How I Got Over the Pain of Watching My Father Dying on Zoom

Seeing him perish through a monitor shocked me and rocked me. This is how I recovered.

“How old am I, Iain?” dad asked.

For the third time in five minutes, I gave him the same answer: “You’re 87, mate.”

Under normal circumstances, I’d have said, “Fuck me” just loud enough for him to hear, then given him a gobful for not listening, but the gurgling rattle in his chest that hijacked each breath and overwhelmed every background beep and buzz from his bed meant I wasn’t so harsh on him this time.

“87, eh? That’s good enough for me,” he said again.

As soon as he’d wheezed those words out, his pallid, blue eyes froze and his hollow, sallow cheeks stopped still. Then the rattle disappeared.

Complete silence.

“Dad!” I screamed. “Dad!”

I was a man of 47, but I felt like a ten-year-old boy on the side of the road pleading for my father to wake up after he’d been crushed by a car.

“Dad!” I screamed once more.

Then the screen came to life again, covered by a bright pink finger, and a nurse looked into my eyes and said, “Sorry, Iain. Just a few wi-fi issues. I think we’re back on now.”

“Fuck me,” I said under my breath as I sat back down in my chair and tried to recompose myself.

My father had been poorly for more than ten years and bedridden for the last three, so I’d prepared myself for the inevitable time he passed away, but I hadn’t prepared for seeing it live through a 27-inch flat screen monitor.

“Are you there, Iain?” Dad said as he searched forlornly for my face.

“Yeah, mate, still here.”

“I’m glad you’re here, mate. How are you, son? Are you and the girls, ok?”

“We’re all good, mate. Everything’s fine over here,” I said.

But everything wasn’t fine, and I wasn’t OK.

My father was wearing nappies in a nursing home bed, teetering on the precipice of death as nurses propped his blue plastic pee bottle up by his side and held an iPad in front of his face so he could see me — perhaps for the last time.

He didn’t deserve to die like this.

It felt callous and inhumane watching and listening to my father fade away over a Zoom call while I sat in my office in Japan, 7,044 kilometres away.

Thank you, Covid. Thank you, governments.

“You take care of yourself, Iain. And give my love to your mother,” Dad whispered, through the crackle of impending finality.

“You take care, too, Dad. I love you,” I said. He didn’t answer. His eyes gently closed, and he drifted off.

We never spoke again.

How I Healed My Broken Heart

As the minutes became hours became weeks became months, I slowly learned to let go and look back fondly at my father’s life.

Not seeing him or holding his hand in his final moments will eternally burn a hole through my heart, but life isn’t a beautifully illustrated picture book fairytale. We don’t always get the happy ever-afters.

And as harsh as it is, here’s a secret: we all die.

You, me, every lover you’ve ever had. Even your beloved mum and dad.

We all end up burned in an urn. Or deep inside the guts of a worm.

When I think about that, I have to be grateful that my dad was almost 90. That’s longer than the life expectancy of all 195 countries on earth, male or female.

I live in Japan, a country the world often points to as an exemplar of longevity. You know the life expectancy here?

It’s 81 for males and 87 for females.

Hong Kong officially has the longest life expectancy for males, at 83. My dad outlived all the fancy charts and averages.

Millions of other children are never as fortunate with their parents. And millions of people die far too young.

My dad’s days outnumbered the best of ’em.

Not only did my dad almost reach 90, but he also had a red-hot crack at life.

After enduring WWII as a child in London, he joined the British Navy at 17, sailed across Europe, travelled the world, got married three times, got divorced three times, emigrated to Australia in 1971, and lived as my dad for almost 50 years.

A rich, full life of his own. And a rich, full life as my father.

As a father and son team, we did as much together as most fathers and sons could ever wish for.

He taught me how to play soccer, then never complained when I made him go goalkeeper while I pinged penalty kicks at his head and laughed.

He taught me how to swing a golf club, then held his short-tempered tongue as I began to outscore him within a year.

He taught me how to read the ocean, then never said no when I asked him to drive me to the beach and watch me surf for an hour. Which always became three.

And he taught me how to cheer for our beloved South Sydney Rabbitohs. When they won the Grand Final in 2014 for the first time in my life, he was the first person I rang. We sobbed tears of joy over the phone.

We did as much together as any father and son could possibly hope for.

Finally, it wasn’t just the things we did together when I was young; it was also the support he gave me from afar as he watched me grow from boy to man.

He supported me through my years of beers at university, then repeatedly propped up my bank account when I left Australia in my mid-twenties to travel the world and teach in Asia.

Like clockwork, I’d call him up every couple of months from an internet café somewhere deep in S.E Asia and say, “G’day John. You reckon you could spot me a few bucks for a while?”

Like clockwork, he’d answer, “Sure. How much do you need?”

When I finally stopped spending his money and got a life and a wife of my own, he welcomed her into his home and into his arms, then held both my young daughters as he became ‘Grandpa John’.

Even from his nursing home bed, he’d ask to speak to my girls when we had our weekly chat.

What More Could You Ask For?

When my mother’s partner died, he was in a hospital bed surrounded by my mother, his daughters, and his grandchildren. He took his last breath, smiling at all of them.

That’s about as good as it gets.

I didn’t get so lucky with my dad.

Don’t worry about being in the same room together, I wasn’t even in the same country.

The best I got was a goodbye over a spotty Zoom call.

That was — is — heartbreaking.

On reflection, however, he lived a long, full life replete with rich experiences: both his own and with me.

The circumstances of his loss and the sadness in my heart will always linger, like a photo in a room you can’t quite bring yourself to put away.

But I content myself knowing that he exceeded his expectations and was happy with the way his life turned out.