Shine A Light On Me

Tuesday night my dad was still somewhat lucid and he didn’t want to take his pain pills. Thinking about it now, I don’t know how much he understood what was happening anymore. I suspect he couldn’t swallow at that point but didn’t want the syringe full of bitter medications either. He became combative and angry at my mom, who then became upset. 

He started yelling as my mom got on the phone to hospice. She was also angry and unsure how to proceed into the whole event. My dad kept yelling, feebly, “I’m not ready to go to the hospital! I don’t want to die in that hospital!” Trying in vain to not be annoyed at his misdirected anger I sat down next to him and said, “You’re not going to the hospital. There’s not going to be any hospitals, Mike.” 

Suddenly a sadness transfixed his eyes, he sat muted. It was as if he understood perfectly what I had really meant to say. Quickly I began to regret saying anything at all. Suddenly now, after all these years I realize that I should have just been calm and supportive that he would not go. Funny how exhaustion robs of you of your usual clarity.

Hospice said they would not come and my mom grew hostile on the phone. She yelled and became upset, which spurred the woman in charge to come by personally later that night. When the lady arrived, upon seeing my dad, she began to cry. She had met my dad three days before when he could still talk. Now my dad was only blinking, eyes frightened, motionless and silent. The lady comforted my mom. 

•

Things were emotionally impossible from minute to minute now. I was past the point of exhaustion, whatever that is. Later, once my dad had begun to sleep again, I went to the kitchen to look for some Advil. I opened the cabinet and saw the boxes of tea, the one he always requested to drink at the end of the day. I began to cry. The thought of how painful it had been when I first got there, how unsettled I was. Now I would have given anything to go back to all those nights when we drank tea together, when we would chat. How could I have taken it for granted? How did I not realize it would get worse? My mind rushed with pain. 

During this last week, my mom was inundated with bills, paperwork and legal insanity. The end was near. A lawyer came by and began paperwork to make sure her name was on all accounts and to sign over all of my dad’s assets. Something that should have been taken care of earlier and hadn’t happened through what I assume was denial at the incredibly rapid deterioration of the situation. So then in that late moment, we were having to deal with it. 

Our old family friend Pam was over, which felt like both a small, yet substantial comfort. I watched over my dad, his mouth agape, lips chapped, no longer communicating. Pam walked over and put some nearby vaseline on a q-tip and told my dad she was going to put some on his lips so they wouldn’t crack. I felt like an idiot. I still think about it, how stupid I was. 

I was so uneasy thinking of my dad in this state. I’d never cared for anyone in this way, this situation. I didn’t know how to care for him. In some small part of my brain, I was actually trying to spare him the embarrassment of caring for him because I knew he would never have wanted that. Who would think like that? Of all people, his own daughter should have realized our roles were gone, they ceased to exist miles ago. Cancer takes the roles away, whether you’re ready or not. It doesn’t care about your authority or self preservation. Nobody warned me. Nobody told me how it would be.

•

By Wednesday he was no longer awake. He was sleeping all day. I urgently told Jon to hurry before he passed away. Jon arrived later that night around eleven. In the garage we hugged tightly, relieved to see each other’s faces. Now I was sad for what he would endure beyond the doors. I knew Jon was nervous after seven hours of being alone with his thoughts. I tearfully tried to smile and appear calm. “He doesn’t look good. He looks real bad, but it’s going to be okay, it’s still him. Don’t worry,” I said, to try and prepare him. My face was probably a mix of fatigue and red from crying. 

We went inside and crept over to my dad. “Jon’s here Mike, he got here safe,” I said to him. Leaning over his bed, my dad with his eyes opened, tried to speak. His mouth was desperate to form the words but all that came out was a crashing consonant on repeat. You could feel his struggle. The stubborn Mike I knew, still pushing, was in there but his body couldn’t let him speak. Jon began to cry, I put my hand on his back for support. Even for the small years of his life that Jon knew my dad, it was a massive shock to see him in this way.

I tried to say all the things I could think of, in hopes something would fit with whatever it was my dad was attempting to ask. “He just got here, the drive was fine. His parents say hi. Don’t worry, get some rest.” He quieted a bit and his eyes became heavy. After we got alone together Jon said, “I didn’t think it would be this bad.” Two months ago, had been the worst he’d ever looked, two months ago had been unbearable. 

•

That Thursday was equally somber. My sister, her husband, and kids returned. We were all there, waiting for the inevitable. We had been given a pamphlet by the hospice a day earlier, explaining the final stage of death. It was something odd, a few pages open-ended in spiritual connotations. It said things about the person no longer wanting food or water. A person might feel a burst of energy or even claim to be feeling good. This occurred, with the beer request. But now he had passed those stages, he was asleep and yet the pamphlet suggested he could still hear. I sat by his side, held his hand. 

I prayed that last week, helplessly, desperately, an absurd prayer. I prayed and could imagine a miracle. He would wake up, start talking again, then eventually ask for water, eventually food. We’d all celebrate, smile, and rejoice. In my mind I imagined him getting up, into the wheelchair. How we’d have to carefully help him gain weight, safely help him get better. I believed it was possible, I prayed for the most irrational idea ever to exist for the deadliest cancer there is. I promised everything I could think of in return, I begged for it to be me instead of him. I tried to barter with whatever God was listening to let me die of cancer instead of him. I plead everything to make it stop. But instead, he slept, traveling farther away and it felt like a betrayal I would never accept.

In the pamphlet, it described the final moments, when the person is no longer with us, “They are in their new city now.” The idea sounded like a bunch of crap, but it also seemed reasonable. The nurses and pamphlets urged talking to the person since they could still hear. The problem with this idea is that in the previous days when my dad had heard anything, his eyes would fly open and he looked scared, strained but couldn’t communicate. I don’t know at that point if it would’ve happened still, but I was terrified at the chance. I had decided not to talk to him because it felt like torture. I didn’t have a better answer, then or now. It felt better to let him sleep in peace than run the risk of bringing him back to painful consciousness. I would hold his hand, sometimes whisper near him, not knowing if any of it made it through.

•

That Friday we all woke up, ready for the end. It was sometime close to one in the afternoon. My sister came to get me, afraid it was time. His breathing had gotten ragged. I went to his right side and held his hand, my sister crouched over on his left. I whispered to him not to be scared, that I loved him, that everything would be okay. My mom rubbed his chest, she told him everyone was there, he didn’t have to struggle for us anymore, that there was nothing to worry about. 

A moment later there was a soft whine that came from his chest, it almost sounded like a cry. I watched as a tiny teardrop formed in his right eye and ran down the side of his face toward me. My eyes watched as I tried to see into his mind. Was it just a physiological reaction? Did he know? Could he hear? We stood waiting. His ribs showed through his white shirt, rising and falling. Then the breathing stopped and he was gone. All the months, weeks, days, and hours of despair, it was over. 

We had spent so many years struggling to understand each other. There was so much I had looked forward to with him. We were having good years, good memories and I finally felt I understood him. I had been excited about it continuing, making up for all those bad memories and all that anger. No one ever tells you the pain of seeing that door shut. When you have a dysfunctional parent and they die, you also watch that hope die. The hope for better things all becomes part of the past too. 

From the first day I saw my dad sick, I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t stop believing we could push things further, like he did. Every moment was and had been terrifying. No relief. In what I imagine it feels like to be a soldier, we kept going, even though it was impossible and while everything fell apart all around us. No matter how tired, distraught, wounded, I couldn’t leave his side. His body no longer breathing, lay in front of me. 65 years of life, 32 years of my memories, 6 months of suffering, and 3 months battling the monster by his side. Now it was over and he was gone.

In the following few minutes, I felt like I was simultaneously a thousand pounds and light as air. My legs felt as if they would give out. I walked over to the couch and laid down. Staring at the ceiling, I could hear everything but couldn’t talk or move anymore. My mind went blank. Jon sat next to me with tears in his eyes, holding my hand. From the back of the house, I heard the wails of my four-year-old niece, who now knew that her papa was gone. I had no emotion, I had nothing to cry. It felt like I was dead too. My brain and body were overwhelmed by a disconnected signal.

At some point, some people came to take him. I was still on the couch, dazed. My mom was still somehow functioning. I saw the afternoon light from the garage door spill into the kitchen like I’d seen a million times before, on normal days. Two strangers came to take my dad’s body away. 

I heard people struggling to park and get the stretcher to roll inside. A young guy who was in the process of sharing a laugh about some comedic situation that I hadn’t seen, caught my eye. As I lay pale and immovable, he stood in my kitchen with a smile, on the worst day of my life. His face suddenly saw me. I closed my eyes and turned away. I know he didn’t mean anything, I know it was nothing. I hope whoever he was doesn’t feel badly about it.  

When I opened my eyes later, the same guy looked unraveled, clammy, and nervous. My mom, her voice strained, did what she always did to make people feel at ease and herself feel better, she started talking. She showed them pictures of my dad from when they were on their anniversary in Maui in the early 80s. The younger guy said he looked like Elvis. I knew they couldn’t see who my parents were, who my dad was. Not like I did. 

From that picture you didn’t know they were funny, hardworking, compassionate, creative, smart individuals who loved scary movies and who were fantastic cooks. They didn’t know that they danced together at a club in Maui to Let’s Dance by David Bowie and I Melt With You by Modern English. They only looked at an old, flat picture while my dad’s skeletal gray body was a few feet away. 

They eventually put him on their bed to take away. My mom and sister kissed him and I forced myself to do the same so I wouldn’t regret it later. I didn’t want to, not for any reason other than spite at the entire ordeal. I hadn’t wanted it to all end. I didn’t want him to go. I hated all of it. I wobbled over, kissed his forehead and walked away to sit back down as they left the house. Then he was gone. The strongest, hardest working, most reliable person who tried to protect me from everything my entire life was now gone forever.

•

The house suddenly held a void. I gathered strength and stood outside in the backyard. My parent’s garden, decades worth of beautiful flowers, trees and hard work. I stared, heartbroken. The sunlight was shifting to a late afternoon glow. As the tears started to come in, I felt something around me. The neighborhood cat I named Panda was there! 

She swirled her luxurious black, silk tail around me and looked up with her green eyes. The surprise startled me. Smiling, I bent down to pet her and immediately thought of my dad. Did he send her? It seemed like something he would do, “Hey, you go over there and cheer her up,” he’d say. It worked, it stopped me from sobbing. Moving to the front of the house, I sat on our little bench with Jon. 

The front yard was also years of hard work. We sat beside the sidewalk my dad had poured all by himself. I can still see that day, in his navy shorts and baseball hat. In the typical Houston heat, he was setting up perfect concrete rectangles, something professional like a million other secrets he seemed to know. One of the giant magnolia trees sat in front of us, as the other had died years earlier. Now, a young Japanese maple took its place. It was an unusually beautiful March day. He picked a good day.

The sun and sky were now a shimmery golden, the air had a cool breeze. It was gorgeous. Panda sat on Jon’s lap, purring. My dad was no longer in the house. My mom opened all the windows.

 A while later Jon and I found ourselves in the parking lot of the grocery store. I alternated between crying and eating some sushi. Still in a daze, sun setting as we sat in the car. I ate like I was starved. It was the first time I ate without feeling swords of guilt tearing through me for being able to do so. I still felt some guilt, but not as badly. It had been hard to eat those last several days. 

I couldn’t believe he was gone. It felt like a boulder of weight had been removed, but all that was left was despair. I hadn’t realized how much stress it was watching my dad suffer. There was a strange relief I had not anticipated, but that also made me feel terrible guilt. On one hand, I didn’t want him to go, but I could no longer handle seeing him in torturous pain. My tear-streaked face was white and swollen as I ate my first meal with my dad no longer alive.

•

Unbelievably, my vanished menstrual cycle began immediately that late afternoon. There would be no baby to see the immortality of my dad in, to bring unexpected joy to a meaningless loss. It had only been stress. My body was so physically and emotionally stressed from the night he had fallen that I didn’t have a period for an entire month. It felt like a punchline to a cruel joke. 

Later that night before going to bed, I sobbed uncontrollably. All the images of my dad were flipping through my mind. Moments and memories I could not stop from flashing through my eyes of my dad, his jutting bones, him in pain, making horrible sounds. I couldn’t escape them. When I closed my eyes I could see everything, in unending amounts, faster and faster. “How am I ever going to be okay again? I don’t even remember what he used to look like anymore!” I began to scream. Jon clasped his arms around me. My eyes were swollen.

•

The day ended, the house was dark and quiet. Everyone was exhausted and in bed. Dehydrated from a month’s worth of tears, I quietly crept down the hallway to get something to drink. I stopped in the hallway and looked at the back of our living room. The hospice bed where my dad had been, was gone. He died in the same place we always had our Christmas tree. Another thought that I didn’t know what to do with, so I threw it into the pile with the others in the closet of my brain.

I stood there wondering if any of it was real. How could he possibly be gone? The corner was empty, the void transfixed me. The yellow glow of a night light plugged into the wall was all that remained. The light shone onto the wall and floor like a perfectly symmetrical, diamond prism. I stared at it for a few seconds as if it were a memorial. 

The red wax glow of a near empty, guardian angel candle flickered nearby, in the dark. The sight of it almost coming to an end urgently sent me to get another. Quietly, I retrieved a new one from the garage and lit its wick, placing it next to the one that wouldn’t survive the night. I knew how silly it was but I didn’t care. I still didn’t want to let go. I hated to imagine him alone somewhere in the dark.