Swan Song - Part 2

Tales of Impermanence - Just Living Jenny #21

Words (because you need words apparently on any newsletter to generate SEO) These were read at my Dad’s Memorial May 29, 2022: What I am now aware of is how the absence of a person from this world, makes the distinct spirit of that singular person all the more palpable in the present.

I am more keenly aware of what is no longer here.

In the recent days and months, it fell on me, the only offspring within shouting distance of my father, to tend to his immediate needs.

For a long time that meant tending to his physical needs. Getting my father to countless doctor’s appointments at the VA, bringing him rice milk when he ran out, coming over to refill a growing assortment of daily heart medications, or watching a Giant’s game and dining on a watered down menu of dry salmon over rice and overcooked asparagus provided by Grand Lake Gardens, the retirement community where he lived.

My father always loved to give, and as his daughter I would receive whatever it was that he was giving. In the physical world his giving came in the form of leftover ice cream in the fridge with freezer burn, a free calendar he was sent by the local legal forum, or a pair of red, white and blue fuzzy socks from the 4th of July BBQ picnic.

The truth was, it didn’t matter what he gave me in the physical world, because in the spiritual universe, what he was always giving me was his love. And I would gladly give it back to him.

In the past few months, as his physical needs became more complex, so too were the tasks of taking care of them.

As his body began failing, his larger challenge was accepting the fact that he was leaving us.

As his caretaker, I wondered how to help him with that task.

“Am I dying?” he asked me, (and countless other people) as we talked about having him go on hospice care in late April, after he traveled to the hospital three times by ambulance in the space of 7 days for inoperable chest pains.

“I don’t know, Dad.” I replied. “You’re 95. What do you think?”

He grappled with the idea of letting go of repairing his aging body that had served him well. In the last 9 days of his life, despite barely being able to walk with a walker, he insisted on going to be fitted for a new hearing aids 45 minutes away in Martinez, having his blood drawn in a Quest lab in walnut creek and trekking to an appointment in Concord, to have his hearing tested to file a medical claim with the VA.

“I need a martini and a two week vacation,” I texted my siblings furiously while sitting in the waiting room at QTC Medical testing unit in a medical office park, while my father placed headphones on his ears and dutifully repeated words like a school boy.

I was struggling to support his physical needs, while he struggled with his spiritual ones.

One night I had tried to get him to meditate with me to help ease his anxiety. “I can’t do this,” he protested.” “I can’t stop thinking.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Just try to concentrate on your breathing and let go of the thoughts in your head as if they are flying away on wings.” And so he tried.

Last Wednesday afternoon, I visited him as he lay dying, (although I didn’t know it would be his last.) I watched him going in and out of consciousness, barely able to speak, his body thrashing around in bed.

There was a brief and marked respite from the frantic pacing of his limbs, whenever I leaned down and spoke to him quietly, touched his arm, and encouraged him to slow down and take a deep breath in and let it go.

Several hours later, encouraged by his caregiver, he did take his last breath.

Now that he is gone, I no longer carry the burden of my father’s physical needs. I will always miss his gifts. But I hope to meet him, where he has always been, in spirit, and where his kindness now looms larger than life itself.

Now read: SWAN SONG PART ONE