as my father's life ebbed away

My father had a massive stroke that left most of his left side paralyzed. His left leg could walk in a heavy limp, he was never able to use his left arm again for anything and the left side of his face drooped frozenly. Many years before that happened, when he took me shopping for back-to-college stuff, as we walked through a parking lot to get to the department store, he saw a man with a paralyzed left arm limping. He stopped, pointed that other man out to me and he said "That's the kind of thing that could happen to me" (I guess he had been told he was at risk of stroke because he did not take care of his diabetes?). He went on a bit, saying how self conscious he would be and how unhapopy he would be. As he spoke, I have a strong intuition that a paralyzing stroke was in his future. About ten years later, it happened and then he lived a few more years, getting progressively dependent and progressively miserable. I lived in MN, he was in Chicago. I visited him a few times a year, bringing his first grandchild. Every time I saw him, he spoke of wishing he would die. Near the very end, when some of my brothers had taken over his health care choices and ignored me (they always had ignored me and were furious when I voiced, just once, an interest in our father's care and esp. his wishes).  It was customary in our family for my four brothers to bully and brow beat me. As the second oldest child, all my brothers (well, not really my baby bro David) were almost encouraged to see me as a lesser being. Encouraged by each of our parents and the culture of the fifties and sixties as I grew up.

I visited him at least once a month as he seemed to be approaching the end of his life.  I also wanted my daughter to know her grandfather as much as she could. Dad doted on all babies, esp ones related to him. How he doted on Katie, his first grandchild.

In the second to last visit, we went down to Chicago for the weekend before Katie's last week of school. It surprised me, and pleased me, when my dad urged me to stay.  He wanted to spend some time with me.  I reminded him Katie had one more week of school and we'd be back the next Friday. He said "How cares about a week of school?"  Well, Katie did. our Waldorf school was centrally important to our lives and school was indescribably important to Katie. The last week was a special week that she would have been hurt to miss.

On that visit, he was in a nursing home and not on machines. By a week later, he had been moved to a facility that provided more intensive care, like a feeding tube and oxygen mask.

In our penultimate visit, he kept asking me to pray that he die. I said I would pray that God's will unfold for him, pointing out to him that asking me to pray he died was not something I wanted to do. I did want him to end his suffering. His eyes became so expressive then. He could just about shout at me with his eyes "please let me die".

I believe he understood that two of my brothers were making the decisionsm giving docs the impression they were in charge. They did not have a power of attorney. I did not fight because I never won fights with my brothers and my dad was dying.  I reasoned that the last thing any of us needed was more sadness. So i sat with dad as much as I could, leaving Katie with sisters-in-law.

When  returned and he had the food tube in his mouth, he could not talk. His eyes said it all. As I stood next to him, whispering about my love for him and telling him Katie stories in hopes of pleasing him, he kept on begging me to let him go. He was in a small room with another patient in the next bed. I got close to whisper for a bit of privacy. As I whispered, I knew what I wanted to say to him.

"Dad" I whispered with as much loving tenderness as I have ever had in me, "I can't do anything about the feeding tube or the oxygen mask but you can. Joe and Tom would not listen to me even if I asked them to remove the tubes.  But you can let go dad. You can close your eyes, pray, feel reverent and just let go."

My dad died within two hours of what I said.  I never told anyone I had said that, except my aunt the nun. She, ever the pip (she left the convent later on, married a divorced priest, even scored a pension from her order when released from her vows!), called me to find out if my dad was really truly near death because she didn't wnt to drive from Chicago's North Side (she was my mom's sister, not dad's) if he wasn't really dying. I described my last visit with him, talking to her within an hour of the visit.

I was often challenged by my aunt the nun, tales for another time maybe. Even as a young child, I thought she was condescending, with a superior air. I heard her dissing my mom a few times, accusing my mom of slovenliness, my mom with four, then five, then six kids and Jody just sitting there criticiing her kitchen table for not being properly cleaned. Jody did not lift a finger to help. And damn, that table top was not dirty.  I didn't discuss my contempt of my aunt the nun with any siblings for a long long time.

But the day my dad died, probably the one time in my life when my aunt the former nun (now former) approved of something I did, she said, after I told her I had told him he could just let go and his suffering could end, she said "Good. Someone should be talking to him like that. it sure sounds like he is dying. I guess I will drive down to see him tomorrow."

He was gone before that tomorrow.

After talking to Jody, I rounded up my kid, my three nieces (i have more, three were around then) and took them all to the Aquarium and the Natural History Museum. These museums are separated by Chicago's 8 or 10 lane Outer Drive but there is a passenger tunnel under the speeding cars and the wide roadbed.

Katie loved the coral island. I treated the girls to a dolphin show. Or some fish show. Then we straggled over to the Natural History museum. Mainly the girls wanted to see the gigantic dinosaur skeleton in the lobby.

I had gone to both these museum dozens, if not hundreds, of times with my dad.

The girls, that day, were taken by the pedestrian, underground walkway. If they screamed, it echoes rilliantly. So they ran around there like crazy creatures screamint, listening to the echoes of their screams and running around to see how their noise changed as they changed positions.

I left them in that tunnel and sat on one of the ledges along the grand staircase up to the entry to the Natural History museum. I saw, feeling myself to be in a bit of a bubble. The girls noise recedes, the traffic noise, which whips around both sides of the Natural History museum muted and I flashed on endless scenes with my dad at the Aquarium, the Natural History Museum, amusement parks and, the favorite museum, I think, of all my siblings and me:  the Museum of Science and Industry.

My reverie was lovely. And gentle. In my mind's eye and in my heart, dad became a gentle man doting on his little children.

And then I felt him pass.

Later, describing that scene to my mother, who happened to be in Ireland with her second husband that day, she asked me the time, converted the Chicago time to Ireland time and said she is sure she had felt him pass at the same time.

I loved every squeal my nieces and daughter made.  I felt wave after wave of wonderful love. My dad's love for me and all my siblings.  My dad's love for all those noisy, happy girls, who were aware their grandpa was very sick and likely dying but as kids, they remained happy in each moment.

Gradually the actual physical scene I was in returned to my focus. It was a hot day in June.  I was grateful the girls had been apart from me as I sat with my dad, energetically, as he passed.

And I was grateful dad had been able to release himself from his suffering.

I would give anything if he were still here. I wish he had taken care of himself. He would be in late nineties now.