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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Thurs., August 3 [1]

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Date: 2023-08-03

The first week in August has been a difficult time for me for nine years now. It is the month when I lost my father.

For his entire life, dad had expected that he would die on August 1 and every August 1, I would call to make sure he was okay. (It was one of our especially endearing ways of connecting throughout my lifetime — No matter what was going on in our relationship (which was often quite turbulent due to my mother’s narcissistic nature) I could always count on him to call me to wish me a Happy Groundhog’s Day. At one point, I had four years of messages stored on my cell, all lost when I finally switched to an iPhone.)

My dad died nine years ago tomorrow, three days post August 1 but for all intents and purposes August 1 in 2014 was the day when he left us. I can still recall the day quite vividly. He was sitting that morning in his Laz-y-Boy in the study, barely aware of what was going on around him when he suddenly gestured to me that he wanted to move into his bedroom. My brother, my daughter and I helped him into his bed. That was the last time we communicated. My mom says that when she laid down beside him and took his hand he whispered to her that he just needed a few hours sleep. She had believed against all evidence to the contrary that he would wake up.

I can recall sitting on the floor outside his room, waiting for the clock to read 12:01 and texting my brother that he was still with us and it was August 2. At that point in time, I deluded myself with the hope that he might wake up and we might conceivably have him with us for a few more months. Weeks even.

My mother told us after he passed that he had said to her that he just needed a little sleep and that he would wake in a few hours. But I wasn’t around for that. What I was around for was when the priest came to administer the final rites of the Catholic church and he whispered to my mother “Come with me.”

On the first anniversary of his death, I bought a dozen white roses and took them down to the docks near my house to release them one by one to the currents. I went home then and lie on my front deck, crying as I played and replayed Pavarotti’s Nessum Dorma as loud as it could play, serenading the entire neighborhood.

It is almost impossible to believe this wonderful man, the father who I always believed would be able to solve any problem I ever encountered in life has been gone for so long. That next year will be ten years gone and I still haven’t adjusted to a life in which he wasn’t available at the other end of the phone connection, a constant assurance that everything would be okay. Life feels lonely without him. Unsafe.

I woke up at dawn on the day of his death. The nurse told me to call the other members of the family. His breathing had changed and there were other indications that the end was near. My brothers, the nurses, and my daughter sat around his bed silently for hours. I left at around 2:45 to take my daughter to an emergency chiropractor appointment and just as we arrived my brother called to tell me to get home. That my father was close to death. He passed before we returned five minutes later. After watching over him, barely leaving his side for over a week, he died when I was not there. My brothers told me that my mother had also left the room when he passed. Maybe there is some truth to the belief that people often wait until the people closest to them were away to finally let go.

This was nine years ago. I still feel as if I didn’t really get a chance to say good-bye.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/3/2184571/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-Thurs-August-3

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