Father's Day

For the past nine years Father's Day has been a sort of bittersweet day that none of us know how to celebrate, or whether or not we even should.  

My mom won't say anything until inevitability my twin brings it up, "Do you miss dad today mom?" My mom will respond in the incredulous kind of way she often does when talking about my dad, "Of course Alana!" We will generally go the rest of the day without saying anything more about the subject.  

Despite our lack of verbalization we are all caught up in our thoughts...thinking about our dad.  As each year passes I find myself crying less over the loss of him, but occasionally I will hear a song, and it will bring me back to a moment, and I utterly surrender to it.

I often think about the hours I spent upstairs in what used to be my mom and dad's room but had been transformed into a makeshift hospital room.  Eventually, my dad would spend every single day, every single hour and every single minute in that room.  

That room, the one that my twin sister and I used to play in like it was some forbidden castle, dressing up in my mother's high heel shoes, the red leather heeled ones with the gold soles, wearing my dad's ties as scarves. Where I would read the Mother's Day card that my mom has had in the same frame for the past 15+ years with my dad's handwriting to which he signed Your Mrs. Doubtfire.

I think about how lonely my dad must have been during his battle with cancer. I thought about what it would be like to know you are dying, but to also know that everyone else around you would go on.  At the time I couldn't understand how that thought could bring anyone any peace.

My dad had a jovial voice, the way he spoke or told stories just made you happy.  You could feel the joy he had at the time the story happened, or the joy he got from telling the story.  The anticipation of setting up a joke on one of us, though nothing seemed to make my father crack up more than to take a piece of paper (usually homework of ours) and draw a cat and just as we thought "awww a cat" he would draw poop coming out . 

As my dad became weaker he stopped looking like the dad I knew and recognized. As his body shrank he had to stop wearing his wedding band, something that he was rarely seen without. The tall, robust dad I knew no longer existed. The most difficult change was the sound of voice.  As the months passed on it became frail, and when the pain was too much it became a whimper, and then a cry.  

I used to sit upstairs with my dad as he laid in bed and watched movies, anything to pass the time.  The time that was going by so fast, and yet so impossibly slow, waiting for the end.  I would sit there holding his hand, desperately trying to commit to memory what it felt like, and what it looked like.  Sometimes we'd sit there for hours not saying anything. When I had to go to sleep to get up for school the next morning my mom would take over, and it was like that until the day he went to the nursing home, trading off vigil.

We had a hospice nurse whose name I cannot recall, she encouraged us to say everything we wanted to before it was too late.  One particular day my mom, sister, brother, dad, hospice nurse, and I all sat in the family room.  My dad in the recliner we had purchased for him as he no longer could stand couches.  He sat there surrounded by the array of medicines that had been prescribed to dull the pain.  To try to fool his body into believing that tumors were not in fact taking over.  My dad perpetually smelled of Bengay or Tiger Balm.  His body was exhausted, and ached all the time. We would spend hours trying to massage away pain that would never, could never, go away.  He was wearing a blue sweatshirt that hung very loosely on him, like all of his clothes did.  

I cannot recall what my brother, sister, or mom said.  The only thing I remember is telling him I didn't want him to go and I ran over and hugged him and we cried.  And now I can look back on this and though it is is one of the most painful memories I have, I have eternally grateful to have had this moment with him. A few months later he would be gone.

My dad died a week or so just before Father's Day that year.  It was a beautiful sunny day. My sister and I had just finished up with finals at school.  It was in the afternoon and my sister and her fiancée came to pick us up to take us to the nursing home because they didn't think he was going to make it through the night.

I remember the artwork, and the steps, and the pristine white high gloss laminate tiles of the second floor.  As I made my way down the hallway I remember approaching the room with considerable hesitation, not wanting to know what was behind the door, afraid to know. As I peered in, the sunlight was pouring in from a window on the right hand side of the room.  My dad's bed was raised in an upright position, my mom by his side.  Other family members already in the room, my dad's eyes were open, his brilliant blue eyes shone in the sun, but he was already gone. 

No one really said anything, we all just sat there crying. Other family members came, and we continued our crying, and just when someone thought that they could cry no longer, reserves of tears were found and they would flow freely down our faces again.

When we got home we realized that we wouldn't need the oxygen tank, or the baby monitor anymore, the bottles of pills, or the notebook of when medicine was prescribed and at what time. All these things could go.

After my dad's funeral, I was in the car with my sister and my cousin.  My dad had a love of all things Fleetwood Mac.  We listened to Rhinannon and Landslide and we laughed and we cried about memories we had of my dad, or to my cousin, 'Uncle Doug' . 

There is a lyric in Landslide that goes "Well I've been afraid of changing because I built my life around you."  No matter the original intent of that song, I have always felt that it applies to my father perfectly.  My father was the nucleus of our family, and we have struggled to build our lives without him, but each day we try. 

My dad found joy in life, in simple every day tasks, and he didn't take himself or any of us too seriously.  The greatest gift he has given me has been to make time to laugh every single day, as cliche as it sounds, it has been  one of the more enduring lessons of his life.  That, and you are never too old to draw cats pooping.