On the anniversary of my father's death

 

The three of us at the official opening of The Village of Erin Meadows Retirement

A year ago, I lost my father. At the time, I started a blog post but I didn't have words. I didn't have much of anything, really. In the interim, my brother John has written some beautiful posts about him, which I don't think I have the ability to match. But here I am, at 6 in the morning a few days before the anniversary, with this story forming in my brain that didn't let me sleep. 

The thing is, I can't really talk about my dad without talking about my mom. My most recent memories, and the thing that really bonded us close, was being her caregivers. I moved back home almost a decade ago when I had my hysterectomy so they could take care of me. And then I stayed to take care of them.

At some point, I don't know when, she had a stroke which caused damage to her brain. I didn't know for the longest time what had happened, as she unfortunately had been told by doctors her whole life that her pain was all in her head so she just learned to live with it. I was working, so dad took her to her appointments. Then when I left my job and looked around, I saw just how bad it had gotten and the toll it was taking on dad. So I devoted myself to helping and just accepted that would be my life for a while.

Not going to lie, living with dad wasn't easy then. He had a lot of unresolved anger about how things went for him in the 90s, when he lost his job thanks to free trade. He was in his 50s and the only job he was able to get was being a butcher at a grocery store. They ran through all their savings before he was able to get even that job. Then he lost his sister (who basically raised him after his own mother died when he was 5) to cancer and she didn't even tell him she was sick until she was near the end. During a late night talk with my mom, she lamented how she lost the man she had married then, how she knew how hurt and angry he was but he closed himself up to her. Then he contracted myasthenia gravis, which put him on disability and he didn't work again. For his generation, being a provider for his family was paramount and I saw how much it hurt him.

Dad was like an Italian grandmother. To him, food is love. You couldn't go visit without him insisting on feeding you and more than once, giving you food to take home. So when mom went through periods of not eating, or saying she wanted something but lost her appetite for it by the time he finished making it (something I understand a lot more as that was my experience for the first 4 chemo treatments) - well, let's just say there was a lot of calming down to do.

Hanging on the living room couch at the family homestead. 

The other thing she kept from us was that her uterus was prolapsing. Dad discovered one day when he went to assist her - it was falling out. And this meant she was getting UTIs, which were accelerating the brain damage. Since she had left it so long, the usual remedies didn't work and she needed surgery, which had a year-long wait as only one surgeon does it. And that's when it got nightmarish for dad and I. When she got one, she was up all the time and was constantly distressed at her lack of control. By the time she ended up in the hospital for the second and last time, dad and I had switched to shift sleeping every 4 hours so one of us was always available to help mom. We came home from the hospital, looked at each other in utter exhaustion, and said we couldn't do it anymore.

So mom moved to LTC. We sold the house. And that 6 months was incredibly painful. My dad stayed with my sister Trish so he could visit mom most days, only coming home briefly. Leaving me dealing with sorting through a lifetime of their memories. Which as you can tell by this blog, I'm still doing.

But the move ended up being great for their relationship. Freed from the burden of taking physical care of her, he became her husband again. He lived with my sister and took the bus almost every day to see her. My parents were social creatures who in the course of raising us, cut themselves off from their friends. At the Village, they made friends. They did things together. They were happy. When they finally finished building the adjoining retirement residence, dad moved in and he just had to walk across a hall to go visit, and then just go home when he needed a break. I would come up once a week and play bingo with the two of them and have fun giving the staff member John running the game a hard time. (He's been great though - the day Dad died he was the first person I found when I arrived to tell Mom and he took control of everything.) 

Dad lived alone for the first time in his life but he wasn't isolated. Until Covid hit. 

This was the first time my parents got to be together in my dad's apartment after Covid hit. There had been a few outdoor visits but the iron curtain that went down between the two sides meant that she couldn't be moved. To make this happen, I had to appeal to the Director and Assistant Director and wait until both sides were clear of outbreak, which took months. That day we all did rapid tests, then I had to push my mom over to dad's side. She was a mess - she thought that this meant he was dying. But once she got there, they just sat like this the whole time she was there.

Dad was able to go visit her for a couple of days after, then outbreak came back and it was back to how it was before. I believe that broke him. He slipped into depression, and so did she. His health took a nose dive after that. And I had a front row seat as their go-between, as the one who was there every week, spending a couple hours with one of them, then the other, and making sure I called dad when I was with mom so they could speak.

Eventually it was decided that dad was going to move in with my sister. But it was too late. Just before he moved out, he fractured his spine. A micro-fracture, no idea how he did it, but he was in constant pain. He wasn't able to walk without pain again, and only walked with assistance.

This was the last time they saw each other - celebrating their 55th anniversary. Sure beat how they spent it the previous year. Shortly after that, Dad ended up in the hospital. He had been moved to rehab. He kept saying he'd see Mom when he got out. It didn't happen. I ended up being the last one of the family to see him and speak with him. It was supposed to be a regular visit, seeing him in the hospital after visiting Mom, but that day he ended up in the ICU.

The rest of my strong memories of Dad, including the final ones, are tied up with baseball. Those are in this post.

Mom and baseball, those are my dominant memories of my Dad. And even though he's crossed over, I still talk to him sometimes. I know he's watching over all of us. I felt him with me during some rough patches I've had over the last 6 months. I'm finding I'm carrying more grief about Mom than him, although I know it's my grief around both that triggered my breast cancer, the same thing that killed his Mom. It's not a coincidence. Someone pointed out the tumour is right on my heart. My parents are my heart. I've had to let go of taking care of Mom and that's been hard because that was my sacred trust with Dad. He trusted me to take care of her when he couldn't. But as my brother Mark pointed out, they would both want me to take care of myself now, so that's what I'm doing. 

Still, I miss my Dad.