2013.04.21 - Staying Alive

The afternoon I came to say goodbye to my father, I found him in his bed staring blankly into space, mouth agape and waiting to die. He’d been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia eight years earlier and the disease had run a hard course over that time: his breathing was labored and getting harder; he couldn’t talk, swallow or eat; his attention span was minimal and his ability to communicate was nearly non-existent. Now that he was in hospice, he was drug free for the first time in over a decade, something I was hoping might make him more available.

I pulled up a chair next to his bed and gave him a kiss. He didn’t respond, something to which I’d become accustomed. The only sounds in his room came from the bubbling machine that was pumping oxygen into his nostrils and the semi-regular cries that came from other patients in his wing of the nursing home. The walls were covered in wallpaper that made me recount a trip I’d taken to Columbus, Ohio in 1982 with the middle school orchestra when I’d eaten a lot of potatoes with my host family. On his dresser stood a colorful bouquet of flowers my wife had brought over earlier in the week.

Reflexively, I covered the silence in the room by recounting his grand daughter's 6^th birthday party from earlier in the day. But, after only a few minutes, I began talking slower and slower until I just stopped. I’d been gifted with all of this incredibly precious alone time with my father — a rare treat for a man with such a doting family — and here I was talking about six-year-olds jumping on trampolines and leaping into pits of foam blocks. I chuckled. Sometimes, I feel the universe bumping into me repeatedly. This was one of those times. And in a flash, I realized the reason that I was visiting this particular afternoon: it was to say goodbye. Forever. 
I cleared my throat and took a breath. Per his living will, it was Dad’s fourth day with no food or water. I grabbed his hand and looked at his face.

“Dad, I remember when I was younger and I asked you to explain to me how you told your patients — sometimes in front of their families — that they were going to die. And you answered, 'You just do. You don't lie or beat around the bush. Patients and their families should know the truth.' Thank you for teaching me that, Dad. And I want you to know that if you're still holding on to anything, anything at all, that you don't have to anymore. It's OK for you to go now. We'll miss you. I'll miss you, but we're all going to be OK."


I was choking on my words. I couldn’t help it. There was something there in the back of my throat. I felt it, it was sharp, and it made it incredibly difficult to speak. And, for the briefest of moments, I realized that although my condition was temporary - a result of my emotional state - my Dad’s condition was permanent. No talking at all. Not ever again. So I shared thoughts and memories, hoping that my talking would simply be enough for both of us.


"You would have loved our wedding, Dad. The ceremony was outside, it was at the height of the Fall, the sunlight was perfect, and you could smell and taste and the air as it rushed in right off the Pacific. We put the Chuppah under three giant sycamore trees. And since you and Mom weren't there to walk me down the aisle, I decided to do something I mentioned to Jamie when we teenagers. Only, I didn't tell anyone in advance, just the soundman. As the wedding party filed in, a sting quartet was playing a lovely song, but then, when it was my turn to enter the congregated, they stopped playing. Instead, the soundman pressed play. And the Bee Gees song Stayin' Alive came over the load speakers and everyone just lost their shit as I danced my way right down the center aisle and up to the chuppah. You should have seen the look on your daughter's face. Jamie nearly shit her pants she was so shocked. Then, the reception and the party: the cocktails were amazing, the food was incredible and I even got to sit in with the band and jam on the piano. The only thing missing was you and Mom."


"I remember my bar-mitzvah trip to the Middle East. When our plane landed at Ben Gurion airport in Israel, we got ushered onto a bus that drove us across the tarmac to the terminal building. During the short drive, I noticed you were crying. And I'd never seen you cry before. So I began crying too. 'Why are you crying,' I asked you. 'Because I'm so happy,' you said, 'My family is in Israel, and I brought them here.'"


"And I remember when you took all of us to Disney World in Florida. We were on a shuttle bus from the parking lot and heading into the main gates of the park. And, suddenly, you began singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme song. Loud enough that others could hear you. And I wanted to melt into my seat. But, son-of-a-bitch: everyone else on the bus joined in with you, Dad. You had the entire bus singing along with you. And I went from being embarrassed to being proud of you."

"And I remember one of our first baseball games at Veterans Stadium. You took me to see the Phillies that night because Steve Carlton was pitching and you knew he was my favorite. He actually hit a home run that night which made everyone at The Vet go insane..."


I didn’t have a plan as I shared these memories and thoughts; I just wanted Dad to know what I was thinking about him. I didn't even know if he could hear what I was saying and I certainly hadn't seen any evidence to support that he did. As the disease progressed and his abilities declined, I'd gotten into the habit of just talking to him and trusting that my message would get through one way or another. More than that didn't really matter. Even if the message was difficult to say. Which, clearly, it now was.

"I don't... I don’t really know if I feel comfortable saying 'goodbye', Dad. So how about I just say 'So long, for now...?' Would that be OK?". And he smiled. He fucking SMILED!


And because I hadn't seen my Dad communicate so clearly for days, because he was bed-ridden and at the end of his fourth day without food or water, because I hadn't really known if he could even comprehend what I was saying... this simple act, this slight facial movement was, truly, like a miracle. Because of that smile, I knew: I knew right then and there that I had my Dad back. He was there. He'd been listening and he'd heard. 


The grapefruit in the back of my throat clenched. I leaned forward in my chair, put my head on his chest, wrapped my arms around his body and sobbed, the kind of sobs that shake your body in violent convulsions. And I just tried to let them come. I said "I love you" over and over even as the chokes were getting stuck in the back of my throat.


Some minutes later, I had to move my glasses off my face to blow my nose. When I put them back on, I half-jokingly said, "Do you like my new glasses?" and Dad nodded. I just shook my head in amazement and smiled. For days I hadn't seen him communicate in much of any way and now here we were with him smiling and nodding at me. My heart leapt. I felt like I'd entered an alternate reality. Which made my next action easy to decide. 


"I'm going to meditate now, OK, Dad? This is what I've been doing one or two times every day for five years and I want to do it with you. I just close my eyes, breathe and then listen for my mantra. I'm going to hold your hand, OK?" I moved my chair closer, took his left hand in my right, sat up straight in my chair and then closed my eyes. And then, after I found my mantra, something extraordinary happened: 


I entered into some kind of temporal dimension, a “jet stream consciousness” where I was able to effortlessly time travel with my father. I had no idea it was going to happen and I certainly had no control into which times I travelled, but the experience was similar to watching TV while someone else changed channels. Only, I wasn’t just watching these various channels, I was actually in the action, experiencing different times in history.


I first found myself forty years in the past, experiencing Dad as a thirty-year-old man, when I was four-years-old and he was healthy, vital and the biggest person in my world; that morphed twenty-six years backwards in time when I saw Dad as a small, only child, playing alone with some of his toys; then I shot ahead fifty years to when I was aged thirty, confused and learning how to live my own life as an adult; then forward again, another twenty years, where it was me who was the father, fussing over my own child, enveloped in joy and in love with this precious, new cargo; finally — much later into the future — I saw myself as a grandfather, surrounded by the two generations that came after me. And there, at the end of my life, I felt a quiet knowing and a compassion that was unmistakable. Everything — my decisions, my family and my life — was as it should be.


Lost in time: pleasantly so.

It ended as abruptly as it started, somewhere in the middle of my meditation. My remaining meditation felt chaotic and when I opened my eyes after thirty minutes, I remembered where and when I was but my head was swimming. Dad’s eyes were open. I squeezed his hand to get his attention. He looked at me.

“Listen: Mary and I have been talking about having a baby. If it's a girl, we’re thinking about naming her Allana, after her grandfather, who, I wish could have had the chance to meet her." He blinked, slowly and there was a softening. I didn’t imagine that, either: because I’d had his attention earlier, I knew that he’d heard me.


"Am I going to see you tomorrow, Dad?" I asked. "If so, that's OK but if not... I’ll miss you and I love you. Now gimme a kiss..." I leaned over his face and he puckered up, again: just shocking. I kissed his cheek multiple times in devotion and loss and such terrible fear that I'd never see him again. I stroked his hair, held his neck, looked into his eyes, and - after a taking a breath - said:


"You were a great Dad. You were such a great dad. You're my daddy."

Then, the time for words had passed. I put my forehead on his and cried. And then, despite the other remarkable events that had already transpired during our visit, Dad found a way to top it: he reached out his left arm and put his hand over my arm, holding onto me while I held him. For a man I've watched nearly motionless for the past week to suddenly demonstrate the strength to smile, to nod his head, to pucker up and kiss and to reach out his arm to hold me?


There are no words for that.


Forty-four years of my life plus seventy of Dad's slammed together in a nuclear fusion of love, creating more information and emotion than my paltry human brain could process. It was a miracle. It was a remarkable, unexpected miracle and I don't know how else to put it. For about seventy-five minutes, I had an audience with my Dad for one last time. I was there with him, only this time, he was also there with me.


Now, it was even harder to say goodbye because I knew Dad was still in there: still alive inside that tired, failing body of his. I wanted to experience him more, protect him more, and try to save him more even though I logically understood all of that was futile now. But that’s one of the ironies of love: it makes us emotionally yearn for the things we logically know are impossible.

One last hug, one last kiss and one last look into his eyes. Then I said goodbye, turned and walked from room 509 and into the hallway, into that just-too-bright fluorescent light which lit the outdated 1950's wallpaper. As I drifted towards the locked door by the nurse’s station at the end of his ward — The Horizon Ward — I passed the other residents' rooms. Each room had a photo cabinet just outside the door showing pictures of the residents from earlier moments of their life.


Life, then death: the most natural and shocking thing imaginable.


Mom died twenty-two months ago. Now, Dad's going to die. He'll be dropping his physical form so that his spirit can head off to greener pastures. And it's going to happen within a few days. But not for me. I'm not going anywhere: I'm witnessing his last, few, precious moments. I'm surviving my father. He's dying, but I'm staying alive. 


Stayin' Alive. 


This one's for you, Dad.