From there to here to where

Another of my posts following the death of my dad. It's a different kind of passage, a sail through some rough seas.  I'm trying to recover the person he was to me before his final years as I transverse the passage from child to orphan.  I hope some of these words resonate with fellow travelers on this journey.

I did not intend the visit to be my last. Dad went downhill fast, but I had no indication he would die that day.  My son had given me a report from his visit the day before, and our best guess was a couple of weeks. Speech was difficult for my dad, and I could no longer understand him on the phone.  I knew that the only way to have two-way communication was to do it in person.

I sat with him while he went from responsiveness to a coma over the course of the day. After the first hour or so, he floated in and out of consciousness, eyes staring vacantly, lying perfectly still.  I think his systems were just shutting themselves down, and voluntary movement was gone.  So, mercifully, was his ability to feel pain, since he was unable to swallow even a sip of water.

And so I sat with him, holding his hand, able to stare at him without rudeness.  Pili, his caretaker, told me how much she loved him, even though she'd only worked for him a few days.  He reminded her of her own grandfather, once fiercely independent but now felled by a broken hip.  Helping my father helped soothe her distress at not being able to take her turn by her grandfather's bedside.  I told her what a force of nature Dad was before this final combination of illnesses and old age took him down. We swapped some family stories over the deathbed, two strangers coming to terms with loss and providing an odd comfort to each other. We talked of dying at home, and dying in the hospital, and how to let go.

How to let go of him and how to let him go.  Pili said he had promised not to die on "her watch." She said he knew she was a softie and she worried about him.

The portraits, shot in a hasty photo inventory in 2008.

He lay underneath his portrait and my mother's, the place he had slept all the years of my life.  They joked they had hung the portraits over the bed to settle any questions about whose side of the bed was whose.  They are beautiful pastel portraits of a beautiful couple in their late teens or early twenties. Since I first learned to crawl up onto that bed to bounce, in eight different bedrooms, my parents slept under those portraits.  They'd overseen heart-to-heart conversations, joyful girls-only slumber parties with my mom, the "nest" my daughter made at the foot of Grandma's bed, a few very difficult conversations, a couple of surprise presents, mother-daughter reviews of Mom's jewelry, some memorable breakfasts-in-bed.

And now he was dying in this bed, almost unrecognizable to the youthful self above him. I studied his face, looking at the curves and the angles, the spotted skin stretched tight over his head, the skin loose on his hands from rapid weight loss. I remembered my visiting his father, my grandfather, in his last days, an incomprehensible sight for a five-year-old child. I recalled more vividly being with my father-in-law as he lay dying in a cold emergency room bed, wondering what kind of comfort I could give.

I was not there when he died.  Pili sent me away, saying he would not leave until I left him.  Not on my watch, either, I guess. I did not leave because Pili told me to, but I did leave, and he died shortly after.

In my family, we have always talked about dying, never passing on. We never talked about heaven, and Dad told me after Mom's death that neither of them had faith that heaven existed.  Dad used to say he wanted to be hit by a truck (and sometimes he drove as if he wanted it sooner rather than later...).  He did not fear death, but for a long time he feared dying.  He had pamphlets from the Hemlock Society, yellowed with age, in his "when I die" folder. He feared the loss of control, the loss of choice.

For a long time, he feared losing his independence, losing his intellect.  He posted a DNR in his house, in his car, in the minds of his children. He was terrified of being in a vegetative state, but he was also terrified of being in assisted living. In the end, he was ready to go. He had lost his short-term memory almost entirely and he was easily confused.  He relied on his impressive long-term memory to dazzle and distract, and he managed to fool a lot of people that way.

I don't know how the dying goes, I don't know where the dying go.  In many ways, Dad was lost to me long before he died.  I am doing my best to find him again.