Letting Dad go
From the Earthship near WichitaWe spent the last week with Dad and Mom in Kansas, America’s cul-de-sac. Dad has had a couple of small strokes – small only in comparison to large or catastrophic – and, as a result, has had difficulty focusing for more than a phrase or two, and difficulty expressing his thoughts in words.
“It’s clear in my head,” he says, “just can’t say it.” So over the past year or so, he has said less, and with a weaker voice, and moves less, shuffles really, and stoops. That’s not the confident 20-something I knew as a kid, but that was 60 years ago.
It’s troublesome to see a dominant male falter. Disturbing, really. So we four siblings came to Kansas to share time with him and Mom. My brother and I decided we wouldn’t let him go silently. We plotted to encourage him to finish his life the way he lived it, showing us the way, giving us an idea of what is to come.
Dad beat us to the punch. In a quiet moment, he told me, “I want to go. I want to see Mom.” His mother died at age 53 – over 50 years ago – and he has missed her terribly since then. Every day.
His lip quivered as his eyes looked beyond the moment. “Dad,” I ventured forth, as planned, “you’re free to go. You’ve finished it here. You’ve gotten everything ready and we’re all fine and the work of your life is complete. If you want to go, then move forward. But do it with confidence, Dad, do it with style and grace and joy. Show us the way to do this, just as you taught us all the other lessons of life.”
Then my brother Randy came into the conversation, and he stroked Dad’s foot while I put my arm around him and hugged him and kissed his bald head gently with a tenderness he had taken seven decades to muster for us. He cried some, and let it out. We talked a bit more, but mostly just listened to him as he, haltingly but steadily, said some final things.
That was two days ago, and we’ve had another deep conversation again since, about the surety of the next life and what we know and how we know it; what his own dad said as he passed suddenly, “Beautiful, oh, so beautiful.”
And for the last two days Dad has been smiling and talking more and has been more engaged in people and less cloistered in TV reruns.
It matters that we stay engaged with each other. It has finally let me cast off the anger and rejection of the past and just move beyond childhood emptiness.
I love my Dad, now more than ever. Enough to encourage his next adventure.
Labels: Dad
posted by DanZ @ 6:25 AM
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