So my Dad died in July of this year. My Dad and I did not always have the best relationship, but in the last years of his life we got to know each other more as people than we had in my previous 44 years on this planet. We had a lot between us, not the least of which was the angry son he had, my brother, who died of Cancer four years before my father at the age of 41. My brother was an angry person his whole life. Gifts of ability for sports notwithstanding he was always negative and I have come to see in the last few months how much of my Mother is in him. Dark and brooding, angry at the world and all its stupidity in so many forms. He was above it all and these people around him were nothings. He never lived anywhere but under the roof of my parents, never ventured out into the world despite his smarts and larger than life stature. He was a self-imposed hermit who stayed to himself, alienating himself from everyone and everything that didn’t meet his tremendous standards. He was violent with me, at times with both my parents and when he got sick he was more violent and angry which was blamed on the drugs given to him to release the poison from his body. He died bitter and alone in a hospital bed where nurses said it looked like something was trying to pull him up and out of the bed. Was it the demons he dreamt of in the months leading up to his death that came to drag him away? Or was it just the seizures that ravaged his already weakened body? Perhaps no one will ever know. What I do know is that neither of my parents went with him on that last trip to the hospital in the middle of that cool April night. Neither followed behind the ambulance to see that his journey was successful. I think both had seen him go so many times that they just decided to let him, perhaps in some parental way knowing this would be the last trip, the last time they would follow those lights and sirens and neither wanted to face that.

He died alone in a hospital bed having never fully awoken from his afternoon nap. His last act was one of kindness I must say though. Although he lived with my parents in his old room for his whole life the last two years of his life he didn’t speak to my mother. She tried in vain to get to him but he was angry that she couldn’t name the medications he was taking for his treatment; or at least that was his chosen reason for his cruelty to her. He blamed her for his Cancer and said that her years of smoking had caused it. He did everything he could to hurt her from the physical to the mental and back again. But she never stopped trying to reach him, to understand him, to love him. This first-born son whose existence made her whole was pulling so hard from her and she could never let go. His last day on this earth was like so many before, medications and poisons to kill the poison in his blood, sleep, hardly any food, and pain. And silence. Then in his last act he asked if he could sit with her for a few moments and she in her shock and awe of this gift was alive again, his mother, broken shell of a woman, who sat and waited for this moment his whole existence extended her hands and he sat with her. Rested his head and went to sleep, never to open his eyes fully again. Years later this once strong woman who raised two children, not just one, would remain in this place, seated and waiting for him to ask for her again, long after he was gone. She withered here, in this place of solitude and silence waiting for the ambulance to bring him back as they had so many times before, but knowing he was gone, just never having to accept it.

After my brother died my father became everything to my Mother. I was the distant child who never fit in and moved three thousand miles away to put the distance between us I had always felt. It was never enough. The time passed after my brother did and she weakened further until she could no longer walk or stand for a long time, until the type two diabetes became type one, until all of that strength and power had dwindled away to where she was just a shell. The loss of a child is not something I will ever know, but those I have spoken to tell me it is not something anyone could ever understand or accept. She would go on to have both hips replaced and one knee and that modern medical wonder would decay in her living corpse as she waited to join her son on the other side. My father took on the role of caregiver. He cleaned up after her, shopped for her, did laundry, added sage counsel and did everything he could to keep her going. He too weakened after my brother’s death. This was another in the long line of friends that he lost over his 80 years. My brother was a confidant and a friend, a golf buddy who shared so many of his passions. His last link to technology and the marvels of the new generations. I envied their closeness but found their relationship comforting in a way. My Mother’s neediness gave pause for my father to need that relationship and I was grateful for it. They golfed and talked about computers and cars. They commiserated over sports losses and trades, they were friends. My mother was an island, even then content to sit and be alone and not in the fray. Somewhere on the edge of existence and reality. All my childhood she never participated in our lives really. She did go to baseball games for her son, and most school events she was there sitting alongside my father. Dad coached and Mom watched from the sidelines various sporting events. But for the social side of things she stayed to herself for the most part the older we got. She preferred to hear about the wins other than witness them. As I faded into the background my brother stood out. He was a star in High School, extremely smart and talented and excelling at all he tried. I didn’t get the same attention and I know what it sounds like to say that but it is true. The greatness in my family was meant for my brother, not for me. As years of this went on I had to work to find my self-worth in other places, not in the proud faces of my parents. I had to work to earn their pride, their acceptance and their concern. I still struggle with my self-worth to this day, but everything I have, I have because I earned it and there is something to be said for that.

My Mother ended up in the hospital about a year after my brother died, having fallen and being unable to stand one evening. My father was not strong enough to lift her and her muscles were quite stiffened from sitting for so many years that she did not have the strength to lift herself or help him lift her. So there she sat, on the living room floor for hours as my father begged her to let him call an ambulance. She flat-out refused because of her pride and when a neighbor finally came over and he couldn’t help lift her either she finally relented and an ambulance was called. During this trip to the hospital she was left on an emergency room gurney for several hours developing a bedsore that metastasized into a gaping wound. She was given lotion to treat it and sent home. This ordeal did nothing to help her distrust of the medical profession and the wound grew. She has had a wound nurse that has been coming to the house to help her for the last three years and the wound is almost healed. But this only lead her to be more sedentary despite the fact that moving might have helped the healing process. She loves her caregiver and between this woman and my Dad all was right in my Mom’s world. defiantly my Dad grew tired as his age caught up with him and his inability to keep constant care of my mother grew and took its toll. He was tired and his friends noticed. We spoke about it a few times and he did try to lean on others for help. They were married for 57 years after all and we all know that love changes and takes many forms. He was at the pharmacy getting her prescriptions when the heart attack hit. The pharmacist gave him two nitrate pills and made him sit for a while. My Dad was old guy tough, sat for a few minutes and then brushed the incident off. He went home finished his Saturday in his usual way and then went to bed. July was the month my father died. This July that has just passed.