I’m not grieving

A couple of weeks ago, Dad died. I am not grieving. I haven’t cried yet over his death and I doubt that I will. 

When I was growing up, Dad was a hard drinker. All the grieving I should do now at his death was done then. I grieved when he was home, and I grieved when he was coming home. I gauged my grieving by how hard his truck engine ran as he barreled down the dusty county road after he turned off the highway. I could hear the truck two miles away and knew that if the truck was racing, he was furious.  I didn’t know what he would be furious about, I just knew that when he pulled into the yard, all hell would break loose. I would either have to hide behind something or get out of the house as the torrent of foul language and yelling rained down on Mom, when she was home.

But she wasn’t home a lot. Mom had to work. She didn’t want to, she had to. She was a registered nurse so her days or evenings were spent at the nursing home taking care of the elderly and trying to keep the lazy nurses aides on task. 

If Mom had not worked, we would not have eaten, so it was a done deal.  I was left alone in our far too small trailer house most days in the country with only a cousin to call on the phone or hang out with. But she was the youngest of five and her family was functional. She had family. I had me.

My grieve not only included living with Dad, but it included living without a Mom to do things with. If I were to tell her this now, she would double over in sorrow and false guilt because she too grieves that she could not be a Mom at home. She carries a mountain of memories and anger that all wives of alcoholics carry and not being able to be home for her children is one of them. 

Sixteen months ago Dad was placed on home hospice care. He was not expected to live half a year, but he beat the odds and lived three times that long. Heart problems and kidney problems were to blame. 

For 16 months, Mom nursed him, made sure he had all his medications, went everywhere with him, and stayed always at home with him. A year ago my husband and I moved back next door into the house I built there years ago. We came back to do the same, to take care of Dad and to take care of the caregiver. 

When Mom was sick in the hospital this summer, someone had to be there for Dad so I nursed him, made sure he had all his medications, bandaged his rotting legs, and stayed close by when I wasn’t at the hospital with her. 

My husband took over cutting all Dad’s firewood so that Dad could maintain the stove in the basement. Earl became a favorite coffee companion and someone to shoot the breeze with while sitting by the stove. Stoking the stove and drinking coffee with us and close friends were Dad’s last pastimes.

While living next door and being there for the patient and the caregiver, I was able to see through my dad’s eyes that he finally saw me as someone worthy of attention. He saw that I was strong, because I could load, haul, and stack his firewood. He saw that I could get work done around the place because I did. And he saw that I was loved and cherished because my husband loves and cherishes me.

When he saw that affection shown me, he started to demonstrate, in small and almost undetectable ways the same to Mom. She did not recognize these demonstrations and when she was told, she attributed them to a certain drug’s side effect or as a misinterpretation of his intention. Her mountain blocked her view much of the time so she kept to her pill counts and bandage changes.

In the last months of his life, Dad became more resigned to his impending death. He started to pray in his own way over meals whenever my husband invited him, and he would listen to Mom’s favorite radio Bible program with her. But mostly, he would sleep in his living room chair and say how nice it was to have peace and be with Mom. She did know that, that he cherished peace and being quiet with her next to him.

Now he’s gone and I don’t grieve. God gave us the gift of holding him in our arms as he passed away in his hospital bed in the living room. When Dad breathed his last, Mom had rubbed his back and was taking care of the results of an enema that had worked. He was in our arms. He gave two short fishy gasps, and a slight grimace and he was on his way across the river.