LIFE & DEATH
Gratitude Towards Death
Why I am grateful my father didn’t live longer
My father died on January 6, 2020, and I am grateful he didn't live longer than that.
I’m not a horrible person. And neither was he.
Let me be very clear about something; if my father could have had a long and healthy life, I would have wanted that. I didn’t want him to die.
If I could be certain that I would have another few years with him here, I may not be making such an offensive statement. But throughout 2019, he was an incredibly sick man.
It was hard enough to be a healthy person in 2020. What would have happened to him if he had lived?
My dad was never the beacon of health and wellness. But he was stronger than he appeared.
He had a very slim build and didn’t really do much in the way of exercise.
He suffered from polycystic kidney disease and underwent a transplant in 1995. The donated kidney, which came from a family friend, thankfully worked well enough until his final days, 10 years longer than expected.
For the last few decades, had cancerous and pre-cancerous spots on his arms and scalp that were being monitored, but somewhere around 2015, they started removing them, as necessary. Eventually, they were too numerous, too large, too deep, and too dangerous. A complete scalp transplant was needed.
After a very successful transplant in December 2018, he developed pneumonia and a cough that just wouldn't go away.
As it turns out, bilateral lung cancer will do that. Fuck.
He spent the next year in and out of hospital. Being the terrible patient he was, he would be discharged from his stay, go home, follow none of the instructions, eat nothing, do nothing, and sleep all day.
For every week he was home, he was back in the hospital for two. This went on for a year. So often, he was too weak to receive his chemotherapy. So he had major gaps in treatment.
He suffered a ruptured bowel on December 26, 2019, and went to the hospital. He never left.
It has been a little over a year since he passed. While the deep ache of his absence is palpable, normal life — or whatever it is that’s happening now — has resumed.
But I look at everything that has transpired over the last 15 months and wonder what it would have been like, for my mother, for me and my siblings, and for him.
My father would have undoubtedly been fascinated with the science behind everything related to the novel coronavirus — the virus itself, the epidemiology, the efforts towards vaccine development, and the daily medical briefings.
He would have worked diligently from his hospital bed, on strategies that he deemed far more effective in managing the virus. Everything from looking at cellular processes to managing public compliance would have been jotted down on hospital napkins, or in the margins of his crosswords.
He would have been absolutely convinced he had it worked out.
But he would have been alone.
He would have been completely alone, day in and day out, in a hospital bed that he was too weak to leave. And when he came home, he’d have to quarantine given that he‘d been in the hospital.
And before his two-week quarantine was up, he’d be back in the hospital.
We’d be limited to talking on the phone — no FaceTime, since he refused to give up his Blackberry for an iPhone. And he wasn't the chattiest guy. So we’d be the ones asking questions and getting one or two-word answers.
And that’s how it would have gone for the whole year.
My siblings and I have always been close, we didn't need this event to bring us together. However, given the pandemic, we actually see even less of each other now.
Had this been a normal year, my mom would have hosted fairly regular Friday night dinners for her 4 children, their partners, and our collective 9 kids.
Nineteen loud people gathered around a long table, talking more than eating, laughing about old Saturday Night Live sketches, the big driving trip we took in 1988, and likely celebrating a recent birthday or anniversary.
But we are eighteen people now. And we can’t be together.
My siblings and I are now officially sandwich generation people. We are still caring for our kids, who range in age from 6 to 17, and now caring for my mom.
My mom is a young 73. She is physically active and in good shape. She worked until about 8 years ago, but family always came first.
She absolutely lives for her kids and grandkids.
During the past year, when she couldn't be with any of us, she’s been planning craft activities for the little ones, watching Marvel shows she really doesn't enjoy — just so she can chat with her grandsons about them, video baking sessions, crocheting scarves and blankets, and cooking up a storm and delivering it to our houses regularly.
But my mom was also dependent on my dad for a lot of things, and that's where my siblings and I have had to pick up the slack.
We had to teach her everything about online banking, help her with all of the life insurance and other paperwork relating to my dad’s death, and we’d don hazmat gear just to go into her condo and help her move some furniture.
I’d be a millionaire by now if I had a dollar for every time I had to remind my mom to just reboot the cable box when it stopped working.
We have to find extra time to join her on her walks, which none of us have, but somehow we all make.
We check in with each other to make sure we’re sharing the load.
In all honesty, it's not work. My mom is all sorts of awesome, but it is something new that we have had to factor into our lives.
My mom’s life, however, would have been so dramatically different this past year.
Prior to my father’s passing, my mother was at every appointment, every chemo session, and by his side as often as possible whenever he was in the hospital.
When he was at home, she cooked every possible food, just so he would eat something. Soft foods that didn’t sting the chemo-induced sores in his mouth, high protein and fatty foods to help keep the slightest bit of meat on his bones.
She had always kept a kosher home and threw that out the window just in the interest of him eating something, anything at all.
Had my father lived, my mother would have been in permanent quarantine, as she would be at the hospital (assuming she was even permitted) and would have contact risks there.
She would also have to stay isolated to prevent any germs from coming into their home.
He already had almost no immune system due to his anti-rejection medication from his transplant, chemotherapy only made it worse.
Even if she wasn’t isolating, she wouldn't have had the energy or time to go on walks, have distance visits with her children and grandchildren or driveway meet-ups with friends.
Nor would she have had time to do what she loved most; taking care of her children and grandchildren. She loved to cook and bake for all of us.
This past year, my siblings and I often got a group text informing us of the chicken soup, broccoli casserole, and meatballs that were cooked and ready for pickup.
Had he lived, that simply wouldn’t have happened. She would be shuttling him to all his appointments, waiting nervously during surgeries, and sitting by his bedside.
And when she wasn't doing that, she would have been stuck at home caring for a very sick man, one who really just wanted to be left alone. He always hated people making a fuss over him.
My mother could have possibly faced the harsh reality of saying goodbye to him over a Zoom call, having a funeral that wouldn't even allow for the numbers in our immediate family, and losing out on Shiva, the 7 day, post-funeral mourning period observed by Jewish people.
And in all of that time, she wouldn't have been able to hug her own children.
When my father died, he was surrounded by his wife, his four children, and their partners. We held him, we held each other.
Over 300 people attended his funeral, and the same people, plus hundreds more came to visit us all during Shiva.
Shiva is an incredible thing. I am far from religious in any capacity, but I have always respected Shiva in a purely humanitarian sense.
It is a time for the mourners to be supported — they don't cook or clean at all. Catered meals are sent in from close family and friends for the week. Then those people who ordered the food show up to serve the meal and clean up after.
It is a time for stories, and looking through photo albums, and remembering every wonderful thing about the person you’ve lost.
It is a time when people whom you haven't seen in years return to your life to pay their respects.
Returning to a world that kept spinning while yours stopped is jarring. “Getting up” from Shiva is challenging. But I believe that engaging in reality immediately after such a significant loss would be even harder.
We would have been robbed of all of this.
We would have lost the opportunity to turn our tears into laughter as we recalled the time he sang along to the beep-beep-boop of a cash register on a family trip. Or when he rigged the hot tub motor to our doorbell so we’d know if the breaker tripped.
We would have lost the opportunity to find strength in each other through our most devastating moments.
I’m grateful my father died when he did. Had he not suffered the ruptured bowel, he would likely have endured months more of pain and suffering, energy-draining chemo, continued weight loss, and incredible loneliness.
And we would not have been afforded the gift of how we got to say goodbye.
I am sad for my mother that the isolation of this pandemic has been even lonelier for her. But I am grateful that she did not spend this past year as a nurse-maid to a dying man, She had already done that for a year and I saw how it weighed on her.
I miss my father so much, and I would give anything to have had more time with him, but quality time. Not more time for him to wait for death, more time to live. And that simply wasn’t going to happen.