Part III: Remembering the Final Days with my Dad.

"I would not leave his side from that moment forward until I witnessed his final breath 23 days later."

CHAPTER VI

On January 9th, I had set for home to visit my Dad and celebrate. He had turned 79 three days earlier and we had FaceTime'd, but I wanted to celebrate in person. Up until this point Dad had grown weaker and weaker, I remember I had cried after we had hung up the phone from one another the day of his birthday.

The last text my Dad ever sent me was on January 9, 2021. He had inquired about what time I would be home. I told him I'd be there in the early evening and that I was headed to the train station towards him soon. I arrived and set my small bag down that I had packed for the weekend and found him with his friend on the sofa. He was lying down, she sitting up next to him. She told me he was feeling particularly unwell. Come to find out, the moment I had arrived home, was the moment my Dad began to let go.

I would not leave his side from that moment forward until I witnessed his final breath 23 days later. I don't know how else to describe it but instinct. I am not a Mother, but I am a daughter, and I am capable of truly loving and I saw how much my Dad needed someone, to begin the process of accompanying him down a very unfamiliar and what can be an uncomfortable but important road.

That night, I placed cool towels on his head and neck and gave him medicine to break his fever. I remember he held my hand tight, and didn't break away as he usually would after a few loved filled squeezes. He lingered his hand in mine. I still remember I made him a tuna fish sandwich that night at his request, but he couldn't eat it. He opened the birthday gift I had bought him, stainless steel measuring cups for baking, that he delighted in shortly. He gave me the last remaining energy he had. I feel a deep sense of gratitude and humility that he had waited for me to be there with him.

What would unfold in the 23 days that passed until my Dad passed were the hardest moments of my life. I am not a doctor or a nurse, nor have I ever put myself in situations that require I be with people who are dying. My first experience with this would be with my Dad. He had always told me once he knew he was terminal that I'd be able to learn more from him through his dying. When you love someone, soul love, helping them out of this world, feels like an honor, and though it was the most painful process I have ever endured, in those moments, all I was there to do was be present and provide a safe and calm space for my Dad to die as he needed.

CHAPTER VII

"His friend couldn't understand why she wasn't getting the same response until the hospice nurse told her that my Dad had been attuned to my voice and my cry since the day I was born and most likely had a different connection with me that allowed for him to hear my words better than he could hers."

In the 23 days of my Dad's dying process, I would learn how to dress bed sores, how to measure and administer some of the strongest pain medications available, how to provide someone who is dying a calm space to do so, how to cope with as much sleep as new parents with a new born baby, how to hold my Dad's weight in my arms without hurting either of us, how to change a bed with the person you love still in it and unable to help you, how to dress and feed a loved one who can no longer speak or move. My Dad had always been such a formidable presence in the world, in my life. He remains this way in my memory but I don't know how to describe the deep agony that comes with bearing witness to the physical decline and the rapid rate at which it takes over.

I had the added stressor of my Dad's friend who was constantly trying to connect with him in ways that I didn't think always had his best interests at heart. Dad had gone inward and was doing the important work of dying that takes an incredible amount from the body, mind and spirit. He was teetering from plane to plane, sometimes in this world, sometimes out and I firmly believed this process should not be tampered with. Dad's friend didn't understand much of this from what I was beginning sense and feel.

My Dad's hearing and comprehension had so significantly declined that his friend would have to yell in his ear, like you may with someone who is experiencing profound hearing loss, to get his attention, which put me on edge most of the time because I didn't want the important work he was doing to be interrupted. I still remember being able to gently talk into my Dad's ear and he would be able to respond with a gesture or a word. His friend couldn't understand why she wasn't getting the same response until the hospice nurse told her that my Dad had been attuned to my voice and my cry since the day I was born and most likely had a different connection with me that allowed for him to hear my words better than he could hear hers.

I still remember the day that my Dad's friend had tried to press on my Dad that all he simply needed to do to lift his spirits was to "sit up and read a book". I'm not sure if she was in denial about what was happening before our eyes but it took everything for me to not turn into a raging mama bear. I don't know if I made the right decision by letting her stay, by letting her hover. I will have to admit here that I was anything but calm with her behind closed doors because I didn't believe her presence as my Dad was dying provided emotional safety for my him or myself but as Elizabeth Gilbert says, "your only job is to find mercy — starting with you. Again and again and again. Mercy for the difficult — sometimes impossible — dilemma of being human. So for anyone out there today who is “failing” at being the perfect caregiver, the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect friend...please drop the knife you are holding at your own throat."

CHAPTER VIII

The last meal my Dad was able to ask for was chocolate cake and an IPA, Lagunitas, to be exact. So that's what we ate together, as he sat cheerfully in the hospital bed we had delivered and set up in the living room so we could be together. I slept in the same room as him each night either on the floor or sofa, and listened for all the signs I grew to know well. When he stirred I knew he had grown uncomfortable or needed something from me. Towards the end I would use a syringe as directed by the nurses who visited and taught me so much, to administer the medication down his throat to help ease the pain he felt. All the people who loved my Dad would send flowers and he'd have big vibrant bouquets that smelled of perfume around him at all times. In the depths of winter, candles were lit in little living rooms all over the world for him, by people who loved him or who he'd made an impression on. My job in Seattle was gracious and wonderful and didn't ask a thing from me for the entirety of my Dad's dying process. I was with him day in and day out, working with him, learning from him, and loving him as he was, and I still very much love him, as he IS.

Prior to Dad losing his speech, I remember the last things he spoke about were of my Mom. I still remember silently weeping in the final weeks of his life as he struggled to recall details of his life to a nurse who had come to visit, but was able to speak about my Mom, his love for her, and what a good person he thought she was. Her death was a devastating blow for him, my Mom had been his everything and he had to deconstruct an entire life he had imagined with her. He never got over her death. He never stopped loving her. I do believe that my Mom was the ultimate love of my Dad's life and nothing was ever going to or ever did change that.

CHAPTER IX

I remember the night that my Dad passed away very vividly. When my Dad was still able, months before he had spoken to his friend about what should happen with his physical body after he passed. I knew my Dad very well, but his friend had pressed some of her Buddhist beliefs on him that he, in a diminished capacity, said he was OK with. One of the things that she had insisted on was not disturbing his body for up to three days. This is not something my Dad would have approved of for my sake in a different state of mind and I knew it. She had told me that if I wasn't OK with what the plan was, I could leave to a friends house, to which my response "no", I would not be leaving his side. I am saddened by the circumstances around this important time in my Dad's life, but I wasn't going to budge. We ultimately settled on 12 hours.

On the night of February 1st, I knew the end time was near and that though my Dad's physical body would be departing, his love and my bond with him would remain. I remember his friend hovering over him for a significant amount of time saying over and over in his ear"go towards the light". She would keep me distinctly away, at a distance, at what we all could feel were the final moments. After a long time and as he continued his labored breathing, she decided to retire to her side of the condo for the night. That's when I very clearly and calmly told her that the next time she visited, I would need to be involved for what could be my Dad's last moments to which she responded,"he may not want you to be with him in his final moments". She turned and left and I hunched down and gave Dad a kiss on the head and decided to give him some alone time. I went to take a hot shower and emerged to go check on him about 15 minutes later.

I sat at his bedside and looked into his eyes, placed my hand over his heart, and he departed moments later. Just me and him, together, as we'd always been.

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"I came here to live a life. I am willing for my life to be this one, whatever it is.

The honor in grief is the rejoicing of having loved someone so much that their departure breaks you.

Not everybody has that.

There's a rejoicing of 'We did that!'

The willingness to feel both of those things at the same time."

-Elizabeth Gilbert