Lawrence Everett Forbes stood in the center of his parents' Valley Stream, Long Island, living room, heatedly yelling at his 90-year-old West Indian father — a U.S. veteran with advanced Alzheimer's-related dementia — and wondered how they had regressed to this familiar, hostile place.
Looking back, Forbes, now 54, admits he should have known better. A Black, queer man who recently moved back from California to help care for his father, who also has severe hearing loss, he had read up on caretaking for someone suffering the disease known as "the long goodbye." He knew you aren't supposed to contradict them, and certainly not manhandle them. Yet that was precisely what he had done.
Forbes' mother, the primary caregiver for his father, had left the house to run errands without his dad, which sent him into an anxiety spiral. As a result, his father transformed into what Forbes calls "Bizarro Daddy" — his alter ego, quiet, cantankerous, and manic whenever something is amiss.
A Moment of Crisis
Forbes felt like he was walking on bubble wrap whenever that version of his dad was around. His own temper overtook him after he learned his father had escaped from the house. He raced through the open front door and found him standing undressed on the porch steps.
"What the hell are you doing out here, Dad? Where are your pants?" Forbes asked.
"I don't know," his father replied.
"OK, well, we have to go back inside."
"No!"
"'No!' is not an option, Daddy!"
Then Forbes did what the books and experts say never to do: he ruptured his father's dementia bubble by wrapping his fingers around his shoulders and firmly shoving him back into the house. His frustration at having lost track of him left him panicked by the thought of losing him. However, his father did not see it that way. Instead, he exploded into an expletive-filled rage. Forbes had never in his 54 years heard his father drop an f-bomb — not even when he was with his buddies at the racetrack. The anger being directed at him suddenly triggered long-forgotten post-traumatic angst.
A Traumatic Memory
It was autumn 1984, and Forbes had been speaking with his cousins upstairs when his father appeared in the doorway. The rage in his eyes made it clear something was very wrong.
"Boy, didn't you hear me calling you?" his father asked.
"No, Daddy, I — "
He struck Forbes in the face, grabbed him by the collar, dragged him down the stairs to their apartment, and continued to beat him with words like "fool," "lying," and "ridiculous" — all because Forbes had not heard him call.
The rest of that traumatic conversation lay tucked far away in the recesses of his psyche. Left with no other choice, Forbes drifted away to the safe, psychic space 13-year-olds inhabit when their parents rebuke them. Just like that, the boundaries separating the years between when he was 13 and 54 shattered. Everything around him was that night and that staircase.
Confronting the Past
Beneath decades of forgiveness lay untamed rage. Forbes cursed back at his father, and before long, they were face-to-face, with Forbes full-blown yelling about the way his father was talking to him. However, instead of arguing his case, his father responded by parroting his every word, like a child might do. For his protection — and his own — Forbes locked the doors and retreated to his bedroom.
He bit into a tab of Klonopin from his emergency stash, then sat down in the middle of his childhood bedroom — recently replaced Janet Jackson posters and Marvel comic books with his own abstract paintings — and closed his eyes to recenter himself.
His father no longer had access to his right mind, so it was Forbes who needed to adjust. He had not practiced meditation in years, yet there he was, leaning into the rhythm of his own adrenalized breathing and humming in an attempt to self-soothe. Before long, numbness crept in from the corners of his consciousness, saturated his center, and diluted his anger enough for him to face his father.
A History of Discord
The night when his dad dragged him home from his cousins' house marked one of the lowest moments in their relationship and set off an era of deep discord. Gone was the daddy who tucked him in with bedtime stories, took his side over his mom's, and let him stay home from school when he faked being sick. Instead of apologizing for his brutality, his father badgered him about getting into college. Forbes couldn't have cared less: he was being molested by a family member, and rather than turn to his father for help, he kept his shame to himself and turned inward toward artistic self-expression and the safety of solitude.
Once in high school, they barely spoke. His father was frustrated with his grades, and Forbes was busy struggling with his sexuality. After he came out in college, his father would say something insensitive about his fine-art major or homoerotic self-portraiture, and Forbes would do something provocative like register with the Republican Party. After he told his mom what the family member had done to him and she relayed it to his father, his father raged to her but said little to him about it. Exasperated, Forbes moved to San Francisco to escape.
A Letter of Apology
About a month after he moved westward, Forbes received a letter from his father. In it, his father apologized for his role in their estrangement: "To put things honestly, I stayed on your case, because I wanted the best for you." For the first time in his life, his father opened up about his stormy relationship with his own womanizing father and revealed his deep scar tissue. Tears streamed down Forbes' face as he read the letter in Alta Vista Park. His father followed up with an hourlong long-distance call, in which he apologized for not protecting him from his abusive family member and for not being more supportive.
When Forbes made his first trip home that year, his father actually hugged him — both when he arrived and when he dropped him off at the airport. He even said, "I love you."
Finding Peace
That was 30 years ago, and their relationship over the past three decades has been as bounteous as the mango tree in his aunt's front yard in Saint Vincent. They sat under it during a homeland pilgrimage in 1999 and ate the sweet fruit with their bare hands until their bellies distended. However, as Forbes descended the stairs to check in on his 94-year-old father, he worried those years of goodwill would mean nothing to the man he lived with now.
His father was sleeping on the couch in pajama pants when Forbes found him in the living room. His need for around-the-clock care had kept Forbes up until 4 a.m., when his bartender brother came home from work and took over. Between the three of them, there was always someone to keep him from fleeing — something he had attempted several times prior. But Forbes had to figure out a way to get through his tantrums without traumatizing either of them.
It was then that it hit him: it was completely unfair that their parents should require more grace than they had been given.
"Lawrence," his father grunted groggily.
"Yes, Dad?"
"You OK?"
"Yeah. How about you?"
"I don't know."
And just like that, their big fight was a memory that only Forbes had to live with. His father didn't remember what happened, and Forbes didn't see the point in bringing it back up. This left them free to start anew yet again.
Conclusion
Forbes and his father share a complicated past, but what defines them most is the progress they've made in the years since their contentious era. Far too many of Forbes' male (heterosexual and LGBTQ) friends still suffer from unresolved paternal trauma, so he's grateful for the hard-won healing he and his father have achieved. It's their reward for growing closer together instead of further apart over the decades.
Seeing his father so frail and vulnerable is truly devastating, because he is the first man Forbes ever loved — and the first man whose love ever mattered. He cannot imagine being anywhere else but by his side at this point, when he needs him most. It feels like both the least and best he can do to grant him the end-of-life dignity he deserves. "I won't always get it right, but I will always keep showing up for him and the people I love. My father taught me that," Forbes says.
Lawrence Everett Forbes is a 2025 Lambda Literary fellow working on a father-son memoir.
