My dad passed away last month.
Everyone’s been so kind, asking how Mom is doing. She is doing as well as you might expect. Spend 57 years married to someone, even though caring for him the last few years took up nearly all of her time and energy, even though at the end his dementia made him agitated and angry and often hard to be around, even though all of those things, when that person is no longer there, they leave an enormous void. It takes a fair bit of time to figure out how to fill that void.
It takes some time to figure out who you are when you were someone’s wife and now you are someone’s widow.
I look at all of the things Mom did for Dad, especially in the last months of his life, and then I look at SG, and I hope like hell he will be happy in a care facility.
I’m kidding. I’m sure he will like the candy striper I hire to change his pants and help him with the shower.
I don’t know, maybe it is inappropriate to joke about these things, but you know Dad always injected humor into even the most awful of situations, and so it is something of a reflex. I get in trouble a lot for injecting humor at inappropriate times, so I suppose you could say I got my inheritance early.
It is not a light thing, even though it was expected, to lose a father like mine. He was bigger than life, bigger than mountains to me. He was often very difficult to absorb, he could be extremely difficult and temperamental and he had little tolerance for your feelings. He was also wickedly funny and had the biggest, best laugh. He loved his family more than anything and I have so many wonderful memories from my growing years. Dad gave me the gift of his time and attention, over and over again. He wasn’t just teaching me how to change the oil, steer out of a spin on ice, hitch up the horse trailer and back up my rig. He was giving me the best of himself. We bonded over horses and sports. He never missed a basketball game, not once that I can remember, though I would have appreciated him not telling me to jump higher so often. (I'm TALL, Dad, I don't HAVE to.)
He was in hospice for the last month, first with a home care team and then, at the end, at Hospice House. They were wonderful. His propensity to drop the F bomb on a regular basis (also my inheritance, apparently) didn't faze them one bit.
He lived a good, long life. He loved and he was loved. He was boundless. We will miss him, and come spring we will take his ashes to the salt water and we will raise a glass (or three) in his honor and we will tell stories. Some of them will even be true.
