Jack
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To preface, this is the story of my experience of my father’s death. It’s definitely the shorter version, but it’s still fairly long. I didn’t do a lot of editing, I just started writing my account of what happened. This is also my first time writing on Medium. As I wrote this, I sobbed and experienced the pain all over again, but by the end, I felt almost better. Writing about my experience kind of feels a little therapeutic right now.
I recently read an article titled “I’m Sorry I didn’t respond to your email, my husband coughed to death two years ago” by Rachel Ward. She formatted the story of her husband dying into a truthful FAQ, and I admire and am inspired by the way she wrote about her experience. My version isn’t as quippy. Things for me are still quite raw, but I was hoping that by telling this story, it could inspire others in some way. Not sure how, I’ll leave it up to you.
So here it goes.
On Easter Sunday, I made a call to my dad on my way to church to wish him a Happy Easter. He didn’t answer and I figured I would try him again after the service.
While I was waiting in the lobby of the church for the service to start, my twin sister Jacquie called me and told me that our dad was in the hospital. She was two hours ahead of me since I lived in Boulder at the time. I didn’t think too much of it, I just thought my dad wasn’t feeling well since he had been telling me that he had been sick on and off for the last couple of weeks. I truly thought it was the flu and that he may have been dehydrated or something. The service was about to start, so I told her I would call her afterwards.
After the service, I went and got Starbucks with some friends and then, lo and behold, I dropped my phone flat on it’s glass face, the screen shattered. I had never had that happen to me before, I’d never dropped my phone and broken the screen before.
I texted Jacquie, without trying to cut up my fingers, and told her that I had dropped my phone and that I would call her when I got home after I visited the AT&T store to order a new phone.
After I got home, I called Jacquie. I asked her what was up with dad and she told me the doctors didn’t know what was going on and that she would call me later when she found out. So, we ended the call.
Two minutes later, she called me back and told me that she had lied. She said that the doctors said that our dad had cancer, stage 4 lung cancer, that had spread to his liver and his liver was starting to shut down. I was alone in my basement apartment when she was telling me this. Needless to say, I was really upset. I was experiencing the deepest pain I had ever felt, and I was b by myself in my Boulder basement apartment. I wasn’t expecting to find out that my dad had terminal cancer. I didn’t get to talk to him at that moment, he was resting after having had all of these tests done. She also told me that his boss forced him into his car and took him to the hospital after had had been throwing up for 2 days straight. My dad tried to refuse to go.
Later that night, I called Jacquie back again. This time, I got to talk to my dad. I tried to stay strong and not cry, and I didn’t. I did ok, I just wanted to hear his voice.
The next day, they did more tests and we didn’t know what was going to happen. From what my sister told me, they kept talking about what kind of treatments they could do for him, but couldn’t figure it out until they finished testing him.
On Tuesday, I was at work, about to go to lunch with my co-worker and my mom called me. As I was walking out of the building, she told me that they were possibly going to release my dad from the hospital and put him in hospice care. To me, that meant the hospital could do nothing for him, and it was time to let him go to die somewhere. Again, I wasn’t expecting this. I fell to my knees and sobbed as she was saying that. I’m not a dramatic person, but it was the only thing I could do in that moment. My co-worker was shocked. I hadn’t told her what was going on yet since I didn’t know, but she was an angel. She went and got my stuff from my desk as I sat on the curb and sobbed. She walked me to my car and I drove back to my apartment.
I booked a flight for the next day and I went right from the airport to the hospital. It was a Wednesday. I saw my dad and held his hand almost the whole time I was there. My sister and her husband met me there. After a while, some other people from my dad’s work came and visited him. Then they left and I got to spend some time with my dad by myself. It was really the last time I had a real conversation with him, as the days to come, my dad was in so much pain, he didn’t say much. We played Chinese Checkers, which was a game we used to play all the time. I had only beaten my dad once at the game, and that night, I ended up winning. Then I wanted to talk to him. I told him that I didn’t think I could ever be normal again and I didn’t know how I could go on in my life without him. He told me he was sorry, and that it was his fault. I told him my fears about him not getting to meet my kids someday and walk me down the aisle and give me away at my wedding, whenever I actually get married. I asked him what I could do for him, he just said that he wants to hear about the good memories. I also asked him if he was in pain and if knew he was sick like this before. He told me no, but I knew he wasn’t telling me the truth. He told me that he loved me very much and I told him the same.
The next day, Jacquie and her husband and my dad’s friend/roommate Laura took my dad home. They told us to bring him back the next week to possibly start treatment. Each day, my sisters and I took turns staying with my dad during the day while Laura worked. Laura had also been my dad’s girlfriend for a while. They ended up just being friends, but lived with each other for over 10 years. I let my other sister, Emma go to my dad’s house more often than me (by herself) because she wasn’t able to stay in Michigan for very long, she had to come in from California and could only take so much time off. I wanted her to have her own time with him alone. That next week, we all came to my dad’s house, all four of us. It was the last time we all as a family were together. I knew this was probably going to be true, so I made sure we all got a photo together.
By that next Thursday, my dad was not doing well. He was not making sense and you could tell he was in a lot of pain. Laura and my dad’s best friend Bob took him back to the hospital. They gave him morphine that night, but that escalated the failure of his liver, since his liver was not able to process the toxins and they started to go to his brain and shut down his other organs. By the morning, they took him off the morphine and Jacquie and I came to the hospital, ready to stay the whole day.
The plan was for the doctors to go over his treatment plan with us. Instead, they told us that we had to make a choice. And help my dad make a choice. Either we could give him the morphine and let him not be in pain, which would in turn, quickly shut down his liver. Or he could suffer through the pain and try and start chemo 8 days from then. The choice really came down to either die or to suffer for longer and wait for death. We were tasked with asking our dad what he wanted. We had to help him make his decision. As 25 year olds. I kept thinking, “where are the adults, aren’t they supposed to be making the decisions and figuring everything out?”
So, after talking with the doctors, we went over to our dad’s hospital bed. He was fairly loopy already. The toxins had gone to his brain by that point. He really didn’t know what was going on. My mom was with us, they had divorced when we were 13 years old, over 14 years ago. But he had always loved her, even after. We ended up trying to ask our dad what he wanted, and we weren’t able to get him to answer us in a concise and understandable way. Finally, my mom piped up and said, “Jack, do you want to this be over or do you want to try and push through it?” He said clear as a bell, “I want this to be over.” It was a punch to the gut. My dad had decided. So, after that, we called our sister Emma and had her talk to him one last time. We called our other sister Lindsay, who has Down Syndrome and had her talk to him one last time. She didn’t really understand what was going on. We finally called his mom, and had her talk to him one last time. She also didn’t understand what was going on, she believed that he could fight through it. The whole time we were passing the phone to my dad, he kept holding the phone wrong and saying that the phone didn’t work.
After the final phone calls, I wanted to tell him goodbye and so did my other sister. I told him I loved him again and I tried to read off a list of memories that I wrote up, but he wasn’t understanding them. He really just wanted to get the morphine because he was in so much pain.
After that, I had expected my dad to not really be conscious for the rest of the day. I expected him to just sleep. But he was in and out. Tried to leave from his bed several times. At one point, he believed that he was at the apartment complex he worked at and was yelling at a woman saying, “Can’t you see ma’am? I’m very, very sick. I’ll fix your sink when I’m not sick anymore, but can you please leave me alone?” It was a long day.
Later that day, my dad’s fishing buddies came to visit. By that point, my dad was sleepy and calm. He didn’t do much while they visited, but he acknowledged that they were there.
My dad hadn’t eaten the whole day and we thought it might be a good idea to get him some ice cream or a milkshake. When you don’t know what to do for your dying father, you think that getting him food will make him feel better. We asked my dad’s best friend to go and get him one from the closest McDonald’s. When he returned, we tried to feed it to him, but he couldn’t swallow anything. I was worried that the milkshake would get into his lungs if he swallowed wrong, as the nurse warned us, so I stopped trying to get him to drink it.
By 10:30, it was time to go home. Me and twin sister had spent the entire day with my dad in his hospital room. I tried to talk to him, I held his hand, when he had a loose grip. I saw him in an hospital adult diaper and just tried to act normal.
I know my dad would have never wanted us to see him that way. He was always trying to protect us from seeing anything bad about his life, and to be honest, he had a lot of sadness in his life. He had lost multiple jobs, gotten divorced, made a low salary, and had a failed business. He didn’t take care of himself and smoked heavily his whole life. He had also been an alcoholic, but had stopped drink 25 years prior.
There were many great memories of him too, like when he took us to the thanksgiving day parade in Detroit every year. When he made his famous fried fish, that he had caught himself, almost every time we went to visit him. When he went all out on Christmas since he couldn’t really do much during the rest of the year. Whenever he told a story, I craved and still crave his stories because he was so animated and had a rhythm to them that kept me engaged and laughing and wanting to hear more.
It was April 18, 2015. the next morning. Jacquie and I had planned on coming to the hospital at 10:30 a.m. so we could sleep in. At 6:30 a.m. my dad’s best friend Bob called and told me to come quickly, the doctors said he was going fast. I called Jacquie and told her to meet me there and had my mom drop me off at the hospital. I walked down the hallway as fast as I could to the elevator. When I got to his floor, Bob was standing there waiting for me. I had quickly thought, “oh, he’s just going to walk me to dad’s room.” Then it quickly dawned on me. The truth. Bob just needed to affirm it. “I’m so sorry, but your dad just passed away 10 minutes ago.”
My twin sister came in soon after me and she learned too. We then had to call my other sister Emma and tell her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to leave the hospital. Bob was so great and helpful, and he was there when my dad passed. I was so grateful that he wasn’t there alone and that he had his best friend of 40+ years by his side.
The night before when I said goodbye to my dad, I wasn’t expecting for it to be my last one. The doctors had told us that he had possibly two weeks left to live. Not one day. Not one fucking day.
I had never experienced a significant death like this. I had never experienced such trauma. I had never experienced such sadness. And the big theme of this story is that I certainly wasn’t expecting it to happen so suddenly. From the time I found out about my father’s illness, to the time he passed away was 14 days. Two fucking weeks. I feel like people who get cancer find out a little bit earlier and maybe have some possibility of fighting it. But I don’t really have a lot of experience or knowledge of this topic, I do know that everyone has their own version of how cancer has affected their life.
I think back to the months before my dad passed. I keep thinking, “He had to have had cancer then.” My younger sister Emma got married in December, and I definitely think he had it then. Like I said, he always tried to protect us from seeing anything bad about his life.
He also didn’t take care of himself. He didn’t like going to the doctor. He didn’t want to quit smoking. He didn’t want to eat better or exercise. He just wanted to do some fun housework, build a garden, and fish, amongst a few others things. He pushed off trying to make his life better his whole life.
The sad part was that I had always had big hopes for him. I had always wanted to him to try and improve his life. And when a parent dies, your hopes for them kind of die along with them.
That day, after we left the hospital, I went to Jacquie’s house and we didn’t say anything. We watched That 70’s Show on Netflix and I fell asleep for a few hours. I then left and went back to my mom’s house, where I was staying, and I truly don’t remember much else.
I do remember his memorial service and spreading some of his ashes in a lake that was next to Bob’s lake house up north. I remember his birthday, which he had missed by a couple of weeks, where we honored him with a tree and memorial at the apartment complex he worked at.
And I remember trying to pick myself back up and make myself go to a tech meetup in Ann Arbor to see what was going on since I had moved to Boulder. Much to my surprise, I learned about a design meetup with a startup in town. One thing led to another and I ended up deciding to move back to Michigan and take a job with this company after discovering their amazing mission.
They say to not make any major life decisions when you go through such a trauma as I did. For some reason, I don’t listen to those “they-sayers.” And for me, it’s been a huge blessing to move back across the country to be closer to my family and work for an amazing company.
I am in no means healed from what happened. It’s a stressful, daily struggle. I’ve had a hard time facing it and miss my dad so much everyday. The months after, I dove straight into my new job and put a lot of my time and energy into my work. I’m now trying to focus on finding balance. There are so many days I wish that what happened didn’t happen. I wish that my dad had taken better care of himself. I wish that he was still here. But those stories aren’t helpful, since I can’t have hope in them. There are many days where I’m foggy. Where I forget things constantly. I’ve had to reschedule so many appointments because I’ve forgotten about them. I’ve had to become more diligent about taking notes and setting alarms so that I don’t forget. For a while, I even had an alarm to brush my teeth.
The thing I can have hope for now is my desire to try and better my own life. To find balance. To navigate through the fog and to try and help myself remember things. The thing I can have hope for is relying on God to get me through this, even though I’ve struggled with my faith since my dad passed.
I don’t know if I’m ready to say what I’ve learned from this experience yet. It’s been tough to see if there’s a light at the end of this grief tunnel. I don’t think I’m there yet, but I know I’m reaching for it now.
There’s a lot that was left out of this story, I might come back someday and do some editing.
