The start of the long goodbye

Last updated on 8 December 2020

“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold onto. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.” —Lau Tzu

There is no instruction manual for this: When we know someone close to us is going to die and can do nothing to change the course yet would if we could.

My dad and I are are starting to say “so long” to each other. His cancer, discovered over the 4th of July, is terminal. We don’t know how much time he has. The doctors say a few weeks or a few months. There is no cure and no way to stop the cancer.

My mom died of cancer more than thirty years ago. Seeing my dad suffer a similar condition brings back the helplessness I had when I was 22. What do we do for the dying? 

I find myself focusing on the little details of Dad’s daily life: Ensuring he takes his pain medication, filling his oxygen tanks, getting him Ensure from the refrigerator and making and clearing away meals for him. Straightening his apartment. 

He and I have spoken about his will. A durable power of attorney. A health care directive. And I’ve taken care of working with an attorney friend to ensure the documents are according to Dad’s wishes. These things make me feel useful. In charge. Capable.

What I feel is ineffective. Lost. Sad. Confused. I thought we had more time.

Yet what I feel is ineffective. Lost. Sad. Confused. I thought we had more time. The weight of appearing capable so my father doesn’t have to worry about little stuff, so he can focus on what his dying means for him, is unrelenting.  I carry on the other parts of my life—my work as a Realtor. Things with my wife and kids. I’m even training for a marathon. In fact, I see my running as just about the only time I escape the worry that my father will have a miserable dying that will invalidate all the good things he has felt about his life.

We don’t do mourning well in the U.S. There seems to be a deeply-rooted ethic of moving on quickly after a loved one’s death. The ceremonial end of life routines in our culture feel directed at getting people in the ground and out of our sight swiftly and efficiently so we all can get back to the business of living. 

I’ve read about deliberately slower rituals in other cultures. Rituals that allow loved ones to experience loss in meaningful ways without the push to move on. 

When mom died of pancreatic cancer in February 1982, my sister, Dad and I didn’t know how to grieve. We split into three separate mourners. People said things, the right things, earnest things, but it felt as if we were supposed to move on with life almost immediately. So I did. Yet Mom’s death occupied my mind so immensely and unexpectedly for a decade or longer and looking back I can see decisions I made governed by my feelings about her loss.

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How my father dies suddenly feels similar. Though I have decades more life experience and have done the work to become more mature, accepting and adaptable, I already feel Dad’s loss before he dies. It’s as if I’ve fallen into the  psychological category “anticipatory grief.” 

Dad and I have begun to talk about the meaning of his life and what he wants most in whatever time he has left.

Dad and I have begun to talk about the meaning of his life and what he wants most in whatever time he has left.

He wants to finish his Galimauphry, an annual compilation of his personal observations. It’s a mixture of poetry, commentary on the news and his own thoughts on what makes for meaning. He’s been writing it since he retired in 1992.

Writing is one of the twin passions to which my father has devoted his retirement. Music is the other. Classical music fills him and poetry feeds his soul. I think I inherited a love for both words and music from him. 

He wants to write his own obituary too, something that at first seems icky, but in the end makes total sense. 

Dad is choosing to confront the really big questions of life and death as he grapples with the cancer taking over his body and faces the reality that there is nothing he can do to prevent his dying, only accept it. 

I, too, am affected. I also reflect on Dad’s process of dying and the same questions of life and death and what it means for me. This time dredges up all the long buried feelings I had when my mom died. Stuff I thought I had put on a shelf never to revisit.

The deaths of our parents deeply impact us. And my Dad’s impending death mingles with my Mom’s in a movie that replays over and over as I try to make sense of how I feel about him as a father and as a person, just as I did with Mom. These are not easily digested things, these dyings. And as Buddhist as I try to be, I also feel the profound loss of him, even now, while he is still alive I am readying myself for the moment he passes.

Life is akilter, careening off on some ungrounded course, like a ship on an unpredictable sea, climbing waves of sadness, guilt, appreciation, gratitude and a sense of loss, of missed opportunity through the years to do better, to have a better, closer relationship.

I love my dad, but he hasn’t been perfect. I’m certain my children could write something similar. In his decline and pain now, I look at him and think about all the feelings I have had throughout my years with him—from hero, to gentle guiding hand, to frustrating judge of me, to stable parent who helped get me out of jams when I needed, to half of my parents who raised me to be a responsible adult.

His touch is all over my life even when he was miles away. I never wanted to be like him and I did. He has in many ways always been the model of patience that I’ve emulated. And he is stubborn and unfeeling sometimes, just as I suppose I have been.

But his fade into disease ultimately creates compassion in me. All the stuff I’ve held against him recedes like a tide. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself, because I get to go on while he has to face his end. It is one of those things that I hope I can do with dignity. Death is not something you can outwit, beguile and ignore. It’s not a relative on whom you can close the door or better yet ignore the knock. Death comes. With its malevolent partner cancer, death infiltrates the bones, the tissues and steals one’s life. It is relentless and overwhelming like an army at the castle gates.

I don’t focus on me and my feelings of sadness over my father leaving me. At least I try not to. The mission I’ve adopted is to contribute to Dad’s quality of life here, now, in this moment. I want to strip all the little details away so Dad can focus on his meaning, his life, and ultimately, his death. I want to take away as many of the practical day-to-day worries about bills, and groceries and health care so he can just be, allowing his mind to wander over the landscape that’s been his life. It is the best way I can think of to contribute and to thank him for being my father. For getting me through the minefields of childhood and adolescence. I owe him that. 

Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can be your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.  — Rumi.

PostScript: My father died yesterday August 6, 2018. He died in his sleep. His passing appeared peaceful and without much pain. 

His body will be cremated. We will scatter his ashes in accordance with his wishes, somewhere meaningful. He did not want a memorial so we will say a few things and read some of his poetry. And feel him pass. He will be gone but in my heart and mind–and in those whom he touched–his memory will remain. 

I’m aware that there is no going around loss like this. One must go through it. There are now details to work through. Affairs of his to manage. It helped to have significant conversations with Dad about his life. To be clear on his wishes. To appreciate with him his highs and feel the sadness of his lows. Just as with any life. I am grateful for this time we had and hope as his son I served him well.