A Season of Dying

My father died more than thirty years ago, just shy of his 70^th birthday. I am older than that now and am increasingly aware of my own mortality. When I think about his death, I wonder what my own will be like, how my children will act and feel, what their memories of that time will be.

The story of his last months started one January when I had flown to Oklahoma with my wife to attend her father’s funeral. I had moved to San Francisco twenty years earlier and returned to visit only about once a year because of the distance and because I was busy with work and with my own family.

When my father and mother arrived at the funeral service I was startled at my dad’s appearance. Since I had seen him just six months before, he had become an old, sick man. He had lost twenty or thirty pounds and had to lean on my mother for support as he walked. His ancient cheap suit had grown too large and his old clip-on necktie sagged from his loose collar. He looked as if he were apologizing for something.

After a battery of tests the following week, my father found out that cancer from four years before had recurred and that his condition was terminal. The oncologist basically sent him home to die. Not knowing what else to do, my mom and I signed my dad up for hospice care, but that was short-lived. The agency sent out a nurse and social worker for an initial visit. Just their presence made my dad uncomfortable because no one other than family and close friends ever came into my parents’ house. It got worse. As the visitors explained their roles, my dad began to understand for the first time what hospice was about—and he rebelled. When I called him after the visit to see how it had gone, he told me that he was feeling better and that he had “fired them people.” He wasn’t ready to just give up and run out the clock, however. With the help of his old family doctor, he found an oncologist who would treat him. I doubt the treatment extended his life, but it gave him the hope he badly needed.

That summer and fall were surreal. I flew back every few weeks to see him, but those visits were tough. He was afraid of death, and not being a religious man, he did not have a peg to hang his soul on. I did not know how to talk with him about his fears or about my feelings, so our conversations were uncomfortable and stilted. While I was close to my father as a child, we had grown apart in the two decades since I had moved away to pursue my own life, a life so different from his that in many ways we had lost much of our connection. Now that I am older than he was then and have accrued my own scars from life, I understand better how hard it was for us to talk. I doubt our conversations would be any easier, however. Neither of us wanted to acknowledge that Death was sitting in the corner listening.

One of my strongest memories from that time came from an unexpected source. I was a candidate for the San Francisco Board of Education during his final months. Although I lost the election, the process of running for office taught me a lot about how political sausage was made in that city. About two months before he died, my father developed a serious problem due to chemotherapy, so I decided to fly back to see him and give support to my mom. I knew I would miss a candidate night hosted by one of local political clubs. When I called the president of the group to tell him I would be visiting my sick father rather than attending the meeting, he became irritated and told me, “You need to get your priorities straight if you are going to hold office in San Francisco.” He was right: I never held office there.

The end came in October. One evening, I was eating supper when my mother called to say that my father was close to death. I caught a red eye to Oklahoma and arrived at the hospital early the next morning. By then, my dad was already in a coma and struggling to breathe, his eyes half closed. Over the next couple of hours, his breathing became more irregular until finally he took a breath followed by a long pause, another breath with a longer pause, and then his last, my mother on one side of his bed and I on the other. When he died, I turned off the alarm on the monitor so that the nurse would not bother us while we sat with his body as the blood slowly drained from the surface, leaving his skin the color of an antique ivory brooch.

I didn’t weep that day, nor did I at his funeral. About three months later, however, watching a movie unrelated to anything about fathers, sons, or death, I began to cry, so much that I had to leave the theater. Although I haven’t cried about his death since, I still think of his season of dying, particularly now that I am facing my own mortality. Early the next spring after he died, I became a volunteer working with hospice patients and have continued since. I wonder now if doing so was a subconscious way of paying respects to him.

I sometimes go through a box of mementos I have of him: his wallet containing a single dollar bill, a pocket watch passed from his grandfather to his father to him and now to me, his World War II dogtags and medals, and a letter, likely the only one he ever wrote to me, from the summer I turned 19, advice on the best route to take when I drove back after my summer job in the oil fields of Texas. As I look at those things, I try to recall what he was like, but so much has slipped away forever. I have only some old photos, occasional memories that arrive unexpectedly, and glimpses of him when I look into a mirror.

Just as I see traces of my father in my features, so I see reflections of me in both of my daughters. The similarities have been refracted enough by genetics, however, so just as I am different than my father, they are different than me. I wonder what memories they will have of me thirty years on, whether I will have faded from their lives as much as my father has from mine. I am sure brief images will come to mind, but will they also recall my values, my views on life, and my ideas on how to engage the world? What will my children think as they accompany me through my own season of dying?