Father's Day. Whatever day you're listening to this, this is a Father's Day episode.

Even if you don't have a dad or if your dad is dead or kind of a crappy person or if your dad is the best, I just want to give you a little reminder that Father's Day is a made-up holiday and you don't have to do anything if you don't want to. Personally, I have a dead dad, so I'm going to spend the day doing all the things he would never let me do. I'm going to watch MTV, get a tattoo, drink a pop, probably an ice-cold Coca-Cola Classic, which is how he ordered it at restaurants and it always...

Embarrassed me. And now I do that. So, as you can tell, Laura has a complicated dad story. When Laura got that phone call, she was a successful, professional woman just trying to decide if her estranged father should live or die. But this father-daughter story has been complicated for a while. Laura was nine years old when her dad disappeared for the first time.

It wasn't a sudden disappearance either. It was more of a slow fade, like a ghosting, but by a parent instead of a Tinder date. I remember the last gift he sent, it was Christmas time, and he sent me a box of presents in the mail. Laura's mom and dad were divorced, and Laura and her mother had recently moved away from Laura's dad, so they were about six hours apart by car.

And he had been kind of avoiding me. The visitation that I had had, he had canceled a number of times and I just hadn't seen him in a while. So he sent me Christmas gifts in a box and then he was gone. I remember I got her a motorized car, like a little red Ferrari that you could drive around, remote control type thing. Yeah, I do remember that. That's Bob, Laura's dad.

When Bob disappeared and headed out to California, he'd been struggling for some time with alcoholism. My disease had really gotten bad, and I decided to go out west. I'd been out there before, loved it. Thought if I'm going to become homeless, that's the place to do it. You don't do that in Texas. If that's my fate, then I should do it there where the weather's decent. It turned out I wasn't really homeless that much, but some.

Bob didn't end up homeless, at least not right away. He ended up at a Salvation Army out in California and eventually lucked into a job managing an apartment complex. And with a job, Bob's life got more complicated because working while you are an active alcoholic can be very hard to pull off. I hadn't really evolved to the binge thing yet, but I was still drinking pretty much every day.

I'd drink at night and then get up and, you know, be functional as long as I could. And then that caught up with me, and I ended up going into a rehab. I did that a couple of times out there. Bob went to rehab and got sober, but he and Laura didn't reconnect right away. He didn't write to her. He didn't call her. Bob waited nine years. And a lot happens in nine years. I mean...

Middle school, high school, braces if you get them, first job, first kiss, first heartbreak, whatever those nine years hold for Laura, Bob misses out on all of it. Laura had a stepfather in her life, but over those nine years, she'd still wondered about Bob. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he okay? In other words, what about Bob? That's the only time we'll say that in this podcast. It's been a struggle not to.

When Bob was ready to be in touch with Laura, it was hard to find her. And through the smallish town friends of friends, Bob finally tracked down and called Laura's mom.

at work. And so she spoke to him first, probably read him the riot act. I mean, she's an attorney, so she's probably really scary, I imagine, and wanted to vet what his intentions were, I suspect. She allowed him to email me, and that was the very first contact we had. I still have the email.

This is like the late 90s, so email wasn't just popping up on magical rectangles that we keep in our pockets. Email was something that you had to intentionally go get. You had to go check for it, like your regular mail, only with dial-up and a lot of waiting. And in that AOL inbox of hers, along with a bunch of chats from her boyfriends, all of a sudden, out of nowhere...

There's Laura's dad. What?

Does it mean? Bob had been gone for nine years. When he wrote that email, he had no idea what, if any, response he would get from Laura. He was a stranger to her at this point. But Laura did reply. And that initial email eventually led to a phone call. That was the most difficult phone conversation I ever had. I was scared to death. Scared to death.

Because I'd missed all that time with her, and she could have easily just said, you know what, thanks, but no thanks. You know, I'm all set. And I couldn't have blamed her. I couldn't have argued with her about it. I couldn't have said a word. I mean, from an early age, I kind of forgave him. Really because I knew about his alcoholism. I was an only child for a long time, and so...

You become a really intuitive kid when you spend a lot of time around adults because you kind of you're mirroring after other adults instead of other kids. So I knew he was an alcoholic. I don't know that I knew what to call it, but I knew that he had a problem. And my mom was married. She had remarried when I was probably six years old. And so I had a stepfather. So I wasn't completely without like a male figure in the house.

But I just kind of decided that he was doing whatever he needed to do. I was never really angry with him for having a disease. And, you know, she gave me the chance to try to rebuild a relationship with her. And I'll tell you what, I'll never be more grateful in my life for that. I don't know if I'd be here today if it wasn't for her. I can honestly tell you that. So Laura is a better person than most of us, or at least a better person than me.

The phone call helped reestablish a sort of long-distance father-daughter relationship. Laura was starting college, and she decided to take a trip to California with a friend so that she could actually see her dad in real life. He paid for me to come out. I didn't tell my mom. I was afraid I would hurt her feelings, I guess. I don't know. Oh, I was... God, the emotions...

Anxious, incredibly grateful that she agreed to come out. Nervous. I didn't know what she was going to look like. You know, I was hoping she would recognize me, and she did. I remember her coming down the escalator when I went out to pick them up and recognized her instantly. And I hugged, and it was great. We did the tourist things and then went to Disney World and, you know, had a lot of dinners and a lot of time to talk. I can remember it like it happened yesterday.

Just as clear as anything in my life. Now, I was sober also and had been for a few years. I'm sure that had a bearing on how that whole thing went. I mean, I remember him saying, well, I don't have anything here in California for me. Like everything I care about is back in Texas. So that's what I'm going to do. And at the time, I'm like, OK, well, good deal. Come on down. And he did. And it didn't take long.

Well, I had been in contact with a friend of mine that I had known for about 20 years, and she had become one of my best friends. I mean, we just always had this chemistry. Things progressed, and I'd always loved this woman. I always have, as a friend. And now it was different, and I wanted to be with her. So I convinced her that we needed to be together, and I quit my job and sold everything that I owned and flew back and moved in.

I had been sober for over four years when I moved back, thinking that I could just continue my sobriety when I got here. What I didn't know is I was moving in with a woman who was an alcoholic. I knew she drank some, but I didn't know that she drank every day. Like, you know, some alcoholics do. So you thought you were going to move there, have like this marriage you'd been dreaming about, be closer to your daughter, and instead you get there and

You get married, and when do you start to realize that things are not what they seem? Within about six months. But again, I'm thinking, you know, I can handle this. I can handle this. I did everything wrong that you're supposed to. As a recovering alcoholic, they tell you, you know, don't do these three things. Don't move, get into a relationship, change your job. And I did all three on the same day, which...

That was just a recipe for disaster. And it turned out to be exactly that. You just read the advice wrong. You were like, I thought it said do these three things. Okay. Maybe the pamphlet wasn't clear enough. Okay. Yeah, that could very well be. Well, I ignored it either way. I was in love and I ignored it and thought I could, you know, I thought I could handle it, you know, on my own and

Yeah, love is dumb. It's so wonderful. And blind. And blind. Love will ruin everything or make it better. You never know. Yeah, well, I was hoping for better. I'd been really lonely out in California. I hadn't been in a relationship in many years out there. And I thought, oh, well, here's maybe my last chance, you know, a real meaningful, loving relationship. So that probably blinded me, too.

Bob was finally back in Texas, finally had his daughter back in his life, and finally was sober. And this is the recipe for happiness or for the opposite of that. He's the kind of alcoholic, he would say that, like, the smell of it would trigger him. And he would go from

zero to like 60. He couldn't just have a sip or have a drink. He would drink to being blacked out or he would drink to being nearly blacked out. So there was no middle ground. It's not one of these like functioning alcoholics. It was just like, I'm going to drink this whole bottle of vodka because that sounds great, like a great idea. The smell of alcohol is a trigger for Bob and living with an active drinker in an unhappy marriage, Bob did smell alcohol. Quite

quite a lot. And he told his wife that he thought he had a way to help their marriage survive. I just flat out told her, I said, if we're going to maintain this relationship, then I'm going to have to drink too. I think I can handle it. And she unbelievably said, that's fine with me. I think at that point she wanted a drinking buddy.

So that's where it started. Again, you know, a couple of drinks at night. Do you remember your first drink? Yes, absolutely. Clear as a bell. It was Doer's Scotch. I remember going to the store to buy it. I remember bringing it in, getting the glass, putting an ice cube in it. Yep, I remember it clear as a bell. The first taste, the first feeling of the alcohol in my system was...

and remembering thinking, yeah, that's what I remember. And still thinking it's going to be okay. How did you know that things had gone bad for your dad again? The last time I saw him, he just didn't look good. And he kind of started to isolate himself. It was funny. It was like reliving my childhood in a way. I remember when I was younger and he would cancel.

Or he'd make up excuses. I threw out my bag. I'm like, hey, I have to do something. He always had an excuse. And so it was kind of a similar thing. So the last time I saw him, he had bought me a Christmas present and he wanted me to come over and get it. And it was a tea kettle.

which I still have, which I now don't use because after he disappeared, I was like, it's the only thing I have left from our relationship. So I just like stopped using it and put it in like some weird place. Like he gave me the gift and he just, he had like glassy eyes. He just didn't look well. And I didn't have the courage. It's kind of one of my regrets. I didn't have the courage to say like, what's happening. You know, when I was nine, I didn't really know what was happening. And as an adult, I did. And I,

I have a lot of regret for not going. Are you drinking again? Do you need help? Like, what's going on? I just, a couple days later, I find out he's on his way to California. And that's when he was gone again. And just like that, Bob handed his daughter a parting gift and disappeared again. I don't remember a tea kettle. No, I don't. Bob went back to California, back to his old life, but it wasn't the same.

After about a year of living and working at the Salvation Army and not talking with his daughter, Bob decided to pick up and move again. So I got to ask, why Boston? You're not going to believe me if I told you. The weather, believe it or not. Okay, this calls over. The weather? One of the reasons I'd been to Boston a few times on trips, just really loved it. I love the people, love the food.

Plus, good sports town. I'm a sports guy, so it's a good sports town. But growing up in Texas and living the other half of my life or part of it in California, I never experienced real seasons. Yeah. I wanted to experience real winter because I love cold weather. I love the winter. Love fall. Love spring. And I thought, you know, I can live anywhere I want. And I selfishly just decided to move there.

But Bob didn't expect Boston to be quite as expensive as it is. And he quickly found himself homeless in that cold weather that he was looking forward to experiencing. He was a good cook, so another Salvation Army took him in and he lived there for the next year, struggling again with his sobriety and still not having any contact with Laura, who still thought that he might be in California. And the next February, he was losing that struggle.

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Okay, so we're back. Okay, if you've ever lived somewhere cold, you know you have these sort of winter fake-out days where you wake up, you think it's kind of warm, maybe you're getting a little break from just the brutality of living in a near-Arctic tundra. Boston's like this, Minneapolis is like this. There's plenty of places where people choose to live in this, but you wake up, you think it's kind of warmish. On a day like this,

Bob started drinking early in the afternoon. It was unseasonably warm for winter in Boston. At least when I started out. And then it got really cold. And I wasn't prepared for it. I didn't have gloves. I had shoes I thought were good shoes. And I passed out. I thought I passed out on a bus stop bench. That's where I remember being. And coming to and realizing I'm in serious trouble. My hands...

are now in two fists about the size each of grapefruits and hard as a table. And he said they clacked like ice cubes. They just clacked together. And some people were walking by, and I asked them to call 911. And they did. And this I will never forget. The ambulance driver got out and walked up and said, What can I do for you? And I said, My hands are frozen. And he looked at them, and I held one out to him, and he touched it.

and pulled back, like, and said, "Oh my God." I guess he'd never seen anything quite like it. I don't remember anything again until they brought me out of a coma. I think I talked to the doctor later on in the afternoon, and that's when I kind of got a better lay of his medical landscape. And I remember going to sleep, waking up, and having a follow-up conversation sometime the next day.

At the time, I just thought, I can't make this decision for him. I had no idea, and I basically told the doctor, well, you need to wake him up and ask him because I'm not prepared to make that decision. And that's when things got real. I remember coming out of the coma. I have no idea how much time has passed, but it had been about three days. Evidently, when you have frostbite, the thawing out part,

It is so painful it can kill you. So they put you in a drug-induced coma so you don't have to feel that. And I remember coming out of it and looking at my hand and I could move it. I'm thinking, oh, wow, I've thawed out. And there was a doctor sitting in a chair at the end of the bed. And he said, do you know what's happened? And I said, yeah, I have a vague idea. My hands got frozen. He said, it's more than that. Both your hands and both of your feet have been severely frostbite. And he said, you have two choices right now.

You can do nothing and in about three days you'll die. Or we can amputate both hands and both feet and you might survive. So in the end, Bob made the call and the doctors performed the amputation of both hands and both feet.

I, you know, the like really stoic, horrible side of my personality says you did this to yourself. You have to live with the consequences and you need to figure out how you chose to live and you're going to have to figure out how to do that. And I'll be here like if you need me, but I'm not going to like figure out your life for you. She talks pretty tough, but.

Laura still grabbed the only reasonably warm coat she had, jumped on a plane, and got to the hospital right after the surgery. So this trip, this is the first time Laura had even seen her father since the day when he glassy-eyed handed her a tea kettle and then secretly moved to California a few years earlier. I mean, he just looked sad and kind of bloated and...

I mean, my dad's kind of a he's a funny guy and he he cracks jokes. So he was immediately like trying to make the situation light. He started telling me these like horrible jokes that are like, what do you call a man with no arms and legs in a swimming pool? Bob. And I'm like, OK, that's funny. And your name's Bob. Holy shit. Look, they can take your hands. They can take your feet.

But they cannot surgically remove your dad jokes. Remember that? I mean, it was pretty intense to see because I had to clean the stumps periodically. And I remember him describing it as being extremely painful. It's very, very painful. But Bob has moved to a nursing home where he is given amazing physical therapy that

made this new life seem livable? I remember the first time I stood up on prosthetics and literally I broke down in tears because it was not something I thought I would be able to do, stand for one thing and then actually walk. It was amazing. So what do, because you were amputated right below the ankle, correct? No, just about halfway down the shin. Okay, so what do your prosthetics look like? Carbon fiber prosthetics.

With titanium, they have, I don't know if you remember the sprinter that had the, they look like sleds. Oh, yeah. But these are a lot shorter. I have a little rubber foot that goes over that and then shoes on top of that. So if I'm wearing long pants, no one knows.

Even the way I walk, I walk as normal as anybody else. Yeah. Does that kind of feel cool, like you have a superhero secret? Kind of, because if it's cool and I'm wearing a jacket and I have my arms in my jacket pockets, no one knows anything about my disability. People that ask me, what is it like to try to do things without hands? And I tell them, okay, make two fists when you first get up in the morning. When you first wake up, make two fists.

Act like they've been taped down with duct tape and then go about your day. Imagine every single thing that you would do. Brush your teeth, comb your hair, put on makeup, take a shower, get dressed, eat. All those little things. But you cannot unclench your fists. Then try to imagine doing that without feet. If right now you are currently making fists with your hands and trying to see how you would do basic things, join the club. I'm the president, Hans' VP.

I'm truly imagining this right now. Like, I'm going through my morning. I'm like, how would I crack an egg? You'd figure it out. Yeah. I did. How do you crack an egg? Well, you manage to pick it up from, like, either end. And just like you would, it gets messy. It takes a little longer to do everything. Everything's a little bit messier. I drop stuff a lot, which is really aggravating. But you figure it out. There's very little I can't do now.

Bob continued to build skills like this at the nursing home, where he was sober by default mainly. They don't have a bar at the nursing home, and he had no way of going anywhere. But it is sobriety still, and he was doing so well maybe. Did you ever get a sense of how your dad really felt about his current situation? Not at the time. We didn't come to terms with his alcoholism.

Like, he told me his recollection of events. He was very, very calculating and not really talking about what led to him being in the snow. Before you woke up from your coma, when was the last time that you and Laura had spoken? I honestly couldn't tell you that. It was in California, I think. I'm pretty sure. I called her from out there. But then when I moved to Boston, I didn't call. I was ashamed.

I was again afraid that this was it. She would rightfully say, you know what, I'm done. And I was afraid that that would happen. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

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Most of us know what it's like to fear that we've used up all our goodwill with the people we love, or that we've worn out our welcome or are dangerously close to doing so. And most of us haven't even lived half as hard as Bob has. It's not an unfounded fear except that...

Except that, okay, I have a couple of theories about love, and one of them at least seems to be reinforced over and over by the stories we get here at TTFA. And that theory is this one: that none of us parents deserve the love we get from our kids. None of us. Me included. Our kids love us way more deeply than we deserve. They give us more chances than they should.

Our kids see the best in us, even when the rest of the world needs to squint really hard and use a magnifying glass just to see even a smidge of good in us. And it's not like Laura always sees the best in Bob, but she does see Bob. I mean, to me, it's just, it's sad. Sad for me, but sad for him. Like, alcoholism's a really brutal thing. And I remember my dad crying.

warning me when he came back the first time when I went to go see him in California. He was like, it's genetic. It's you have to watch out, like be careful and like don't let it take over your life. And this is how I react to alcohol. It's like he wanted me to be okay, which, you know, on some level, I think that's kind of why he disappeared. I think he knew he wasn't okay. And I think for a long, a long time, that's why I was okay with him having not been around because

because I know that he wouldn't have been the dad that I needed him to be. He would have been this, like, grossly dysfunctional alcoholic who knows what he would have done or what influence he would have had. So I don't really fault him for making those decisions. It's just, for me, it's sad and bittersweet because I think of what could have been if this hadn't taken control of his life. Does that not reinforce my theory that

Like, our kids, right? Our kids will show up for us even when we do not deserve it, even when we are afraid and ashamed, even if we're unrepentant, even if they're exhausted by us. They show up. As much as I was willing to be there and, like, wanted him to know that I cared about him and wanted to know that he was okay, a part of me was like, you're my dad.

I shouldn't have to take care of you. Like, I'm 26 years old. I'm trying to, like, find my place in this universe and have a job and have friends and be in a relationship and have all of the things that I'm supposed to have. And I remember being afraid that he would want to come back because I remember thinking, like, I can't deal with this.

Bob didn't want to come back to Texas. He wanted to stay in Boston. He found another place to stay, and he moved out of the nursing home, and Laura went back to Texas. Now, nothing says you've hit rock bottom and the only place to go is up, like having your hands and feet frozen while you're in a drunken stupor. But it turns out, up is not the only place to go. Bob can still go totally sideways.

About five years after the incident, Bob and Laura's relationship was still mostly long distance. Since he lost his hands and feet, she had even gone to see him a few times. In February, when she was back at work, her phone rang again. Like a 617 number. And I know that's Boston, but it's not coming up as my dad, so it's like a different Boston number. And immediately, like, my heart sinks because I'm like...

Somebody who's calling me from Boston that isn't my dad, it's about my dad, but it's not him, so it can't be good. Like, immediately I'm like, this is bad. So I, like, answer the phone, and they're like, your dad's had an incident. He's at the burn unit. He was trying to light a cigarette, and he set his hair on fire. And he's got, like, second-degree burns on his scalp. And he's okay, but we just wanted to let you know because you're his, like, next of kin on the contact card.

And I immediately thought, how is he trying to light it? Like, what was he doing? So Laura chalked that lighter burn up to bad luck. Things are hard for her dad. Accidents happen. Bob had started to do that slow ghosting he did when Laura was nine. His phone calls were fewer and further between, but...

Aside from the fact that he lit himself on fire, Laura didn't really think she had to worry about him. I mean, he had a place to live. Someone must be watching over him. But then there's another phone call about eight months later. I was on my first international business trip and I'm in London and I'm walking down the street and I get a 617 call again. And I'm like...

So I answer it, and it's the director of this place where he's living. And she's like, I just want to let you know that your dad has had an incident. He came downstairs naked and drunk, and he urinated all over the common area, and we're going to evict him. And I'm like, well, how long has this been going on? And she proceeded to divulge that, well, it's been an ongoing issue, and...

He'd been panhandling for money to go buy alcohol with and had been drinking for like an indeterminate amount of time. Okay, but I mean, how? Well, remember when Bob said he could do anything without hands?

He meant it. He told us he can open a brand new DVD case with all that plastic on it. I have two hands, ten fingers, struggle with that. So Bob's impressive. He can open a DVD. He can light his hair on fire. He could get alcohol and get a lot of alcohol. And even though Bob does disagree with the specifics of the story that Laura was told by the person who managed the place he was living...

Bob does not dispute that he had started drinking again, heavily. I had quite a bit of freedom to get around that area of town. And there was a liquor store down the street, and I thought, you know, what the heck? I remember buying it, I remember drinking it, I remember feeling like an idiot because I'd done it, and feeling shameful and guilty and all those emotions that come with that. Did you feel like you had sort of crossed paths?

a line that you couldn't go back from? Or did you feel like, oh, it's just this one time? No, well, that's never the way it feels the first time after a relapse. It's always, yeah, I'm just going to this time, and then I'm done. And, you know, it may be another week before I do it again. But eventually, over the course of time, it just becomes the habit where you kind of need it every day. And that's when the real misery begins.

By the time Laura's phone rang in London, Bob was deep into the misery of his disease. And for many reasons, he couldn't keep living where he was living. So he called the nursing home he was first in when he was learning how to use his new prosthetics, and they happened to have a bed. And he took it. So Bob is sober now. I mean, it's a requirement for living in his nursing home, and it's a different living environment, but still...

There's no alcohol, and no alcohol around means no temptation, means no drinking, duh. It means that Bob can just be. And it turns out, Bob is actually a really interesting person. Also another perk of that place, one of the reasons I moved there is because they have built-in Wi-Fi, and I have a laptop and a smart TV, so that allows me internet access 24-7. And I literally, on any given day, read six to eight hours a day.

about just anything. That sounds like heaven. It really does. Rarely watch television. I mean, I watch sports. I like sports. So I watch baseball when it's on. Which can take eight hours. Yeah, that's true. Just a little baseball humor for you. Yeah. But I don't sleep a lot either. I sleep four or five hours a day. So I'm up a lot. And most of it's reading. I mean, I just started a new project where I'm going to read the history of every country on the planet for the last thousand years.

and then try to connect them all and see how they all work within each other. Laura still lives in Texas, and she and Bob still have their long-distance relationship. Skype calls, Facebook Messenger, photos sent back and forth, and one day last fall, they get on Skype. All right, can you hear me now? Yeah, I can see you too. Okay.

So I'm gonna send you an email because I was gonna show this to you, but I'll just send you this email first Okay, wait a minute. No, okay. There it is. Okay. Is this what I think it means? What do you think it means? Does this mean you're having a baby? Yes. Yes it does. Oh my god. Congratulations.

You know who we also don't deserve? Our grandchildren. I don't even have any yet, but I know I don't deserve them. And that baby of Laura's is also going to love Bob unconditionally. Because babies are magical. They have this innate ability to bring to the surface all the best feelings a family can have. Love and support and excitement. Just pure anticipation. And with that...

They also help to surface the less pleasant things in a family, too. Our anxieties, resentments, our worries. I mean, I worry about how often he'll see his grandchild. I struggle with, like, going up there. It's really hard emotionally for me to go. It's hard just to be there in general. Because of all of the things that have happened to him, when I'm there, he wants to project as much normality as he can.

It's just a lot, and I worry. Like, the times I've gone, it's been in the wintertime, and it's, like, slippery, and I'm, like, constantly, like, I'm going to catch him if he falls. Like, it's, like, stressful. And I'm sure he's going to, like, hate hearing that. But I find myself, like, avoiding going. And today, right now, I haven't been there in several years, and I've just been avoiding it because I was mad at him. I was...

Not sure, like, I just wasn't sure how to deal with it. Would you consider yourself close to your dad? No. Do you want to be? I mean, I think yes, but then I don't know if I ever will be. It sucks because I feel like he isolated himself from me for so long that now that he's here, I don't know how to be his daughter. And I do things out of guilt, and then I feel guilty that I'm doing things out of guilt.

But it's like, it's just a lot for me to take in. Like, I don't feel like I have a bad relationship with him. It's just a very different relationship. I probably make it harder than it needs to be in my head. But I think it's going to take a long time for me to get to a place where I'm like seeking out his like company because he just wasn't there for so long. I got used to just...

pretending like he wasn't a real person. Laura's dad is a real person. And unfortunately, real people are often real people. Like, we're all real people who really, really mess up. And to me, this is what it's all about. It's that

Bob wants to be worthy of this unconditional love that Laura gives him. And Laura wants for her dad to be worth it. And they are both trying to protect themselves and protect each other from the reality of the situation, which is that Bob's disease, alcoholism, hurt him and hurt Laura. And knowing that he hurt his daughter hurts Bob. And Laura knowing that her dad knows he hurt her hurts

hurts her to plagiarize something I wrote somewhere. We are all just a bunch of feelings and skin suits doing our best impression of capable and okay grownups. As a person who has parents, I really don't know if there's anything more shocking than the realization that your parents are just people. Like, how disappointing. Especially when the myth of the ideal father, at least for people of my age, senior millennials...

is that a father is stalwart and steadfast, that he does not know how to change a diaper, but he knows how to change your oil. My dad did not know how to change my oil. He knew how to pay someone to change my oil. Dads are hardly ever expected to be emotionally available or emotionally competent, but they are expected to just...

keep their shit together. That's problematic for a lot of reasons, but I'm just naming what I see out in the world. I mean, there are far more mugs that say number one dad than there are actual number one dads. Bob is sober now. Last time we talked, at least he's a grandfather. He hasn't yet met his granddaughter, but he's seen her through photos and Facebook and someday he does want to go to Texas to meet her.

Or maybe Laura will bring the baby to Boston. Maybe Bob will become the kind of father Laura wanted. Or maybe he'll just be Bob and that'll be okay too.

I'm Nora McInerney, and this has been Terrible. Thanks for asking. You can find our show at ttfa.org. We are a production of Feelings & Co., an independent podcast production company. Our team is myself, Marcel Malakibu, Jordan Turgeon, Megan Palmer, and Claire McInerney. Our theme music is by Joffrey Lamar Wilson.

Our supporting producers are Kim Morris and Bethany Nickerson. Supporting producers are listeners who support us at the highest level at TTFAPremium, our paid subscription platform. We are so grateful for all of your support. Listening to the show is, of course, supporting it. You can learn more and sign up at ttfa.org slash premium.

Hey everyone, this is Megan. I'm one of the producers for Terrible Thanks for Asking. And you just listened to our archival episode about Bob. If you want to hear the update episode on Laura, Bob, the whole family, that episode is called About Laura. And it is available over on TTFA Premium. Once you're subscribed, if you're already subscribed, scroll back to June 14th, 2022 in your feed or search by the episode name About Laura.

You can always get in touch with us by calling 612-568-4441 or emailing us terrible at feelings and we are working on new episodes right now. And if you have an episode idea for us, reach out, send us an email, call us or go to ttfa.org and submit your story idea.

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