Month: November 2016

Sunday I drove and I drove hoping to make it to my father’s bedside in time. Time to say goodbye. Time to say I love you. Everything had gone downhill again so fast. There was no time.

Monday dad sat in the living room eating a sandwich and some popcorn. I sit beside him joking as we do, slack jawed. I’m watching a lie. A promise that won’t be kept. How can I trust it? How can I treat this man in front of me like my dad when just yesterday his body was failing. I hate this.

I joke with him. I tell stories. He tells stories. I watch him get loaded with drugs. I see him graying and sipping broth. I’m told “he had such a great day” but I don’t care. His last days aren’t my days. They’re not the days that matter to me. I’m told to tell him every last thing that matters. Let my heart speak. But why? To watch him cry as we both try to squeeze in all the things we should have said? To cause him pain as the guilt he feels for leaving us and the anger he feels for being forced to leave drive him forward?

Today I met with a funeral director. We spoke of administrative items, veterans affairs, cremation, wakes. He was fantastic. A fantastic man doing an impossible job impeccably and I couldn’t give a shit. I’m picturing introducing this man to my dad. To say, this will be the man to undress and bathe your dead body, the man to place you comfortably in a flammable box in which you will then be burned. This is the man that will be able to see your family even after you are dead. This is the man that has all you want in his hands and he’s done no work for it, he hasn’t earned us as a family as you have, he isn’t worthy of us as my dad is and still, this man, this stranger, will comfort us after your passing.

I understand this fury, this fear, this jealousy, this horrible sadness at being left behind. As the last second his heart beats and ours continue on without him. I understand this. But still, he had a good day.

I am so scared. And I’m full of guilt because I don’t want him to be dying. I hate his pain. I hate his dependence. I hate his color. I hate his hair. I hate every part of him that isn’t right but I still can’t be the bigger person. I want him dying rather than dead.

Today I sat at my parents dinner table, eating a dinner my sister in law and I had lovingly prepared, watching my dad nibble at a few morsels, talking to his mom on the phone, desperate for her son to be able to come to her house on Thanksgiving, dad giving the phone away early so his mom wouldn’t hear him cry, me unwilling to discipline my kids for misbehaving because I don’t want my last Thanksgiving dinner with my dad to be tainted by the mundane. I’m told be thankful for the years, days, months, hours you’ve had with him. Remember all the good times. Cherish the moments you have with him and make memories. I can’t. I’m filled with anxiety. My heart feels like it won’t stop racing.

My kids play, my dad sits, white, bald, quiet, mourning. I’m watching him live in a subpar life. He can’t play. He wants to hide his oxygen from the kids. We discuss doing things to make his life easier. He hears changes we are making, work we’ll be doing, without his help because he’s too weak to participate. Every word we utter, every movement we make is somehow in response to his illness. Our being here is because he’s dying. Our google searches are to designed to purchase products to address symptoms of his dying.

I walked into this house excited today, pleased to provide a Thanksgiving meal. He couldn’t stand to greet me. I hear his voice now and all I think of is when won’t I. His light is fading. His emotions are fading. I look in his chair and I can now picture him not in it. I can see the after. He’s caving in and I absolutely can’t stand it. I’m not happy to be here. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want this to happen. My stomach is twisted. My limbs feel heavy. My heart pounds. I feel sick. I feel his sickness.

I am not thankful.

My dad is dying. Every time I talk to my mom it’s one step closer to the end. I have every emotion. And almost every emotion I have leads me to feeling guilt for that emotion.

I want him to live. I want a miraculous cure to show up at the last minute and see him spring back to life, my dad, my kids’ g-pa, my mom’s husband. I want the man who raised me to come back and be sarcastic and funny and caring and rough around the edges and against the norm and damn the man and creative and dirty and in love with the earth and in love with his life and I want him to keep me strong. But there won’t be. He will die. Soon. And that’s something I need to accept and expect.

I want him to die. I can’t stand to see the man who chopped wood and practiced tai chi and stood in scorpion pose and rowed up and down the Farmington River using a walker. That he needs an hour to rest in order to get up to brush his teeth is a horror to him and to everyone that knows him. This man of unimaginable strength in my mind now needs oxygen tanks to keep him breathing.

I don’t want him to see our pain. I think the worst part for me is seeing him feel like he’s failing us. The man who could be counted on, the silent strength, who supported us but never showed weakness now can’t help it and we can’t help but show our shock. Still now he will force himself to make it to the bathroom to brush his teeth rather than do it in bed. He will handle his bathroom business by himself even if it take everything out of him. For us to have to see this dying side of him if hurting him most of all.

My kids. They won’t remember him enough. They won’t know how much my dad’s life restarted when they came to be. I met a whole new man the day Mason was born. To have touched someone’s life as much as they have and to not be able to reap the benefits of such an amazing g-pa is a curse no one should have to bear. I wish for them to have a permanent memory to be able to remember the sheer joy they felt when they saw him walk through the door. Dad is the cool grandpa. He’s on the floor. He’s playing their games. He’s not bothered by those boring adults and what they have to say, his favorite part is the kids and that’s who my kids got to call their g-pa. Who could be luckier than that? I hate how much is being taken from them but, almost in a sick way, I wish they could forever know how much was being taken from them because the feeling of how big a loss this is will only strengthen the fact that they had a grandfather like no other. They are the luckiest and unluckiest kids in the world because of this.

And my mom. No one feels as much as my mom. She is so remarkably strong for being so full of empathy but I worry so much about her. I wish I could do more to take care of her. I wish I could promise to my dad that I would look after her and not let leeches prey on her and not let her head envelope her. I can’t help one side of my family without neglecting the other. I feel like a failure on both sides.

I want my dad to go on knowing so much about me, but I don’t know what I want him to know. I want to purge every thought I’ve ever had into his brain so he knows how immortal is he to me. We’ve always been an actions speak louder than words kind of relationship but I can’t physically act enough for him now to know it all. I know he knows it all. But how can I really know he knows it all? And when he dies, where will it all go?

I’m trying to get some work done today. I have a list a mile long but can’t seem to step forward. There are clearly weights all over me, my arms, my legs, my heart. Everything feels weighed down. And air is made of soup; pea soup. Nothing brothy.

Today I went to submit something on my computer and the spinning thing in the middle kept spinning. I was grateful. Because while the spinning thing spins I can sit here waiting for it to quit spinning and not feel like I should be trying to do something else. I’m given a reprieve to just sit here and wait, and hope, that the spinning thing doesn’t quit spinning.

I’ve realized I’m terrified to start writing here. I don’t know where to start. I’m afraid to really think about my thoughts. I’m swimming in emotion and don’t want to acknowledge any of it. But at the same time I do. My dad is dying. And what I am and will be experiencing with him is something stronger and truer than maybe I ever have.

As it is now, I’m still working towards being able to look him in the eye when something serious and heartfelt comes out. We’ve both spent all our time laughing things off. The thing is, I’ve never done anything of this magnitude seriously. It’s nearly impossible for me to make myself vulnerable enough to really just let emotions sink into me. I consider myself intelligent but it’s possible I have minimal emotional intelligence; if not minimal emotional intelligence, at least minimal emotional fortitude.

But I’m so scared and I know I have to figure this out now because it will soon be too late to figure out how to tell him how much he means to me. Things won’t be getting better for him, only worse, and I fear so much how much I have to tell him and how little he might be able to hear. He tried to talk about how lucky he felt to have mom and I and that he must have been someone really good in his past life and I joked it off because I wasn’t ready. But the thing is, I’ll never be ready so I need to make myself ready.

Ok, I’ve gotten one thought/fear out. More to come.