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**I posted a little note on my other stack, Sincere American Writing, and added a link there to a piece on my Dad from six weeks back. Check it out if interested. CLICK THIS LINK HERE.
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Well, after six long, painful days I’m back home in Lompoc. I haven’t seen Britney yet; she won’t be home from work until 5:30. Last Tuesday—May 30th—I awoke a little after 6AM to Mom’s missed call and a text saying that Dad was agitated, angry and irrational and that he’d thrown his oxygen mask off and had vomited blood and was “ready to go.” Mom said: “Come down.” I called her five minutes after I woke and she sounded deeply scared and disturbed and just said, again, “Come.” That was the longest 50 minute drive of my life.
But Dad survived that moment—thank God—and we got him for four more days. Those days—especially the final 48 hours—were not easy and were indeed a little gruesome (seeing him in a catatonic Morphine-induced eyes-rolled-back-in-his-head state for those two last days) but they were ultimately what Dad wanted. We gave him the sweet, painful gift of helping him end his life by following his instructions: Putting him into a deep coma-like Morphine semi-sleep/unconscious-state until his body did the rest and he finally died at 4PM on the nose, Friday, June 2nd, 2023.
Yesterday was surreal but nice. Mom and I cleared out the shed and threw some old stuff out, reorganized things, took some stuff down to the garage, etc. And then we moved stuff around and reorganized things in the garage. (They have about a million boxes of dog bones.) It comforted Mom to take action, be distracted, and to feel like she had some kind of control. I didn’t mind it, either, though I was very tired. The day before that I’d disassembled Dad’s former Death Bed and put it in the garage with a sheet over it. Mom reorganized The Death Room into her nascent office. (Formerly the master bedroom.) We went through Dad’s closet and office cupboard. I took half a dozen jackets, some T-shirts, clean unused socks, etc. Mom kept his wedding ring. She’d put it on days ago, before he died. Even though my Dad initially offered the ring to me, as a wedding ring, and Mom knew that, I didn’t argue: She can have it. It’s only right and fair: I’m the son but she’s the widow of a 50 year marriage. I don’t want to create conflict. It’s fine. I’ve never been one for possessions anyway, though the ring holds important sentimental value in this case, and it was my maternal grandmother’s ring going way back.
Then (yesterday) Mom and I rested on our large white chairs by the kitchen and deck and sipped hot herbal tea and I convinced Mom to go walk the dogs with me at Shoreline Park. She hesitated but then acquiesced. It’d been over a year since she’d done something like this. For the first time in two years she wouldn’t have to worry about leaving my father at home, wondering if he needed her. It was similar for me, too: For the past 23 months when discussing future plans it’s always been, Well, yeah, we can do A, B or C thing but…there’s the Question Mark of my father. All the waiting. The postponed travel plans. The uncertainty about when Dad would actually die. The tension of Not Knowing.
And I remembered Mom and I walking the dogs around State Street, downtown, in the early months of Dad’s symptoms, circa August, September, 2021. God: That feels like an eon ago, another lifetime. It’s hard to connect that time with right now. So much has happened. So much has changed.