A Different Kind of Ending

My father beat the game.  Everything that could have killed him up to now didn’t.  He survived a brain aneurysm 10 years ago with minimal impairment.  At age 87 he is conscious and aware and can understand and communicate, although very slowly, and in short phrases. 

But he is dying nonetheless. 

He doesn’t even have a terminal disease.  His systems have just been slowly shutting down for the last year.  His biggest problem is he can’t swallow very well anymore so he is aspirating some of his food, which will almost certainly lead to pneumonia.  A feeding tube would not improve his quality of life.  He’s ready to go. 

All the significant losses I’ve experienced up to now have been from cancer.  A disease takes root in the body and brings an end to a life.  You “battle” cancer.  You lose.  It wins, and you die.  But you might have won.  Some people do.  My mother has survived two cancers and is now 90 years old.  So there’s always hope, until there isn’t.

Of course I know everyone dies – it’s happened to everyone else who has lived, up to now, evidently.  But I don’t think I really got it, until being with the old, old man my father has become, that you can’t beat the game.  Even if you beat all the levels, the way my parents have, death comes.  Our bodies do just wear out.  At the end, there’s no battle to be waged.

I thought he would always be there.  I couldn’t conceive of him dying.  Some of that is because of the strangeness of our relationship.  Mostly it’s because he’s my father.

I dreamed I was at his bedside, crying, “I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to go!”  And knowing there was no stopping it.  In the dream, I was relieved to be pouring out the real stuff, with all the intensity of how I feel about losing him.  He didn’t say anything, but I felt him thinking, “I have to go…I don’t want to hurt you…this is hard for me…I have to go.” 

There’s nothing but love between us anymore.  I can tell him the truth, and he can handle it.  But I don’t want to make it harder for him.

I call him every morning and tell him I love him and I’m thinking of him all the time.  He always says, “I love you, Ruth.”   It gives me such joy to have these simple exchanges.  Some days he sounds stronger, and I’m happier all day because I got to hear him sounding more like himself again.  A little reprieve before I have to say goodbye for good.

I don’t want to lose him.  I barely got to have him.  But I am very grateful for the ending we are having.