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 6th 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.