What is supposed to
happen when your father dies? There’s no definitive rule and I’m not given to
public displays of emotion and not very much even to private ones, for that
matter. Letting things simmer away inside is my way. I received the sad news
earlier this month and clicked into action mode, organising flights to England
and a hire car from Heathrow.
This news was deeply sad
and quite unexpected, despite dad’s steadily declining health over recent
years. His sudden departure was remarkably similar in speed to my mum’s a
decade ago, though different in cause. After fracturing his hip in a fall at
home dad slipped away over a two week period. There was a brief and encouraging
rally after a few days but the outcome is so often grim for a hip fracture in
the elderly and dad‘s weak kidneys and lungs succumbed to the effects of the
trauma.
I flew home to visit
last January and I am very thankful I did. I spent three weeks lodging with dad
and although I was out most days visiting relatives, friends and my two adult
sons, I still spent a good deal of time with him. He was more introspective than
ever, more detached from reality and the modern world, more confused by
technology yet he was still dad – not the dad of old, with sharp intellect,
resolve and reliable memory but still dad, just about.
It’s ghastly the way
time slowly robs us of our personality as we age. It’s as if we develop a new
personality fit for each stage of life but the one we spend our final months with
is a far cry from the one of our heyday.
Perhaps it’s that steady
but inexorable shift, that winding down, which prepares those who are about to
be left behind. I had watched dad’s decline from afar and sometimes up close so
when the end came I was not devastated but able to appreciate the relative lack
of suffering, the degree of dignity dad experienced up to the end. That’s not
to say the scene my brother and sister witnessed over the final hours was not
distressing, it was but dad was spared perhaps years of miserable institutional
living. A stubbornly independent soul, he would not have taken well to living
in a nursing home, nor to the daily routine of kidney dialysis.
The funeral service and
requiem mass was very well-attended. Many old friends, cousins, nephews and
nieces, grandchildren, in-laws and former work colleagues were there as well as
his surviving brother and three children. A few days earlier I had composed a
eulogy which I was invited to read aloud during the service. It was a little history
of dad’s life and times, his achievements, his likes and dislikes and little
details those who knew him would remember. I enjoyed giving it and I’m glad I
did.
In no time at all I was
aboard a Boeing 767 bound for Toronto then on to Charlottetown and being
greeted my wife and daughters. Deaths remind us of our own mortality and the
shocking brevity of life. They allow us an opportunity to celebrate the life of
another in ways we seldom do in their lifetime.
Take nothing for
granted.
