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These Are Daddy's Last Days

These days, I feel like a new sprout that has peeked through the soil, and even the soft dawn light burns my baby green tendrils with the shock of being alive.

 These are daddy’s last days. They are finally here, and all my years have not prepared me for this obscene reality. No one walking down the street knows what’s going on right inside his window. A daughter with tears in her eyes feeding him water from a plastic spoon. All his 93 years alive have culminated in this dark little bedroom, like a tornado coming down to a pinpoint. No fanfare, no people. It’s too late to visit, and there were only one or two concerned relatives who live in town anyway.

My father is bones wrapped in skin, eyes sunken and not really focusing. Too weak to hold his head up. He has only his 2 bottom front teeth left, having probably swallowed the 4 or 5 others he had a month ago. He can’t smile anymore or show emotion on his face, having recently lost that ability. He was eating pureed food well until a couple weeks ago, and then he couldn’t. Now, as we wait 3 days for the hospice service which was caught up in stupid insurance company red tape, the caregiver and I are trying to feed him applesauce with his ground up medication, though he has trouble swallowing it. His rapid breathing isn’t a good sign; his body is fighting against its shutting down.

I feel so sorry for him every time I look at him. Sorry for his discomfort and the loss of his faculties. Death is not peaceful; the life force is still trying to do its job, creating discord. Clouded with dementia, does he know he’s dying? What does he think of my crying? The walls of his room are cracked, with concrete peeking through, his carpets are stained and ripped, but he is in his own bed, in his own room, on the street where he has lived for 55 years, with loving caregivers and his daughter by his side…not a bad way to go. Yet what’s happening feels ghastly. The TV is on as usual, and there are Ingrid Bergman and Leslie Howard, youthful and glowing. I see my dad half-watching them with one half-opened eye.

He tries to speak, but he can’t. His brain has forgotten how. A croaking sound comes out. He used to love talking, almost too much, about memories of a Brooklyn childhood and living through the Great Depression, but also the joy of meeting my mother, the love of his life. To entertain him, I show him old photos, which we’ve done countless times. I shine a flashlight on them and point out the details. My young gorgeous newlywed parents, my sister and me at our old house, a picture of my dad at 9 years old, his supple skin and shiny hair and big clear eyes. A photo of my dad in the 1950s on this very street, getting out of his cool old car, looking happy. I ask him, “Dad, is that a Ford or a Chevy?” He can’t answer. “Can you just give a little nod?…is it a Chevy?” but he can’t. It’s okay.

He’s still here with me. I can hug him, kiss his bald head, smell my daddy, tell him I love him, press my head to his, and oh God, it feels good. With the greatest effort, he slowly forms the words, “I…uv…ou,” and even though I’m a foot away, I rush to press against him and say it back, bawling. We’ve said these words to each other many times. My father, bless him, has never had trouble saying those beautiful words. In fact, he taught me how to love. He gave affection to his daughters effortlessly, not withholding it, like other dads.

We feared this moment, and now it’s here. The discomfort is in the utter finality. It doesn’t matter how many times I kiss him, or how tightly I embrace him now. It will not be possible to do so in about a week, no matter what. Where is he going? (He himself has wondered this out loud over the years). I don’t know a world without my dad. What will it be like? I know how to take care of this old man, but I don’t know how to say goodbye to him. My friends have gone through it, in more tragic ways. How do I handle it? The way dad is handling it…without choice. Stepping into each next moment, without one’s own consent or will. Like me stepping into my dad’s room and taking in what’s going on, wanting to or not. It’s more than just witnessing. It’s changing my whole perception of the world. It’s changing the atoms in my cells. After our 61-year relationship, the man who helped create me is going away. The man who loved me, nurtured me, fed me from a bottle, taught me how to play cards, took me to every theme park, played catch with me…throwing the ball straight up in the air as high as he could, to see if I could catch it. Let us eat junk food that my mother wouldn’t allow. Sitting on the curb outside KFC with boxes of extra-crispy chicken on our laps. Going to movie theaters, which dad loved to do: Yellow Submarine, 2001- A Space Odyssey, every Woody Allen film…  Laughing at Danny Kaye movies on TV together, Bob Hope, The Marx Brothers. Playing tennis together, which he was very good at. A big reader, a spiritual seeker. He was liberal. He was sentimental and would cry freely. Taking us on little trips, staying in motels, having pillow fights. Always giving me a sip of his milkshake.

But it was complicated too of course. As sweet as he was, he lacked the social graces of two-way conversation, turning everything into monologues. He didn’t know how to inquire about my life, and so he never found out. He didn’t visit me in the hospital a few miles from his home, even though I was there for a month. He was someone who admitted to loving TV, in the days when it wasn’t cool to say it.

He lived like a hermit for many years after my parents’ divorce destroyed him. He overshopped and hoarded. As angry as I was at him, he was always so lovable. He never, ever let my sister and me forget that he loved us wholeheartedly. Greeting us with a big bear-hug always.

I can’t help but to flash-forward to my own deathbed. Who will be there with me? Will it be as bad as this? Or better? What is ‘better’ in this situation? The only thing that’s for sure is that day will come. I’m at the stage of life of trying to preserve my middle-aged looks. How meaningless at this moment. My dad was dashingly handsome in a Tony Curtis way. His body has served him very well for pleasure and sport. Now, it’s purely a vessel for his soul, with no accessories. What a contrast in the way we value our bodies at different stages of life.

Leaving his house yesterday, I passed the recliner where he used to be practically planted like a tree, and said to myself, he will never sit in that chair again. Even though he’s right there in the bedroom, he doesn’t have the strength to ever come back out.

April 1, 2022