#dying parent
It’s a strange thing to go about your life when someone you love is dying.
3 weeks and 6 days ago, my dad learned his cancer is growing & isn’t treatable, and chose to start hospice. “Hospice” - I knew in theory what it was. Some vague notion of kind faces and gentle hands that somehow made the journey of last days easy.
You don’t know that the reality of the process is much more stark. Everything we’ve come to expect to do for an illness or injury now must NOT be expected. You don’t know because it’s too morbid, too terrible to ask the grieving what it was like. Embarrassed and helpless, you prop them up in a careful corner with hugs and hand clasps and “thinking of you” texts.
6 days ago, Dad had 1 last round of radiation on the new brain tumors to buy him more time. It has wrought havoc on his body. Father’s Day was spent helplessly praying as he vomited and staggered a path back and forth to the bathroom.
I sat and listened to him breathe, overcome by the thought that this could be it - his last hours. But it wasn’t happening in that vague, nebulous kindness with no pain, no last gentle forehead kisses or my sister and brother-in-law with us to bear witness to the end.
I’m not ready. I want to hear his laugh a hundred more times, memorize the stories to tell his 4 grandchildren, take him on one last drive. I want to play him his favorite songs, take dozens more pictures, and watch one more John Wayne movie with him.
Tonight, he fell. And I was confronted with the other half of this painful journey - my mom. The woman who has led our family through more crap than any person should. The weight of watching her life partner of 48 years suffer, wither, has crippled her. I spent the still midnight end of the equinox calling non-emergency dispatch, on call triage nurses. My sister was pulled from a mom’s haggard sleep as we spoke in quiet hushes of the facts and our fears.
In the midst of this stark revealing, I’m recovering from surgery. The day after dad’s cancer news, I took an Uber to the hospital. I’d never felt more alone. My single-ness lay sharp-edged inside my chest. Precious friends stayed in constant touch, their love a balm across the distance (I love you, @thesassywallflower ). A warmth in the vacantness my family couldn’t or wouldn’t fill in my weakness.
I feel suspended - so much must be done, the days march on, but i can’t help the ear always listening for a text or a call. Oddly moored and waiting for the unknown tide that must come.
Forgive me for this pouring out. My brain is scrabbling to make sense of this weird time I find myself in. Life is so. Damn. Hard right now. And yet - it must be lived.
