His Eyes Were Staring Into Something Beautiful
His eyes were staring into something beautiful as he passed, my brother, my mom and I were standing right beside him, touching him. Afterwards we passed a flask around, taking drinks of spicy Canadian whisky, but he couldn’t toast himself. He never did like Canadian whisky anyway. There were fifteen of us crammed in a hospital room, a makeshift hospice.
We’d barely slept that night. He crashed, his blood pressure fell and all of our family and friends rushed to the hospital. It was just my mother and I, panicking as doctors swarmed into his room to try and save him.
Luckily, they did. He didn’t remember what happened. He woke up in pain in a different room. We couldn’t hear him speak; his mouth was covered with an oxygen mask like a muzzled dog. We were all able to say goodbye. He was able to make the choice to leave his tired body behind.
Leaving that place was like walking through quicksand. Our feet were sticking to the floor as we tried to march ourselves outside, out of the pain and anxiety of that place, but his body kept us there. Nobody wanted to leave, nobody wanted to face the reality that this was the last time we would ever see his face. His body was still as we left. Looking back, it was the first time I’d seen him at peace in years. I know now that he was finally free.
I left that place like a wounded soldier. My arms being held by my closest friends and my feet dragging. I had to rip my eyes away from his body to leave, half making sure I had everything I’d brought with me over the past week. I hugged my mother and brother tightly on the way out. None of us could think straight. Now I know that we all were feeling the same thing: fear. Struck with fear that we were alone. He was gone, the man that held our family together, that kept us all sane when the world seemed apathetic to the shared trauma we’d endured for fifteen years.
I drove home in the handicap van that used to hold his wheelchair. I was alone with his loss and the stark emptiness of that passenger seat, a seat that had been removed to hold his wheelchair. The clamps and locks were of no use anymore. They clinked around reminding me of his departure.
At home there was a group of stagehands removing every memory of his pain from the house. Friends and family taking his wheelchairs, his ventilator, and all of the oddly specific things that made his life livable in his final years. It was the changing of scenes. The third act had begun.
That first night of grief didn’t really exist. We wept and let the tears dry on the floor, but we hadn’t realized his absence yet. It was the months following that hit harder. His death was fresh that night, we’d all been there to help him transition to whatever lay beyond. We saw him die; it was final. But the implications of what we had truly lost when it came to our everyday lives had yet to been seen.
My father’s death was unlike most. Everyone close to him had been grieving for a long time. My brother and I had grieved the loss of an able-bodied dad most of our lives. It was only in the last few years that we had begun to process his inevitable death, a death that would come sooner than we had expected. No matter how much we processed and thought we were ready for his death, it didn’t help. The only relief we got was being with him in his final moments, knowing that he was able to choose his way out.
He was tired - tired of fighting. The losses piled up. First it was his legs, his ability to walk. Soon his arms followed suit. He was able to work up to a week before his death, the tiny bit of muscle in his body able to slide a mouse and click with one finger. All things declined as we knew they would. We knew he’d be in a wheelchair and lose his ability to move his arms. What we couldn’t have imagined was his loss of speech and finally his loss of breath.
We used to sit outside together on warm summer days. The nights were always too cold for him, his protective layer of muscle wiped away his ability to sit out in colder temperatures. In his later years a slight breeze on an eighty-degree day was too much. We would smoke cigars - his was clasped in a makeshift arm that was screwed onto a small table. We would sit and talk; I was much younger then and our conversations often didn’t hold much depth. Only when he wasn’t able to converse very long was I open and willing to have deep conversations.
There was one conversation we had that I won’t forget. His health was rapidly declining and he’d just gotten a feeding tube put in. I was worried about him, anxious about his life and when I’d be without him - a feeling I’d felt many times throughout my life as his body declined. My brother urged me to talk with him.
I was feeding him one afternoon, pouring liquified nutrients down a tube into his stomach - something my mother did three times a day. I asked him if he was scared. I asked him what it felt like to have his disease. I asked him every question I wanted to ask. He was honest and kind, gentle with his answers; but he didn’t hold anything back. He told me he was scared of death; he knew it was coming but that didn’t prepare him. He told me that he didn’t want to get tracheotomy, a decision that he and my mother had made; he was scared that in a moment of panic he would ask for it. It was very human, we cried together, and I shared with him my fears and anxiety about him.
He told me about his priorities - how after he’d been diagnosed, he had shifted. He lived selflessly, working and saving his money so that when he was gone, we would be taken care of. He told me how there was a moment of realization for him, he knew he could collect disability and not work if he chose to, but he realized what he had to live for was his family. He wanted us to be okay. I would never had blamed him if he chose to stop working. He was severely disabled - in need of assistance at all times. We had to coordinate who would be home to take care of him during the day. The conversation we had tied together the questions I’d had about how he kept working - it was for us. I’d always seen my father as someone that was made of stone. I’d seen him panic hundreds of times, and rightfully so. I sometimes tried to put myself in his place and I don’t think I could survive. But somehow, he managed to live his life. He made everyone else feel happy despite us all knowing that there was an underlying sadness to him. He rarely showed it. He dealt with his own grief of the full life he’d lost, but he knew he had to live with what he’d been given. There was no other choice. Hearing him discuss his fears with me was important in my understanding of my father, it grew our relationship.
Once his voice was taken from him it made life harder. I was filled with guilt and regret for not having those conversations sooner. I thought about all the times I would sit in my room away from my parents. I wish I could have those moments back, but I was only a teenager. I would try to talk to him in depth when he had a hard time speaking. I would talk a lot to him but tried to avoid asking him many questions. It became hard to for him to answer. Over times our conversations grew short. We would resort to watching sports and documentaries together. The last few months of his life we spent a lot of time together, something I’m thankful for.
The time we spent together over the years is so valuable to me now. My father was a master brewer and when he could no longer make beer on his own, he required my mother’s assistance. After a while, my mother, who spent all day and night caring for him, let me help with the beer so she could take a much-needed break from caretaking. He’d been brewing beer for over twenty-five years and had perfected the art; as a fifteen-year-old, I had no appreciation for beer. Brewing was a chore without any reward. He would have the recipes he had created and would tell me what to do and when. I hated it at first. Four hours of very specific instruction for a final product I didn’t care for. But as the years went on and we’d brew a few times every year, I began to love it.
Brewing became something him and I would do together. I would sit with him in his office and help him come up with recipes, adding my own flavor to his already perfect recipes. He told me he appreciated my creativity when I would come up with flavors for beer that now sound horrible. Soon he started teaching me how to make recipes, what styles I like and how to brew each one. I started asking more questions. Brewing was a spiritual thing for us. We both loved beer. I would pick up beer for us to try and he would tell me what kinds I should buy. Even when he had to stop drinking beer because of how it affected his stomach, he still loved to talk with me about beer.
I eventually began brewing on my own, using his recipes and making my own, always turning to him and asking him what would be good and what exactly I needed to do. Now that he’s gone, I don’t have that person to turn to. I’ve been brewing on my own now, but it’s different. My best friend and I brew together, and both love it, but there’s something missing that we can both feel. The direction he gave us. It’s hard to brew and not think of him, to have problems with my beer that I can’t go get an immediate answer for. Just like in life, I’m brewing with no direction.
I have memories of him that I’ve tried to forget. Painful memories of him falling and breaking down, but whenever I try to forget those traumatic things, I remember how important they are. I watched my father experience things I couldn’t imagine and it’s important to realize what he went through, even though the memories are painful. Why it’s important is because he continued living. He was happy most of the time. He had a great sense of humor about life. He is the reason we as a family were able and allowed to be happy.
He was allowed to live his life because of my mother. She woke up early to get him to work so he could provide for us after he was gone. She’s lived her life as a caretaker for my father and she doesn’t hold any of that against him. She loved him, more than I could imagine loving somebody. I’d cared for my dad for three-day periods and it was nearly impossible. For fifteen years is something I can’t imagine. Despite being free from the burden of caretaking, she’s lost. We all are. We want him back even if meant taking care of him again. The only solace we have is that he his free from his pain. His whole death has been a paradox. We want him back, want to keep living with him here, but we don’t want him to live in pain anymore.
We want to erase the memory of his disease, but he was never defined by it. Everybody that knew him was touched by him in some way. He never let himself get upset at people for staring. Children would ask him if he was a transformer and he would say they’d have to wait and see. He was kind and forgiving, but his disease angers us all.
My father said his disease humbled him, made him realize what life was truly about. It helped shape him. But we all hate that disease that took parts of him from us. It’s a strange thing, it’s hard to grapple with the what ifs in life. It’s important to not dwell on them, we as a family don’t think about it. We lived the life we could with him. He couldn’t choose what his life would look like so he decided to live as best he could and make the most of his life.
But now he’s gone, and we have to navigate without him. He won’t be at my wedding or meet my children. I’m lucky he got to see my graduate college two months before he passed.
I don’t know when it will get better, when the grieving stops. I don’t know if it ever will.
I sit in his office, now empty of the memories of his disease. I watch his favorite birds flutter outside the windows and peck away at the seeds. My mother always planted flowers and put bird seeds outside his office window so he could see his birds. Now we do it for nobody.