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Goodbye Dad

The phone rings and once again there is distressing news about an aging parent.
You shut down your real-time life and hurry to do what you can to bring help and comfort, and you wonder if this will be the final trip. There have been many calls the past year from the assisted living facility where my father has been living. There won't be any more; he died March 7, just short of his 90th birthday.

We all have heard it: Some deaths are a blessing. My father's death was such a blessing. A proud and dignified man who never quite recovered from my mother's death now is at peace.
We talk so much about quality of life, but what about quality of death? It became more and more difficult to watch the struggle for life when we knew death would bring final release. That tough old man wasn't about letting go, and we had to respect that. He made every decision until the last.

Strange the words we choose to use when talking about death. We avoid the words "die" and "death." Instead, we talk about losing someone or say someone is gone. They aren't lost and they aren't gone. "Passing" is a better term, as it is a passing.

As the final weeks and days went by, I experienced what so many of us do. The child becomes the parent.

Spooning applesauce into the mouth of the frail and failing man who barely resembled the handsome and dashing father I remember became routine. I heard myself muttering the same encouraging words I once used for my young sons. I brushed his dentures and helped him to the bathroom. Someone said to me as I lamented the emaciated shadow of a man that slipped away to remember that everyone in heaven is 30.

I like that.

As the last days passed, I fell into a routine. Parking in the hospital parking lot, I passed the cheerful lady in the pink smock who greeted me each morning on my way to the hospital room. The small community hospital bustled with activity as it took truly caring care of each of its patients.

There was no dramatic deathbed conversation. Instead, we who survive will trust the love we knew in our hearts was there, though we would have liked to have heard it from his lips. Typical of his generation, he wasn't one to compliment. He was quicker to make a cutting remark than one of praise. He showed his love through his loyalty and support and example.
So now I have moved up in line. I try not to worry about what my children will have to deal with as my wheels come off. Please grant me dignity and laughter, and a gentle passing.
Now I am home and catching up with the busy life I left behind. My first stop had to be the beach. He loved nothing more than sand between his toes and the comforting rhythm of the ocean slapping a beach, so I made my way to the beach and thought of him.

The first of many stabs I know will come came too quickly. Walking in the door upon my return home, I instinctively went to the phone to call my dad to tell him I was home safe and sound.
I guess he knows.

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