CAPSTONE FINISHED

We had just sprung him from a hospital, and
he was smiling and laughing in between
trips to the bathroom. We knew that meant
he was throwing up. Still, there were a few
brief moments where he would erupt into his
deep belly laugh, and for a split-second, we
could almost convince ourselves that
everything was going to be okay.

When my father died seven months
after that last Thanksgiving dinner, just
weeks after we returned from the
Saddlebrook Resort, I was in disbelief. I
should not have been so surprised, but I was.
On some level, I had to have seen this
moment coming. Leading up to the months
where my father died, I frequently had quite
vivid dreams of his death and his funeral. I
shook them off as nothing more than a
nightmare of a monster in my closet or a
ghost under my bed: purely fictional. After
the initial shock, a state of rage took over. It
consumed me. I was angry at my father; I
might still be.

My father only once told me about my
great grandfather, Max, and it was to tell me
that he died a week before my grandfather's
Bar Mitzvah. My grandfather was so angry,
he refused to attend his own Bar Mitzvah. I
now understood his anger. I now could feel
his rage. Then, my grandfather went on to
die right when my father was about to start

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college. Now here I was, living the same
cycle: the cycle of fatherlessness. I was
starting my first week of driver’s education—
a rite of passage for an adolescent, just like a
Bar Mitzvah or starting college— and I, too,
would do it without a father. They all knew
this pain. They had all felt it. Yet, they all
passed it down onto their children. My father
knew what it was like to lose a father at a
young age, and he still let that pain be
inflicted on me.

According to my ancestry.com

account my father only has five direct, living
relatives. My quest into the depths of the
internet and creation of an online family tree
was some desperate attempt to figure out
who my father was and who I am. The idea
that this website would be able to connect
me to people who share the same DNA that
my father had distracted me from my rage.
But, ancestry.com confirmed the
disappointment that I already knew on some
level to be true. Nearly all of my father’s
relatives are dead. His direct, living relatives
consist of my two brothers, myself, and my
father’s two siblings. His brother recently
underwent a kidney transplant, because he,
too, has ADPKD. His sister has long been
estranged since his funeral. Neither of them
are married and neither ever had any

196

children.
It is kind of a scary thought that if

neither my brothers nor myself choose to
have children and risk potentially passing on
a genetic mutation, the Fox family lineage
will die out with the three of us. We have
this power that we did not ask for, that I
certainly do not want.

I found my father’s brother on
Facebook. My uncle still lives in Burlington,
Vermont in the house he shared with his
mother up until she died eight years ago. I
met my grandmother a few times, but she
suffered a stroke shortly after I was born and
was never able to walk or talk, as far as I can
remember. My uncle is a quiet man; he
works sorting mail at the post office. My dad
took me out to see him once, and he came to
see us once. When I found his Facebook
page, I had a hope that we would reconnect
and give me whatever information it was
that I was searching for.

I should not have been surprised that
my uncle only responded after I relentlessly
messaged him over the course of several
weeks, and that when he did respond, he
provided very minimal information about
my grandfather and great grandfather. Our
family is not exactly the sentimental type,
nor the type that feels comfortable talking
about the dead. He offered up a little

197

information about my grandfather, but
mostly the same few details that my dad had
already told me. He added at the end of his
message that my grandfather and father
liked golfing together.

My dad bought me my first set of golf
clubs when I was about 8, and he would
frequently take me to the driving range
down the road from our house on the
weekends. Once he became too weak to hit
golf balls himself, he would watch me from
his car, and I would run back and forth from
the tee to his rolled down window to get his
approval on my swing. I would always ask
him to come hit with me, but he would tell
me he preferred watching. I wondered why
he even came with if he did not want to play.
I can imagine now that he was trying to
recreate the memories he made with his
father for me to hang onto the way he had
for all of those years.

My uncle knew almost nothing about
my great grandfather, Max, other than where
he came from, when he died, and how he
died. It was not a lot of information to go off
of, but it proved to be enough. There was a
plethora of information about my relatives
now at my fingertips thanks to the internet.
For just a brief moment, I felt lucky to be able
to find out all this information about Max
that my father never even knew himself.

198

My great grandfather, Max Fox, came
to America on the South Hampton Manifest
Line #: 0010. He left Russia just as World
War I began. The Russian government was
amidst its monumental collapse and there
was a lot of hostility toward Jews across
Eastern Europe. Anti-Semitism was running
rampant and the anti-communist pogroms in
Russia took the lives of many Jews. I imagine
Max was quite scared for the safety of his
family as Jews living in Russia at the time of
the pogroms. He was just one of 1,370 people
who came over on a ship from Russia called
the Saint Paul. I imagine they were all scared.
From what I understand, he barely spoke
English, and was forced to change his name
from “Fuchs” to “Fox” and assimilate into
American culture.

Max started a family in the Bronx in
1914 with the birth of his first son Abraham.
It is likely he did not even know he carried a
genetic disease. The first time Autosomal
Dominant Kidney Disease was named in a
medical journal was 1918, more than 20 years
after Max was born and 4 years after the
birth of his first son. In all honesty, it was
never confirmed that Max had ADPKD. The
type of technology needed to confirm a case
of it did not exist yet. My family drew the
conclusion that he died of ADPKD, because
he died of kidney failure at a hospital in the

199

Bronx. When my grandfather had a
confirmed diagnosis, it was reasonable to say
his father had it too, considering it is genetic.
With my father and I now also receiving
confirmed diagnosis of ADPKD, there is little
doubt in my mind about how Max died. But,
I imagine Max had no idea. He could not
have known why he prematurely went into
kidney failure. He must have been scared.

Maybe my father had the blind
optimism that there would be a great
medical advance during his lifetime that
would spare him. And he was almost right.
Nearly thirty years after my grandfather
died on the operating table, my father was
lucky enough to have a successful kidney
transplant. But, receiving a foreign organ is
still a lot for the human body to handle and
often causes complicated autoimmune
reactions. In my dad’s case, it is believed to
have caused an inflammatory disease called
Sarcoidosis. My dad was the first person in
three generations of men with ADPKD to not
officially die of kidney failure. It almost gives
me the kind of blind optimism that he
probably had. I see a lot of the same doctors
that my dad did. They tell me, “by the time
you need a new kidney, we will be 3-D
printing them and growing them in petri
dishes.” I imagine they told my father that
same thing. It is like how each generation

200

believes the next will have flying cars and
hoverboards.

Disease is usually unpredictable;
nobody expects to be plagued with cancer.
But, our disease is predictable. I know that I
have it, and I know that my children would
have a good chance of having it too. My
brothers have never been tested for the
disease, because they have not developed
any symptoms or signs. The cycle of
fatherlessness may very well be over, but
when one cycle ends, another one begins. I
hope it will not be the cycle of
motherlessness.

There is a 50% chance that a person
with ADPKD will pass it on to their child. If I
choose to have children, each one will be up
against a coin toss: heads and she gets a life
no more painful than anyone else, or tails
and a new cycle begins, one she might resent
me for starting. It is a considerable risk to
take when the odds are hardly in my favor. I
wonder if the risk was worth it to my father.
I think if I would have asked him right
before he died if it was all worth it, he would
have said yes. But, when I asked myself that
question the morning that he died, as I stood
in front of my mirror trying to look into my
own soul, trying to make meaning out of my
unsubsiding anger, I was not sure it was all
worth it. When I looked down at the floor,

201

unable to bear my own reflection, I saw the
scattered photos that I had ripped out of the
albums. I saw my father and I laughing,
smiling, playing catch, celebrating birthdays
and holidays, and I had a small glimpse into
his selfishness. Maybe I even understood it.

I thought of my father, my
grandfather, and my great grandfather and I
thought of what a different place the world
would be without their existence. The Fox
family is a long line of hard-working people.
People who served this country. People who
worked to shape public policy. People who
took risks. People who may have offered this
world more love and compassion than this
world offered them. Maybe my father
thought that was all worth more than a
microscopic gene mutation.

Works Consulted
Ancestry®. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2016.
www.ancestry.com

"Burlington, Vermont Early 20th-century
Postcard Views." Burlington, Vermont. The
University of Vermont Library Archives, n.d.
Web. 7 Oct. 2016.

De Almeida and, Edgar A. F., and M.
Martins Prada. "Edgar A. F. De Almeida."
First Description of Polycystic Kidney Disease in
a Portuguese Journal. Oxford Journals, 6

202

Feb. 2008. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.
"Google Street View – Explore Natural
Wonders and World Landmarks." Google
Street View. Nap., n.d. Web. 7 Oct. 2016.
The Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island. N.p., n.d.
Web. 1 Oct.
2016.www.libertyellisfoundation.org/

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Biographies

Zoe Lis is a junior from Bloomfield Hills,
Michigan. She is majoring in English and
minoring in Crime and Justice at the University
of Michigan.

Eun Young Park is a junior at the University of
Michigan where she studies Sociology and
Philosophy. She is originally from San Jose,
California, and is currently working on her first
full-length writing project.

Olivia Sherman is a junior at the University of
Findlay. She majors in Marketing and
Advertising and is also on the Women’s Lacrosse
team.

Monica Smolinski is a sophomore in the
undergraduate School of Public Health program.
She is originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Her writing experience includes creative
nonfiction, profane poetry, and the occasional
rambling journal entry.

Katrina Soyangco is currently a junior studying
Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience
(BCN) at the University of Michigan. She is also
pursuing a minor in writing through the
university’s Sweetland Center for Writing. She
hopes to become a physician and write articles
about medicine for the public.

204

Nicholas Yoo is a junior from Grosse Pointe,
Michigan majoring in chemical engineering at
the University of Michigan. He missed writing as
an engineering major, so he enrolled in a creative
nonfiction class and found it was his favorite
class so far.

Jessica Todsen is from Tucson, AZ and is
currently a junior studying Chemical
Engineering at the University of Michigan.
Taking a Creative Nonfiction class with her
teacher Mr. Hinken exposed her to the joys of the
genre and gave her the opportunity to explore
aspects of her life from different perspectives

Lauren Weiss is a sophomore at the University
of Michigan who is originally from Philadelphia.
She majors in Cellular & Molecular Biology and
with a minor in Writing. She likes spending time
outside reading Saeed Jones, Kurt Vonnegut, and
Virginia Woolf

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