life

One thing I’ve noted about grief after the death of a parent from disease, is that it’s different from a romantic or friendship breakup: There was no rejection.  It is acute, but in a different way.  I wonder at the lack of tears.

But then, I cried quite a bit the day of his death.  Not after, but before.  I knew it was coming, I was by his bedside, his breathing had become rough, and he was now in a comatose state.  His pain made me cry.  I couldn’t bear it.  Seeing my mom, his primary caregiver, worn out, made me cry.

I had hoped to spend all week spending time with him, watching TV with him since the lung cancer was taking his breath away.  But it took him so quickly that he was barely verbal the first couple of days I was there.  He’d been fighting two other forms of cancer but beating them.  Then the third was discovered, and the nurse gave him only a month.  He didn’t even last that long.  Even my brothers could barely stand it.

The first day I arrived, a Sunday, he could speak a little, and responded when we all surrounded his bedside.  He knew I was there.  The second, he managed to say a few intelligible sentences, though you could tell his mind was going.  The third, I don’t remember if he spoke at all.  The fourth, late in the evening, he left us.  As I told my mom, I didn’t have enough time.

Before he passed, I tried to still sort of spend time with him.  His bed was in the living room, so I turned on our old favorite shows, as a way to watch them “with” him.  He could barely attend to anything now, but Mom kept saying he could hear.

But the day he passed, as I heard his breathing, I began to break down.  But after he passed, I didn’t cry anymore.  Just once, on the way home after the funeral.  Maybe a few tears come to my eyes once in a while.

Maybe it’s because the pain is finally over for him.  Maybe it’s because we knew about this possibility for two years, as he battled the cancer.  Maybe it’s because the anniversaries haven’t started coming.

Well, actually, they have.  Remember how, after 9/11, we referred to it as “Tuesday,” before the first week passed?  It took a while before we called it 9/11 or September 11, because it had only just happened.  But we’d note it was Tuesday, or a week ago, or whatever.

Well, little things happen: I see it’s the same time of night that he passed.  Or I see the date written someplace.  Or I think, “It’s been a week.”  This evening, it’ll be two weeks.  Or I think, “The funeral was a week ago.”

I go about my day normally, attending to things normally, enjoying TV shows and such.  But then late at night, or first thing in the morning, I’ll remember.  Or a smell will bring it back.  Or last night, watching the premiere of Queen Sugar on OWN network, as their father died.

I can understand why men in WWII came home and didn’t want to speak of what happened.  You don’t want to remember the bad times.  You want to remember the good times.  You don’t want to remember the death, but the life.

And yes, I saw and heard things that were traumatizing.  I’ve told my husband, I’ve told a friend, and my family saw them too, but I haven’t spoken about them elsewhere.  I certainly haven’t written them here.

I just want to remember the good.  I want to remember the things which I wrote in Dad’s eulogy.

Pop Evil’s “Torn to Pieces” was based on real-life loss of a father:

• by Nyssa McCanmore
• Posted on September 7, 2016September 30, 2021

I was there at his bedside.  I barely made it in time because the third form of cancer took him so fast, while the other two were in remission/dormant.

A guy in my old youth group also died around the same day.  He wasn’t even old.  Different cause, but still, dang.

To my dad:

• by Nyssa McCanmore
• Posted on August 25, 2016May 12, 2017

At the moment, the prognosis is not good: one or two years.  No change, good or bad, in the last scan.

Because we are two states away and have to go through heavy traffic and tolls in between, along with paying for a hotel room, it has become much harder to make the trip than it used to be.  So the last time we saw my family was two years ago.  Back then, there was no known cancer.  My dad has changed significantly in that time, his vigor gone, his body wasting.  He still has hair, at least.

My mom is tired.  My brother who lives with them, was always a pesky bully, but Mom says he’s mellowed quite a bit because of dad’s illness.  He even stuck around to socialize with us instead of vanishing into his upper suite.

It is difficult to hear them speak of funeral plans and realize that I could see my dad in one in a short time.

I recently dreamed that I was at college still, and he came to visit for a father-and-daughter day.

Over the weekend, hubby, son and I drove through the streets of my hometown, and I showed my son the sights: the big buildings downtown, the artwork and East Race of the river outside the Century Center, the sidewalk where I believe I got lost at age 2, my childhood church and the stained glass window-wall.  Only the red-brick road by the church, with its familiar hum, has been paved over long since.

And I remembered my youthful dad taking me to church sometimes when it was just the two of us, all sorts of memories of the old days.  Youthful meaning, the same age I am now.  He and Mom were the same ages at my birth, as my husband and I were at our son’s.

Then last night, my MP3 player, hooked up to the car stereo, played this song about losing a loved one:

And while this strain takes hold, I see my stalkers return to my site and then check out the church website on Christmas Eve.  (I run it, and saw their IP visit both my and the church’s sites.  No one at my church knows about my personal website.)  I wonder if they’re planning to annoy me again or, by some slight chance, make peace.

If you have any mercy at all, my stalkers, make peace or leave me in peace.  This is difficult enough.

• by Nyssa McCanmore
• Posted on December 28, 2015March 19, 2019