Gone

This isn’t going to be a funny story. Sorry. I’m not going to regale you with tales of my parenting blunders or middle age melodrama. I need to talk about goodbyes. I’ve been saying a lot of them lately and I’ve found it both overwhelming and somehow grounding. Grounding because loss has a way of putting everything into perspective.

The hardest goodbye I’ve ever had to say was to my father 23 years ago. I was pregnant with my first son when my dad was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. I spent most of my pregnancy focused on him, on his needs. We all did. The entire family. When your loved one is dying, you don’t really worry about the “goodbye” part. You know it’s coming but you hunker down and get the job done. Whether it’s calling hospice or ordering a hospital bed, you just do what needs doing. It’s how we cope, we busy ourselves with the minutia of daily living so we don’t have to do the really hard thing and face death. To face death is to allow our emotions to have free reign. It’s inviting chaos.

While my dad was dying I tried not to think about the baby growing inside of me. I didn’t know the baby yet, but I knew my dad. And my dad needed me. So I did whatever was necessary, which meant dressing in my hideous 90’s era maternity clothes and driving 40 minutes away to see my dad, every day. My hope was that the garish array of blinding neon patterns and giant floppy sailor collars might confuse or frighten the grim reaper, should he appear. Turns out the Grim Reaper isn’t scared of much, not even a swollen pregnant lady in polka dots.

I remember feeding my dad applesauce when he could no longer feed himself. I was fully aware of the irony of spoon-feeding the man who brought me into this world while very soon I’d be doing the same with his grandson. I remember Dad didn’t want the applesauce, he just pushed the mush around in his mouth. I kept encouraging him to eat, but it was a losing battle. The nurses told me rejecting food was part of shutting down. This was death. Death doesn’t happen at the moment your heart stops beating. It creeps in slowly. Death pulls up a chair and stays awhile.

Dad spent the last few weeks of his life in a coma. But I visited him daily and talked to him, hoping, praying he could hear me. I told him secrets, like the baby names we’d chosen. I told him I loved him, something we didn’t say much when he was alive. It just wasn’t Dad’s way. I told him he was my hero and always would be.

Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath my Wings” had gone platinum in 1990 and was still popular the year my dad died. I couldn’t bear to hear it as it reduced me to a boneless, sobbing heap every time it played. As did Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”, which we had performed live at Dad’s memorial.

The last time I saw my father I kissed his cheek and told him I’d see him in the morning, but my husband, knowing better, caught my gaze and slowly shook his head. So I leaned over my dad and whispered, “If I don’t see you in the morning, It’s okay, Dad. You can go on ahead. I know I’ll see you again soon.” It would be the last time I ever saw my father alive. Dad passed away the following morning.

The day my dad died it was a beautiful spring morning. My husband and I were assembling a baby swing for our child who would join us exactly 30 days later. After I got the call from my sister that my dad had passed, I remember looking up at the sun and wondering how it could possibly still be shining on the day my father left this earth and yet it did. The world went on, and so did we. Our first son was born one month later, and we stopped grieving on that day and started celebrating. It’s what Dad would have wanted.

I was only 29 when my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Twenty-three years later my friends are now beginning to lose their parents. One dear friend lost both of her parents this month and my oldest friend just lost her father to cancer last night. All three of them were like family to me and their passing brings back memories of my own father’s death. It’s painful watching my friends say goodbye to their parents, yet I know they’ll get through it, we all do.

Most of my friend’s parents had led long and full lives. They were prepared to leave. Their ducks were in a row, so to speak. The problem for those of us left behind is that our ducks are not in a row, they’re horribly askew. Our ducks don’t even know there is a row. Our ducks are giving us a giant middle finger/feather as we try to cope with the emotional fallout from our loss. Our minds swirl with unanswered questions until we fear they’ll explode. But that’s what vodka’s for, or valium or prayer or whatever gets you through the night. Because death is hardest on the living.

We are the ones left behind to pick up the pieces. We are the ones orphaned and left alone in this world. We feel the hollow space our parent or loved one has left behind. We feel it like a visceral punch to the gut. No matter how long we’ve been given to process the idea of their passing, we’re never really prepared when they leave.

After my dad died he visited me in a dream. Although only a dream, it was incredibly vivid and real. In the dream, Dad told me he knew that I was sad, but that I needed to concentrate on my baby and find peace. He told me we’d be together again very soon. He said, “Where you are, time appears to move slowly. But in reality, it will pass very quickly, like the blink of an eye, and we will be together again.”

I awoke with a sense of complete calm and tranquility, unlike anything I’d ever felt in my life. All of my anxiety was gone. I felt certain that I’d just been with my father. I knew his voice, the resonance and cadence of it. I wrote down what he said, so I’d remember it always. I’ve turned to it over the years when times have been tough, reciting it like a prayer. I’ve shared that story only with a few close friends over the years, but I’m opening a vein here in the hope that by sharing this story it will help someone else who’s hurting.

I have no idea if what I experienced is common or not. Perhaps my grief conjured up exactly what I needed in my dreams; a final audience with my father. Reassurance we’d see one another again. Did I experience a real connection to the other side or was it a mere fabrication of my unconscious mind’s desire. And did it matter either way? Real or imagined, my father had given me a final gift; complete and total peace.

Undoubtedly 2017 will be filled with more goodbyes for every one of us. Each person will handle those goodbyes in their own way, be it through prayer, therapy, or perhaps a very large gin and tonic. Whatever your method of coping, know you’re not alone in your struggle. Unfortunately, grief is a common thread in our fragile lives. It’s a part of the human condition that connects us all.

I wish I could tell you how to heal and when it will stop hurting. But I haven’t any answers. The only advice I can give is to honor the person you’ve lost by keeping their memory alive within you and sharing the best parts of them with the people you meet. Pass their light on, and in that way, they will remain with you always.

(I love you, Dad, and miss you every day. You are in my heart now and forever.)