Frank

Today is the day that my father died in 1996.  His death changed how I see the human spirit and how I see myself in many, many ways.  I still miss him and he is often with me as I make my way about the world.

My father had a stroke in the last weeks of July, 1996.  He lived in a board and care home that was a loving place to be and he needed that.  He had lived alone for so many years after the divorce from my Mom yet he was a very private man.  And so living with Alzheimer's disease meant that I did my best to keep how he lived respected yet frame his life with the kind of care that would keep him safe from his inner dementia demons.  So many people still struggle with Alzheimer's and the wrath of our brain's twisted methods of dealing with the disease.  We know so little.

Eventually Dad was transferred to the County hospital-now Sutter but I never think of it as such.  It was here that for the next 10 days or so my sisters and I became his sentries.  One sister came to call me "Frank's Doberman" as she returned to Texas once we made some hard decisions.  We were lucky to have one another, my sisters and I, and we often bounced the most difficult aspects of his stroke off of each other.  Yet we all agreed.  Dad would not want extreme measures on his behalf at this point. So began the final weeks of my father's life.

I sat, many days just writing beside his bed, watching him gesticulate to those I could not see.  He could not speak nor swallow yet he was talking to someone.  Perhaps lawyers can never be silenced once they get going? I watched and I felt and I waited.  I had no idea how to do what I was doing. Pneumonia began to increase its hold on him and things slowly changed. 

By the morning of August 3rd, 1996, the experts thought that Dad would exit the planet very soon.  And so my sisters boarded a plane from Texas and I stayed vigilant and afraid.  I felt like I was such a small, small child sitting at my father's bedside and I guess I was just that inside.  I still am just that in many ways.  And so I did become very anxious as I watched my father's breathing become more and more labored, his chest working with great effort to rise and fall.  I paced, I worried and then a foreign calm and strength welled up from deep within into my thoughts.  I still understand that moment as divine in some way.

I stopped, turned and walked to my Dad's bedside.  I looked down into his eyes and started to cry.  I told him that I knew he understood what was happening to him and that I was very sorry. I told him that my sister's were on their way and they knew he loved them and that he could leave right now.  He started to cry.  I was crying.  I told him that I would miss him and that he could go right now.  And he did.  My father looked up above me to the corner of that room, took a few deeper breaths and his spirit blew right past the front of me.  I could feel that strength push past me as it left through the corner.  I stood there crying and took in what just happened.

I watched as my father's chest rose and fell a few more times and then ceased.  He was long gone.  I bent, crying, and kissed his bald forehead.  Goodbye Dad is what I thought, I shall miss you.

I don't understand so much about how cruel the world has become with people so disconnected from one another and running off to do so much that they think is important yet never stopping to look into  another's eyes.  To me, 8/3/1996 taught me what it is to stand by someone to the very end and witness the evidence that has been right before our eyes.  This is simply a vehicle, this body, and albeit a complex one, it is the spirit inside that directs the show going on.  We are spirits trying to be human.  In my Dad's case, a spirit living with valor, loneliness, generosity, frustration and some glee over any kind of pie. 

I am remembering you today Dad.  Thank you.