Eighteen and Life to Go
Eighteen years ago today, I woke up fatherless.
My dad, age 64, had passed away the night before while I sat with him in the hospice room at the hospital, after a year-and-a-half battle with Merkle cell cancer.
I don't know what drives this universe. I understand the physical forces, but there is more to it than that. I don't believe in an all-knowing and all-caring God. But there is something. There are so many unexplained events around his last week that I can't believe there isn't a force -- a something more than stardust and dark energy from a big bang a long, long time ago.
I had planned my first vacation in more than a decade several months before he began the final decline -- a four day trek through the wilderness in New Hampshire with no access to the outside world once we started in. I was torn about going or canceling, but decided he would want me to go and enjoy being free in the mountains after spending so many years under the controlling fist of my ex-husband.
When we returned to the land of the pay phone -- no cell phone service in the notch -- I called home, hoping to hear that he was doing better. Instead I found out he'd been admitted to the hospital again and the doctor was very concerned. The plan of my friends and me returning to Syracuse turned into a plan for them to drop me off at a mall in Albany, where I would call home and wait for a sister to pick me up while my friends went on without me, in my car.
We arrived at the mall, but decided to gas up before dropping me off. I wasn't looking forward to the half-hour wait at the mall, but it was the most convenient plan for my friends, who still had more than two hours to drive. As we pulled up to the pump, at this gas station I had never been to before, I looked over and saw my brother's truck. I had to do a double take. Yes, that was my brother. At a gas station I had never been to before. At the same time I was there. After I had driven three hours from New Hampshire. When I was going to need a ride home. Because of my dying father. And he had no idea about the plans I had made with my sisters; he was just working and filling up between jobs.
We moved my stuff into his truck, called the sisters to tell them they didn't need to drive to the mall, and my brother drove me home. That in itself is Twilight Zone material enough.
But it didn't end there. After a couple of days home and spending time taking my shifts at the hospital, there was no change. Unlike my teacher sisters, I had to go back to my job. I called every day to find out how things were doing. Each day it was discouraging to hear that there was no positive change; he was in a morphine induced sleep and mostly unresponsive, except for when the nurses tried to change his position in the bed, and then he moaned in pain.
When I called on Wednesday, the 26th, the news was different. "He had a really good day yesterday," my sister told me. "He was awake and his eyes were following us around the room."
I didn't know then about the "surge." That when a person is somewhere between a couple of days or a few hours from death, he or she often awakens, becomes alert, and can even interact with loved ones. My sister's words were to me news that my father was likely once again fighting off an infection and responding to the antibiotics. My reaction, however, was to have a force push me down the hall to my boss's office where I told him I needed to go home. It made no sense to me, but that's what I told him. The second unexplained phenomenon.
My roommate convinced me to spend one more night in my own bed, because the final watch could takes weeks and be exhausting. So I arrived at the hospital the next afternoon, sat in the room with my mother for a while, and then told Dad I'd be back later.
I ate dinner, and my aunt called from Texas. My father's baby sister. She was 52 years old and coping with the looming loss of the older brother she always looked up to. As I write this, I am 57 and realize how heartbreaking that must have been. We were all too young. When I told her I'd been to the hospital, she asked how he was doing and if she should fly up. I didn't want to have her jump on a plane that night and then be wrong, but the words, "I think you should," came out of my mouth.
After dinner, I went to the hospital with the intent of staying there for as long as I could, to give the siblings a break from the overnight watching. My mother had left about 20 minutes before I got there. I was a little angry that she had left -- I think I was already feeling a premonition that this was going to be The Night. But I shook it off, and settled in with a stack of mail to open and bills to pay. The 24-hour watch had been going on for at least five days, maybe a week, and there was nothing to indicate that this night was going to be different than any other night.
Except.
Something told me to put everything away and be completely with my father. I read to him a little bit from my hiking journal. Then I sat quietly a little. A nurse came in and gave him his morphine injection -- a little early she said, but she knew she was going to be busy when he was actually due. His breathing slowed. I pulled up closer.
And I told him that we were going to be okay. I told him my then boyfriend was treating me like gold, although I would be able to get along without him if he broke his promise to me to not take me for granted again. "You don't need to worry about Mom," I said. "We'll take care of her."
Those are hard words to say to someone. I didn't tell him it was okay for him to go, because for me, it wasn't really. But I did tell him we would be okay. Although there are times when that was a lie. Because I'm not always okay not having my Dad. And sometimes I'm angry that he's not here to help Mom, because she could really use him.
His breathing became less and less rhythmic. When the nurse came by, I called her in. She said this often happened at the end. I waited a couple through a couple more breaths wondering if I should call the family. When I started having to will him to take his next breath, it became clear.
I called the house number and my mother answered. I didn't want to talk to her -- I wanted a sister to break this to her. I asked very firmly for the oldest. Without questioning me, my mother handed the phone over to her. Later she told me she hadn't recognized my voice.
"You have to get Mom down here NOW," I said. "It's time?" she asked. "Yes," I said and then I hung up the phone.
I turned around and held my father's hand. I waited for him to breath. I waited. I waited. I waited. "Breathe," I said in my head. "Breathe."
But his chest remained motionless. I went to the door and I told the nurse. She came in and put a pulse oximeter on his finger. His heart was still beating, faintly. And then the display went black. She tried another finger. Still no reading. She told me she needed to call the nurse practitioner. I waited, holding his hand, and in that time, I felt something in that room. It's impossible to put into words but there was a Presence in that room.
The nurse practitioner arrived, put her stethoscope to his chest, and listened for a while. Then she stood up and hugged me. "I'm so sorry," she said. "He's gone."
How did I know that he was slipping away that night, unlike all the other nights that family had sat by his bedside? What voice of the universe told me to put my paperwork away and just Be? I have always thought that he was waiting for me. He couldn't slip into eternity until the missing daughter was there to say goodbye.
The unexplainable events didn't stop that night.
The next morning, after only a few hours of sleep I woke up. And as with every loss, for a split second, the universe was whole. Until reality came crashing down and my heart gained 20 pounds.
But life goes on, doesn't it? Even though you are screaming inside, "Stop all the clocks!" There were children to be fed. An aunt to meet at the airport. Plans to be made. I went to the kitchen and realized we had no food. Everyone had been so occupied with the caring of our dying father that the business of life had gone neglected.
We had no cereal. No bread. No milk. No eggs. No juice. No fruit. No anything to make any kind of a meal out of. It was as if the Grinch had cleaned out our cupboards.
My sister and I drove to the store. We picked up milk and bread and cereal and eggs and juice and I don't know what else. We wheeled our cart up to a checkout lane and waited for our turn to unload. A moment later, our neighbor from across the street, who I had never bumped into in the grocery store and never did again, appeared in line behind us.
We said hello, and then he asked, "How's your father doing?"
"He passed away last night."
His face dropped in sadness. "I'm so sorry."
Within the hour, the food started arriving at the house. Tomatoes from Fritz's garden. Lasagna from a neighbor. A casserole from the Factors down the street, who were good friends with my parents, and whose children I had babysat when I was in high school.
What are the odds? What are the odds that our neighbor from kitty corner across the street appears in our checkout lane in the grocery store the morning after my father dies?
And now it's been 18 years. It's the proper order that the parents should pass before the children, but at 39 years old, I didn't realize how long and how much missing of him there would be.
I put up six quarts of green beans today and thought of him. How my gardening started with a rectangular patch he dug in the backyard and divided in half, for my sister and me to use to grow whatever we wanted. There were always beans.
Dear Dad, it's been a very good year for the green beans. And the yellow tomato plants are filled with tomatoes, but we're still waiting for them to ripen. And I miss you. It's been eighteen years and life to go. That's a lot of years to miss someone.
Post script:
My mother arrived about ten minutes after my father was pronounced dead. She cried briefly, then said, "He told me no matter what happened to him, he would always be with me."
My aunt arrived at the Albany airport the next morning. The news hadn't made it to her en route, but as soon as she saw our faces she knew, and we hugged and cried and hugged and cried. Two years later, she too was gone.
My dad, age 64, had passed away the night before while I sat with him in the hospice room at the hospital, after a year-and-a-half battle with Merkle cell cancer.
I don't know what drives this universe. I understand the physical forces, but there is more to it than that. I don't believe in an all-knowing and all-caring God. But there is something. There are so many unexplained events around his last week that I can't believe there isn't a force -- a something more than stardust and dark energy from a big bang a long, long time ago.
I had planned my first vacation in more than a decade several months before he began the final decline -- a four day trek through the wilderness in New Hampshire with no access to the outside world once we started in. I was torn about going or canceling, but decided he would want me to go and enjoy being free in the mountains after spending so many years under the controlling fist of my ex-husband.
When we returned to the land of the pay phone -- no cell phone service in the notch -- I called home, hoping to hear that he was doing better. Instead I found out he'd been admitted to the hospital again and the doctor was very concerned. The plan of my friends and me returning to Syracuse turned into a plan for them to drop me off at a mall in Albany, where I would call home and wait for a sister to pick me up while my friends went on without me, in my car.
We arrived at the mall, but decided to gas up before dropping me off. I wasn't looking forward to the half-hour wait at the mall, but it was the most convenient plan for my friends, who still had more than two hours to drive. As we pulled up to the pump, at this gas station I had never been to before, I looked over and saw my brother's truck. I had to do a double take. Yes, that was my brother. At a gas station I had never been to before. At the same time I was there. After I had driven three hours from New Hampshire. When I was going to need a ride home. Because of my dying father. And he had no idea about the plans I had made with my sisters; he was just working and filling up between jobs.
We moved my stuff into his truck, called the sisters to tell them they didn't need to drive to the mall, and my brother drove me home. That in itself is Twilight Zone material enough.
But it didn't end there. After a couple of days home and spending time taking my shifts at the hospital, there was no change. Unlike my teacher sisters, I had to go back to my job. I called every day to find out how things were doing. Each day it was discouraging to hear that there was no positive change; he was in a morphine induced sleep and mostly unresponsive, except for when the nurses tried to change his position in the bed, and then he moaned in pain.
When I called on Wednesday, the 26th, the news was different. "He had a really good day yesterday," my sister told me. "He was awake and his eyes were following us around the room."
I didn't know then about the "surge." That when a person is somewhere between a couple of days or a few hours from death, he or she often awakens, becomes alert, and can even interact with loved ones. My sister's words were to me news that my father was likely once again fighting off an infection and responding to the antibiotics. My reaction, however, was to have a force push me down the hall to my boss's office where I told him I needed to go home. It made no sense to me, but that's what I told him. The second unexplained phenomenon.
My roommate convinced me to spend one more night in my own bed, because the final watch could takes weeks and be exhausting. So I arrived at the hospital the next afternoon, sat in the room with my mother for a while, and then told Dad I'd be back later.
I ate dinner, and my aunt called from Texas. My father's baby sister. She was 52 years old and coping with the looming loss of the older brother she always looked up to. As I write this, I am 57 and realize how heartbreaking that must have been. We were all too young. When I told her I'd been to the hospital, she asked how he was doing and if she should fly up. I didn't want to have her jump on a plane that night and then be wrong, but the words, "I think you should," came out of my mouth.
After dinner, I went to the hospital with the intent of staying there for as long as I could, to give the siblings a break from the overnight watching. My mother had left about 20 minutes before I got there. I was a little angry that she had left -- I think I was already feeling a premonition that this was going to be The Night. But I shook it off, and settled in with a stack of mail to open and bills to pay. The 24-hour watch had been going on for at least five days, maybe a week, and there was nothing to indicate that this night was going to be different than any other night.
Except.
Something told me to put everything away and be completely with my father. I read to him a little bit from my hiking journal. Then I sat quietly a little. A nurse came in and gave him his morphine injection -- a little early she said, but she knew she was going to be busy when he was actually due. His breathing slowed. I pulled up closer.
And I told him that we were going to be okay. I told him my then boyfriend was treating me like gold, although I would be able to get along without him if he broke his promise to me to not take me for granted again. "You don't need to worry about Mom," I said. "We'll take care of her."
Those are hard words to say to someone. I didn't tell him it was okay for him to go, because for me, it wasn't really. But I did tell him we would be okay. Although there are times when that was a lie. Because I'm not always okay not having my Dad. And sometimes I'm angry that he's not here to help Mom, because she could really use him.
His breathing became less and less rhythmic. When the nurse came by, I called her in. She said this often happened at the end. I waited a couple through a couple more breaths wondering if I should call the family. When I started having to will him to take his next breath, it became clear.
I called the house number and my mother answered. I didn't want to talk to her -- I wanted a sister to break this to her. I asked very firmly for the oldest. Without questioning me, my mother handed the phone over to her. Later she told me she hadn't recognized my voice.
"You have to get Mom down here NOW," I said. "It's time?" she asked. "Yes," I said and then I hung up the phone.
I turned around and held my father's hand. I waited for him to breath. I waited. I waited. I waited. "Breathe," I said in my head. "Breathe."
But his chest remained motionless. I went to the door and I told the nurse. She came in and put a pulse oximeter on his finger. His heart was still beating, faintly. And then the display went black. She tried another finger. Still no reading. She told me she needed to call the nurse practitioner. I waited, holding his hand, and in that time, I felt something in that room. It's impossible to put into words but there was a Presence in that room.
The nurse practitioner arrived, put her stethoscope to his chest, and listened for a while. Then she stood up and hugged me. "I'm so sorry," she said. "He's gone."
How did I know that he was slipping away that night, unlike all the other nights that family had sat by his bedside? What voice of the universe told me to put my paperwork away and just Be? I have always thought that he was waiting for me. He couldn't slip into eternity until the missing daughter was there to say goodbye.
The unexplainable events didn't stop that night.
The next morning, after only a few hours of sleep I woke up. And as with every loss, for a split second, the universe was whole. Until reality came crashing down and my heart gained 20 pounds.
But life goes on, doesn't it? Even though you are screaming inside, "Stop all the clocks!" There were children to be fed. An aunt to meet at the airport. Plans to be made. I went to the kitchen and realized we had no food. Everyone had been so occupied with the caring of our dying father that the business of life had gone neglected.
We had no cereal. No bread. No milk. No eggs. No juice. No fruit. No anything to make any kind of a meal out of. It was as if the Grinch had cleaned out our cupboards.
My sister and I drove to the store. We picked up milk and bread and cereal and eggs and juice and I don't know what else. We wheeled our cart up to a checkout lane and waited for our turn to unload. A moment later, our neighbor from across the street, who I had never bumped into in the grocery store and never did again, appeared in line behind us.
We said hello, and then he asked, "How's your father doing?"
"He passed away last night."
His face dropped in sadness. "I'm so sorry."
Within the hour, the food started arriving at the house. Tomatoes from Fritz's garden. Lasagna from a neighbor. A casserole from the Factors down the street, who were good friends with my parents, and whose children I had babysat when I was in high school.
What are the odds? What are the odds that our neighbor from kitty corner across the street appears in our checkout lane in the grocery store the morning after my father dies?
And now it's been 18 years. It's the proper order that the parents should pass before the children, but at 39 years old, I didn't realize how long and how much missing of him there would be.
I put up six quarts of green beans today and thought of him. How my gardening started with a rectangular patch he dug in the backyard and divided in half, for my sister and me to use to grow whatever we wanted. There were always beans.
Dear Dad, it's been a very good year for the green beans. And the yellow tomato plants are filled with tomatoes, but we're still waiting for them to ripen. And I miss you. It's been eighteen years and life to go. That's a lot of years to miss someone.
Post script:
My mother arrived about ten minutes after my father was pronounced dead. She cried briefly, then said, "He told me no matter what happened to him, he would always be with me."
My aunt arrived at the Albany airport the next morning. The news hadn't made it to her en route, but as soon as she saw our faces she knew, and we hugged and cried and hugged and cried. Two years later, she too was gone.
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