Part I: Remembering my Dad's Dying Process.

I chose this photo of my Dad and me a few days after my birth for this section. He nurtured me into the world with my Mom, and I had the honor of nurturing him out. The beautiful circle of life.

INTRODUCTION:

It's a challenge putting pen to paper about Dad's death. I write this post nearly 5 months later and I struggle still, to wrap my head around his passing, and the circumstances around what he endured. What I endured. My Dad never stopped teaching me about love, spirituality, emotional availability, and life. From there, he transcended into teaching me about dying and death through his own experience with it. He taught me everything, gave me the path with no direction, simply by being.

For as long as I am alive, and for as long as I have the ability to remember him, and even beyond that, he will always be the revered one of my life.

What I am about to write isn't easy. It's painful and some of it is unfortunate. Hell, it's not even easy for me to think about most of it, but this is my attempt at externally processing what my mind wants me to. I struggle with intrusive thoughts of his death, which I know is my mind telling me that there's still"stuff "to be processed, worked on, evaluated.

So, here's is my attempt, at bravery.

CHAPTER I:

"For as long as I am alive, and for as long as I have the ability to remember him, and even beyond that, he will always be the revered one of my life."

I am very careful about the way in which I write about my Dad. He didn't want to be remembered for his illness. He didn't want people knowing he was living with cancer for the most part but those who were very close to him. He didn't want to die. I never spoke about him as my dying Father. He was my Father. His illness, his dying and his death didn't define him and they never will. He was a good, loving, tender, and strong person, human, father, and husband, first.

---

I remember the day my Dad returned home from his routine colonoscopy in the spring of 2019 and didn't seem phased by the fact that there were some concerns the doctors had noticed.

Dad always handled everything, he took care of it, he could be counted on to make everything right. He was self sufficient, independent, sharp as a tack, even keeled and resourceful. He was told he would be undergoing emergency surgery weeks later and I committed to being there at the hospital the entire time to wait for him. I still remember the day we arrived and checked in. I went back with him to prepare for the surgery, gave him a hug and told him I loved him and that I'd be waiting on the other side. He was all smiles and looking forward to getting this behind him so he could get on with his gardening, cooking and baking routine. The surgeon rang hours later, Dad had done well and was ready for my visit. I remember the other family members waiting for their loved ones sent me off cheerfully and congratulated me for getting the call that I could finally move to the next stage of the hospital where I'd see him soon. When I rounded the corner, he was sitting up in his hospital bed, alert and smiling from ear to ear just having been woken from surgery. "HI SWEETY!" he said, as I had been bracing myself for something a bit more dire. "DADDY!" I exclaimed, he'd done it again...he'd made it through seemingly unphased. He was going to have to spend at least two nights there while his abdominal wounds healed and we'd be off. I went back to his home and slept comfortably and was up bright and early to visit him the next day. He had so much light about him and oozed love and vitality. His nurses gushed about him when I'd made my way into his room again and he insisted he could walk around the hospital floor just fine and was ready to leave. He was released the next day and waltzed out into the car I had pulled up with dutifully outside. Naturally, he had refused wheelchair assistance.

We got back home, he put on the old blue robe he loved to wear that he'd had since I was born. Weeks went by and he healed nicely, seemingly as good as new. I went back to Seattle where I lived full-time and he was back at his routine.

The doctors called again some weeks later and said that they had biopsy reports they wanted to go over with him in-person which gave me pause. He told me I didn't need to accompany him to this appointment, that he'd take his friend instead. This is where I should pivot and provide a backstory on the 5 years leading up to this event and introduce a person who will remain unnamed but who had a major impact on Dad's life and ultimately my own.

CHAPTER II:

"There were some red flags that I see now in hindsight about the new woman in his life." ... "Dad's first chemo attempt had taken a toll on his, mind, body and spirit and I began to notice some unsettling facts."

In 2014, my Dad met a woman on one of his routine walks around the neighborhood. I was there at home the day they had met and he told me he was going to have tea with a nice neighbor he'd met and they might even do some hiking together. This made me so incredibly happy. At this point, Dad had really retreated into himself for the better part of almost a decade and I was so glad for him to have made a friend. Over the course of those 5 years, starting in 2014, they became close and I encouraged him to develop whatever kind of relationship he felt good about with her if she was willing and they decided "friend" was the best way to describe their relationship. I had been living in Seattle but made it a point to visit Dad frequently, almost every weekend. We'd spend time in the garden, go on walks, cook, laugh, watch the news together and talk about politics. Dad was a great conversationalist and I enjoyed every minute of time we had together as friends and as his daughter.

There were some red flags that I see now in hindsight about the new woman in his life. My Dad had become increasingly worried that perhaps I needed to spread my wings more and and leave the nest, even though I had been living on my own since I was 18. These comments from him, though new, were seldom and I had a hunch his new friend simply wanted more time with him. We decided to have more dinners all together and eventually she integrated Dad into her own family which allowed him to be a grandpa of sorts. I was so happy about these dynamics and enjoyed seeing my Dad have a fuller life after Mom passed away.

As my favorite author Elizabeth Gilbert says, "one must always be prepared for righteous and endless waves of transformation". I can't say that I was prepared. Life can and will shock you.

The woman that Dad had become friends with had ultimately invited him to move into a duplex that she owned, he would live on one side as her tenant, she on the other as the landlord. It was a great deal, beautiful location, and newly renovated. Dad was so excited to downsize and get to working on projects around the property including laying flagstones, planting a garden and generally keeping the grounds. Once he had moved in, he and his friend grew closer and they would spend almost all their time together but Dad's first chemo attempt had taken a toll on his mind, body and spirit and I began to notice some unsettling facts.

Dad had begun to give me feedback that was unusual and divorced from anything he had discussed with me in. He had begun to tell me that I couldn't overstay my welcome at the new house, that he'd have to ask his friend and now landlord if I could stay for a couple of weeks during the holidays since it broke the lease agreement, that I needed to understand that the room he had set up for me there wasn't indeed "my room" but a "place for me to stay briefly if I needed". He was isolating himself and in alignment more and more often with her while treating me like he was unsure of me, unsure of my presence. This was the beginning of my noticing the abusive behavior my Dad was enduring and was too sick to manage, let alone absorb and respond to. I do believe that the way in which he had begun to receive and process information from his friend was intentional on her part. I also believe that she had begun to realize she was losing him, as we all were, and that this was a desperate final attempt to cling onto and feed the supply that she had depended on all those years from Dad who was a loving and doting person. In the process of dying, Dad had found someone his age who he had respected and found companiship in. It was a deeply unsettling and terrifying time for him.

I was sick with sadness over the whole thing. It only declined further and I still can't think about it without feeling like a child again who needs their parent or caretaker when they are ill.

CHAPTER III:

Whenever I talk about the months that followed in my weekly therapy sessions, my therapist will often time stop me and tell me to notice my body language. I am usually contorted in an uncomfortable position on the sofa, hand on my chest, not able to make eye contact, struggling to even utter the words. I grow physically, emotionally, soul corruptingly pained with grief, with horror, with shock.

The way my Dad carried the weight of his diagnosis, his grace, and his quiet strength is something that still brings me to tears because barely bear it as witness. Yet he took it on as his and the respect I have for him could send me into a deep bow at the feet of his spirit. Though the dying process was filled with his friend beginning to corrupt his mind and the way in which he thought of me, my bond with him never wavered and I do not believe for one second that he showed me anything but love the entire way though. I knew his soul and his intentions.

---

“I encourage you to make peace with death. To see it as the culminating adventure of this adventure called life. It is not an error. It is not a failure. It is taking off a tight shoe which you have worn well. 'But those that find the way in the morning can gladly die in the evening', it is said in the mystical literature.” – Ram Dass