My Father
My father passed away yesterday. Lung cancer borne from a lifetime of heavy smoking, and the inevitability of the complications that arose from it: words that are tricky to spell and pronounce, and of which I have no true understanding - "pleurisy," "metastasized," - stick like splinters in my tongue and brain.
My sister and I last saw him a month ago - only the 2nd time in over five years either of us had been in contact with him - and knew then the writing was on the wall.
After being placed in the hospice last weekend his health declined rapidly, going from "no longer than a month" to "less than a week" to "any day now" and finally "a few hours." At the end he was not conscious and on a heavy morphine drip for pain management and comfort. All this was so quick that talk of a "final" visit this weekend was moot. I was updated furiously all day long while at work yesterday by my sister, who was being relayed this information via phone by his (sixth? seventh?) wife.
He's being buried in a V.A. Hospital cemetery in Togus, Maine, the same hospital that was taking care of him since his cancer diagnosis over a year ago. My sister and I are going up next week for the services. He has two brothers, and it's unclear if they will be there too. My father was misanthropic, and he also looked down on his two brothers, so never spoke to them unless he had to.
I'm going through a wide range of emotions and feelings that are difficult to parse. He's the reason I even exist -he met my mother in Vietnam, and she came to the US, and my sister and I were born, and two years later they were divorced. But meeting my mother was one of the few pure and true things he ever did, even if it was by random chance.
I'm angry at how he shaped my life in negative, destructive ways that left scars that took me years to actively stopped covering in shame. And I'm still working hard to scrub the stink of various painful memories off my heart and skin - as if it's an infection and as if it's possible to avoid it. As if his influence will be contagious.
I am sad today. For my sister, and for his wife - we are all bubbling down in this crucible simultaneously, but as variations on a theme.
And I am mourning. But I'm mourning the never-realized possibility of the positive, healthy life he could have lived but didn't, and the positive, healthy relationship we could have had, but hadn't.
My sister and I last saw him a month ago - only the 2nd time in over five years either of us had been in contact with him - and knew then the writing was on the wall.
After being placed in the hospice last weekend his health declined rapidly, going from "no longer than a month" to "less than a week" to "any day now" and finally "a few hours." At the end he was not conscious and on a heavy morphine drip for pain management and comfort. All this was so quick that talk of a "final" visit this weekend was moot. I was updated furiously all day long while at work yesterday by my sister, who was being relayed this information via phone by his (sixth? seventh?) wife.
He's being buried in a V.A. Hospital cemetery in Togus, Maine, the same hospital that was taking care of him since his cancer diagnosis over a year ago. My sister and I are going up next week for the services. He has two brothers, and it's unclear if they will be there too. My father was misanthropic, and he also looked down on his two brothers, so never spoke to them unless he had to.
I'm going through a wide range of emotions and feelings that are difficult to parse. He's the reason I even exist -he met my mother in Vietnam, and she came to the US, and my sister and I were born, and two years later they were divorced. But meeting my mother was one of the few pure and true things he ever did, even if it was by random chance.
I'm angry at how he shaped my life in negative, destructive ways that left scars that took me years to actively stopped covering in shame. And I'm still working hard to scrub the stink of various painful memories off my heart and skin - as if it's an infection and as if it's possible to avoid it. As if his influence will be contagious.
I am sad today. For my sister, and for his wife - we are all bubbling down in this crucible simultaneously, but as variations on a theme.
And I am mourning. But I'm mourning the never-realized possibility of the positive, healthy life he could have lived but didn't, and the positive, healthy relationship we could have had, but hadn't.