In February, my very best friend in the world lost her mother. It was completely unexpected; there was no reason to believe her mother was in anything but excellent health. Her mom was just past 70 years old and looking forward to a long and enjoyable retirement, with travel and grandchildren to keep her busy and happy. Then tragedy struck, and my friend had to deal with not only losing her only remaining parent, but with all the emotional wreckage that comes with being the one to find the body (her Mom died at home, right before a planned outing with her daughter). As an only child, she had to navigate the ins and outs of funeral planning and tie up many loose ends that hadn't fully been discussed--after all, her Mom was healthy and expecting to be around for a good long while. That was a hard goodbye for my friend; and it was heartbreaking to watch her suffer. She's a strong and vibrant lady, and she'll make it through--with the love and support of her two amazing kiddos and a husband who loves her deeply. But it was certainly a difficult goodbye nonetheless.
My own father died two days ago. His story couldn't be more different from that of my friend's mom. My dad's health hadn't been what anyone would call "good" for many years. In my childhood, he had hypertension and gout, just to name two afflictions. He ate what he wanted, and was "a big guy" most of his life. In later years, he started smoking, and developed tremors that made it hard for him to hold a glass or a fork. While in his 60s, he could have easily been mistaken for a man at least a decade older.
For my dad, the turning point for his health issues was when his own sister, the baby sister of his clan, passed away from aggressive lung cancer when she was only 40 years old. This sent him into a downward spiral; he started exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He would go days without eating or sleeping; he'd hear voices and talk back to them; he decided that his supervisors at work were plotting against him and left his job--after 30 years of work. Without his income, my mother lost the house where they raised three daughters together. He became belligerent, then threatening. He frightened my youngest sister and my mother with his behavior. Eventually, understandably, the marriage had to end. My mother picked up the pieces and started over.
From there, my dad become a bit transient. Living first with his brother in an apartment, collecting disability, and not taking his medications reliably without supervision, he ended up having to leave that living arrangement after the two of them became periodically violent/abusive toward one another. He lived with my middle sister out of state for a time. Then he went into a series of nursing homes. His behavior, although moderated with medication, was not always manageable, and he had to leave one nursing home after another due to his tendency to start fights or become physically confrontational with staff.
I distanced myself from him, to try to keep my emotional well-being intact. I had a difficult relationship with my father for years, while growing up and afterwards. We butted heads constantly. I felt completely misunderstood and unloved, unwanted; probably because I was adopted and saw myself as "not a real" daughter, especially whenever there were sibling rivalries that I came out on the losing end of. The truth is that I was probably not very loveable when I was at my angriest and most stubborn; and he didn't know how to reach me, or how to express his love for me. The fact that I interpreted this as a lack of caring isn't really fair; but it is the emotional landscape I lived in for many years. Additionally, his behavior scared and angered me. He once stalked my mother at her workplace, literally jumping out of the bushes to accuse her of cheating on him. She ended up taking out a restraining order for a while, to keep herself safe. Having run up against his temper many times in my youth, I was furious that he would ever target my mother that way, and I mentally and emotionally washed my hands of him. Although I was civil towards him on the rare occasions that we saw one another, I stopped wanting him as a parent. I let my middle sister take over his guardianship with a sense of relief, knowing she would do what needed doing; they were close and she could provide much better care than I could. I walked away, without doubt or guilt.
At least, I thought I had. Turns out the ties that bind run a lot deeper than I had surmised.
Last week, he was hospitalized in the ICU for aspirating food. On his second day there, he was awake and alert enough to recognize visitors and mumble a few words now and then. Seeing him reduced to a shell of his former self really shook me.
I took a deep breath and said, "I love you, Dad." He looked me in the eye and said "I love you, too."
Stunned, I had to turn away and collect myself for a few minutes. Later in the visit, I said it again. So did he.
I said it a third time. He did, too.
In that hospital visit, we probably expressed our love for each other more times that we had done so in the previous ten years.
My father died two days ago, in a morphine-induced sleep, at the age of 68. I wasn't by his side when he passed, but my mom and baby sister were; for which I am very grateful. There will be no funeral, no memorial, according to his wishes. He will be cremated and his ashes sent a thousand miles from here, to be kept by my middle sister's daughter, with whom he shared a special kind of closeness. I won't have a grave to visit or a eulogy to listen to. There won't be flowers or hymns. Part of me is really upset about that; but if it's what he wanted, I have to put my own expectations aside as part of honoring his memory. It's his journey; he gets to leave in the way he wanted. It's my job only to wish him Godspeed, and I do.
It's not the goodbye I expected it to be. It hurts more than I thought it would. I am struggling with a lot of emotional baggage, and I hope I'll be able to put it down and step back from it soon; but right now it seems to be heaviest at unexpected moments. Sometimes it crashes down on my head; kind of like carry-on luggage in a plane's overhead compartment, that's shifted during the trip. The door pops open when I'm unprepared, and wallops me with heavy bags that I thought were safely tucked away.
