My Parents Died 1 Year Apart. I Wasn't Prepared For The Way Grief Showed Up.
Dad is lost in the assisted-living lodge, again. We find him in the stairwell. Last week, he left a tap running and water flowed into lower apartments. He walks into other residents’ suites without invitation. He pees in his closet. Dad’s name is placed on an urgent waitlist for a nursing home and a space opens. Mom asks if the move can be delayed until after Christmas, but the answer is no, because the spot will be given to the next person. His intake is set for Dec. 23. It’s Christmas and Dad is moving to an institution.
Dad finishes his blueberry pie and doesn’t know it’s his last meal at the lodge. He sets down his fork and Mom, in her wheelchair, rests her frail hand on his.
Mom copes in life with cheerfulness, even when there’s no reason for it. This was probably learned when she faced — as a 7-year-old — the unimaginable grief of her mother’s sudden and unexpected death.
With difficulty, due to osteoporosis in her spine, Mom tilts her head toward Dad. She pats his hand and smiles, even though she knows, after 60 years of marriage, they won’t live together again.
“What?” Dad glowers.
“Goodbye, Jimmy,” Mom says and holds her smile, her positivity unrelenting.
“Let’s go, Dad.” I wipe ice cream from his chin.
“Where?”
“To your new home, Jimmy,” Mom says.
We told Dad many times about the move but, at this stage, he can’t remember things for even a moment. His eyes dart between Mom and me, “Where?”
“We’ll visit you, Jimmy,” Mom says.
Dad stands and follows me through the dining room. He trusts me, and I feel I’m betraying him. It’s the only viable option, I tell myself.
On snow-covered roads, we drive through the dark. Dad leans forward as snowflakes skim up the windshield. He asks who I am, the first time he doesn’t appear to know me. We turn onto the exit ramp, and he says, “Good.”
I don’t ask what’s good.
We stop in front of the nursing home, an old red brick low-rise building with three wings, and I step into the cold. From the trunk, I take the suitcase we packed for Dad and then open his door.
“This is where you are going to live now, Dad, they’re expecting you.”
I feel like throwing up.
Dad glances at the suitcase and — showing a clarity we hadn’t seen in years — knows exactly what is happening. He refuses to leave the car.
On the concrete, I kneel and urge him to get out. He shakes his head, juts out his jaw and doesn’t move.
“Dad, you have to,” I say, probably the first time I’ve told my father he has to do anything. At a loss, I take his right foot and try to place it on the ground. He jerks it away and shouts, “No!”
“They’ll take really good care of you. You’ll probably like it.”
Dad looks down at me and lowers an eyebrow as if to say, don’t lie to me.
I explain he needs more care and attention than the lodge can provide. With his intellect back — at least in this moment — he understands and, thankfully, climbs out.
Dad hasn’t spoken a full sentence in months but, as we walk through the sliding doors, he says, “This’s a hell of a way to die.”
We visit Dad often, but he is desolate. The caregivers are saints but overworked. We find him leaning against a wall with bare and swollen feet. He pushes white-haired ladies, who resemble Mom, around in their wheelchairs. They are angry and shout for help. An accomplished marathoner, Dad needs to exercise and jogs in the halls. He is told to stop but keeps running.
The detachment from Mom must create a sense of abandonment and fear. Dad acts violently toward a caregiver. Protocol requires an ambulance to be called, and Dad screams like an animal as paramedics forcefully strap him to a stretcher.
***
Six years prior, Mom and Dad had enjoyed retirement until Dad displayed more-than-normal memory loss and was diagnosed with dementia. Initially, he joked about it. When asked how things were, he said, “All things considered, pretty good, but there’s a lot to consider.”
At the same time, Mom’s osteoporosis restricted her to a wheelchair, and they could no longer manage in the family home. They moved to a nearby assisted-living lodge. They liked residing there. It was like a nice hotel.
Dad’s world shrunk. He always recognized family but eventually couldn’t remember our names. Helping Mom, even getting her a glass of water, became difficult. When she asked his opinion, he stared at her with anxiety and confusion.
We would go for drives with Mom in the front seat, Dad in the back. Wearing his wrap-around sunglasses, he smiled while staring at the snow-covered peaks. Having lunch at a rest stop, Dad ate his sandwich, half of Mom’s and four cookies. He was happy in the mountains.
***
Strapped to a stretcher at the nursing home, Dad is transported to an emergency department. In the hospital waiting room, we hear his shouting. My wife, Lisa, arrives and calms him. Dad refuses to release her hand when he’s admitted and taken to a ward.
Two days pass. He sleeps — sedated — and I stare at the wall. Dad is 85 but has the build of a 30-year-old after decades of training and competing in marathons. His appetite has disappeared. Food trays sit untouched in the corner.
A woman enters his room with a clipboard. A doctor, I presume, but instead of a white coat she’s wearing a floral blouse and skirt.
“Are you Jim’s son?” she asks.
I nod and shake her hand.
“I’m Jocelyn Hughes, your father’s palliative doctor.” Her hand is warm.
“Palliative?”
“He’s in late-stage dementia,” she says compassionately. “He’s stopped accepting food.”
“It’s been a rough week,” I say. “His appetite will return.”
She nods, but it isn’t in agreement.
She takes me to the unit’s central desk and shows me Dad’s personal directive. I have no idea how it arrived there. Dad clearly states — through the directive — he doesn’t want treatment if, “My death is imminent with no reasonable expectation of recovery.”
“That’s for cancer, isn’t it?” I ask.
“It’s for many things. If your Dad continues to refuse food,” she rests her hand on the directive, “he doesn’t want feeding tubes or other interventions,” she explains frankly. “When a patient hasn’t left instructions — like Jim has — we must try to keep them alive. But that leads to weeks of intrusive procedures, which typically don’t work.”
“So, what happens?”
“We continue to offer him food and manage his pain with morphine.”
“What pain?”
“For distress related to malnutrition.”
She gently touches my arm and returns to Dad. I brace myself against the desk.
The unstated is he could die of starvation.
***
I sit on a hard plastic chair and hold Dad’s hand. I was probably a preschooler when I last held his hand, and now, decades later, his hand is restrained with a white cotton strap tied from the bedrail to his wrist. All four limbs are secured because his uncontrollable behavior has continued. He can’t bend his legs, fold his hands, or even scratch an itch.
The straps have foam padding where they touch his skin. Dad is tied down, like a prisoner, yet cushions are thoughtfully provided for comfort. Numb and bewildered, I stare at the foam. Here my father lies — the same guy who sprinted and smiled when crossing marathon finish lines — tethered to a hospital bed. I want to cry but can’t.
When I was young, Dad would shout, “Toughen up!” when I displayed pain, cried or showed fear. I hated him for this.
A week passes and food trays keep coming. We’re hopeful when Dad takes a bite, but he spits it out. His lips are dry, his eyes sunken and skin rubbery. He weakens and the restraints are removed.
My siblings and I collect his marathon medals and hang them on an unused intravenous pole. We place a family photo album along with a picture of Mom and Dad on the nightstand. We play his music, and even sedated, Dad taps two fingers to Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”
A second agonizing week passes, and although mostly comatose, Dad keeps going. When showing discomfort, he is administered morphine. To finish this marathon, why, at the start, didn’t they simply inject two weeks worth of morphine in one shot? Dad would have preferred that. I make plans to shorten my life before reaching this stage.
***
Sixteen days after his admission to the hospital, we are told the end is near.
I push my arm under Dad’s boney shoulders and hug him. “I love you, Dad,” I say. “You were a good dad.” Can he hear me? I have only said these words a few times. Why didn’t I tell him every day? Why wait until these last moments?
Seeing his medals I ask, “When was your last marathon, Dad?” He would have been in his 70s and — if I had known it was his last — I would have dropped everything, got in shape and run with him.
He labors to inhale, and the gaps between each breath lengthen. Was that his last breath? No, another comes, and another. Eventually nothing.
“He’s in a better place. His suffering has ended,” Mom says. Although true, it doesn’t ease the pain, so I busy myself with funeral arrangements, settling Mom in a nursing home, cleaning out the apartment and executor tasks. Something boils below the surface, but I toughen up and hold it down.
***
A year passes, and on a spring afternoon, I visit Mom. She’s just returned to the nursing home after a weeklong hospital stay to treat pneumonia.
Propped up in her bed with pillows, she holds my hand and smiles as I give an update on her grandchildren. She asks, “How are you doing, sweetie?” I say fine and that I’ll return after dinner.
“Bye honey,” she says with her big smile and a wave.
Driving back that evening, a nurse calls, “Your mom has passed, I’m sorry. I was feeding her dinner,” she says. “She went peacefully. Her heart stopped.”
Even in her death, Mom would be cheerful and might say, “I’ll be with Jimmy again!”
I organize another funeral and continue executor work. I become detached, short-tempered and argumentative with those still living. I sleep, eat and drink too much.
Impulsively, I sell my beloved white motorcycle that carried me to Alaska and back three times. I buy the latest generation — the all-black model — and escape on a 10,000-mile trip across the country. Speeding down a remote gravel highway in Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s a risk of striking a bull moose. I would die instantly — not a bad outcome.
***
Only in hindsight, I see myself stumbling in the fog of grief, along its rugged and painful path. Too many times I acted self-destructively or in hurtful ways toward those I care about. I buried myself in work, blew up at loved ones or disappeared emotionally. I’m fortunate to have a forgiving and supportive family, especially my wife of 36 years, Lisa.
Too many of us never learn or even talk about grief. Similar to parenthood, we enter grief with no experience. At least parenthood provides real-time feedback: the baby cries, you provide comfort, and it settles. Grief’s feedback loop is long-term, covert, sometimes harsh and can result in broken families — broken lives. Everyone’s experience of grief is unique and there is no “right way” to prepare for what we can’t possibly conceive of until it’s encountered. I wonder how different things could have been if I hadn’t waded into everything so unequipped — so completely naive. Levels of acceptance do arrive, and though it’s never going to be easy, it might have been less damaging.
I’ve learned that grief is its own marathon — a run that never really ends. Grief can only exist alongside our ability to give and accept love and — ultimately — it has deepened my love and respect for Mom and Dad.
***
After I return home from Newfoundland, Lisa, wearing her bright blue cycling tights, says, “Let’s go,” and forces me — at noon — out of bed. In silence, we pedal along the river and stop at a cafe.
I start crying in the food counter lineup. It turns to sobbing, and no amount of toughening up makes it stop. What is happening? Am I losing my mind?
I rush outside and sit on a warm bench in the sun. Shaking, I hold my head and watch tears strike the concrete amongst coffee stains, flattened french fries and a cigarette butt.
Lisa takes off her vest and offers me a sandwich. I force myself to take bites, chew and swallow. It is salty, wet and sticky from tears.
Sunlight reflects off the water and a gentle wind blows. People pass by, walking through their lives, going to school, going to work, spending time with family and maybe searching for understanding.
“Let’s go home,” I say quietly.
“I think we should keep going,” Lisa says.
I nod.
We get the bikes and continue our ride.
John Mawdsley is a short story writer and essayist who lives in Calgary, Alberta. His nonfiction has appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper and Pacific Yachting magazine. He loves hiking and skiing with his family in the Rockies, and long motorcycle rides. You can find more of his work at johnmawdsley.com.
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