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?