My Father Wasn’t Going to Die Without a Fight
The last time
What I remember most is the stillness, the silence…
It was as if time had stopped in the small room.
Just a few hours before, the room had been anything but silent. The sounds of a raging battle cut the air. The sounds of a battle to the death.
With each labored, rasping breath my father had waged his last fight. It was a fight he knew he couldn’t win, but he fought hard to the very end.
My trip back home to Michigan had been scheduled months before.
I try to visit my family there as often as I can, but sometimes the space between visits stretches to years. The gap was going on three years that time.
My father’s health had been in serious decline for several years. At the previous trip — pre-gap — he was still quite lucid, and fairly mobile.
He was still driving back then, but after one harrowing ride with him at the wheel I thought his driving gloves should be retired for good.
When we talked, he could easily remember events from long ago, events from his childhood, events from his high school days. But he would sometimes just go blank, not remembering a conversation we had the day before.
The next time I saw him — the last time — things were very different. He had suffered a series of strokes, spent time in the hospital, still more time in a nursing home with round-the-clock care.
Finally, as more and more of his body’s systems started to shut down, he was moved to a hospice facility, where all they could do was keep him hydrated and try to ease his pain.
My long-overdue visit brought me to his hospice bedside.
The wrinkled old man lying before me was now a shriveled husk of his former jovial, overweight self.
My trip had been timed to include a weekend, the better to see more of my relatives during the short visit. When Dad’s passing seemed imminent, I extended my stay a few extra days, just in case.
The day before I was scheduled to leave Michigan and return to the West Coast and back to work, I arrived at the hospice room in the early afternoon.
My mother had left her own bedside vigil on an errand, so I settled into the chair next to Dad’s bed, and though he never opened his eyes, I talked to him as I held his hand…
Over the years I had seen that hand gripping hammers and saws, and carrying lumber; fixing TVs and cars and computers; grilling hot dogs and steaks on holiday afternoons. It was the hand that had steered the car and spanked my bottom when I was a boy…
But that hand I remembered as big and strong and skillful now felt cold and fragile, as though I might break it by squeezing too hard.
Cradling Dad’s hand in my own, I watched his struggling chest, listened to his labored breathing and thought about growing up in his house.
From the corner of the hospice room a television set blared out cartoons.
I started to get up and turn off the TV, but stopped and laughed out loud at a memory from the past…
Arriving home after school one day, I had found my father lying on the couch asleep, snoring loudly, his face buried in the back cushion.
The television set was turned up so loud the next door neighbors could hear. So I turned it off.
But the moment I turned the knob, the instant the blaring stopped, his voice came from the couch, reprimanding, “Hey! I was watching that.”
I had quickly turned the set back on, a few decibels lower this time, and from the couch his snoring had instantly resumed.
I was still smiling as my thoughts returned to the present.
As late afternoon turned into evening, more and more family members joined me at Dad’s bedside, until the small hospice room fairly burst with people.
We visited and talked, and laughed, all the while with the TV playing in the background. No one dared turn it off. We had all had our own “I was watching that” experiences.
And through it all, Dad clung to this world, breath by labored breath.
I wondered if he was afraid to die, or whether he was just unwilling to let go.
Perhaps he had too much unfinished business here. Things undone, words unsaid, places unseen.
When visiting hours ended and we all left for the night, we knew Dad’s chances of surviving until morning were slight. So it was no surprise when the phone rang soon after Mom and I arrived back at her house.
Dad had passed away.
I drove my mother back to the hospice. While she busied herself gathering up Dad’s few belongings, I looked one last time at the emaciated old man lying motionless in the bed.
My father.
And I listened to the silence. Felt the stillness. Dad’s last battle was over, and he was finally at rest.
