My Dad died.
He took his last breath around 4am, 17th December 2021. His death was so peaceful and quiet. He just drifted away from this realm to the next. Exactly 100 days since Mum took her last breath...Dad took his.
He got sick from an infection. MRSA. Originating from a wound in his toe. He had osteomyelitis the previous year in the same foot. He had a fall at home after becoming quite dizzy and ended up in hospital with septic shock from the infection. IV antibiotics were started. He was in and out of ICU. He was ventilated for two days. He had multiple heart attacks. Pneumonia. A clot on his lung. His kidneys began failing. He spent just over two weeks in hospital, before it was decided that active interventions were seeing no improvements. Doctors transferred him to the palliative team and within 36 hours of that decision, he was gone. For the majority of the two weeks he was in hospital, I spent as much time with him as possible. Actually out of the fifteen days or so, there were three I didn't see him. One when there was miscommunication and I thought my brother was spending the day with him so I didn't visit, but my brother had some car troubles and wasn't able to make it. And two days when the hospital got put into lockdown due to an ICU staff member testing positive for Covid, which meant absolutely no visitors. Looking back I'm thankful for all the time I got to spend with him. We watched the first game of the Ashes together. The old classic movie Sitting Bull, making jokes all the way through. And we watched The Bold and the Beautiful a few times. Some days when I was there, he would just sleep. But I know me being there helped. If he roused a bit I would let him know I was with him and if he did wake later when I was gone, the nurses would let him know I was with him. It's tough to articulate who Dad was. He was a troubled alcoholic when I was a kid, I'll not sugar coat it. That was the reality of it. But he got sober, he transformed into a mellow creature of habit afterwards. He was a fine example of redemption. He learnt how to garden, he grew a rose garden for Mum and would bring her the most beautiful fragrant blooms when they flowered. They may have never promised each other a rose garden, but Dad grew one nevertheless. He would bring Mum her medication every morning. They had a cooked breakfast on weekends and read the newspapers together. They would organise from the papers what bets they were putting on the horse races together. Dad washed everyone's clothes. He could read the weather like he had some psychic tether to the atmosphere. It was probably just the weather report. He got up around 4.30 - 5am most days. He was a ganger on the local council. He would tell you stories about all the roads he worked on over the years. He loved rock n roll and dancing. He was a rockabilly greaser kind of man in his younger years, and kept the hairstyle well into his middle age. He always looked younger than his age. He taught me about stars and planets and constellations, some were mostly wrong, but it was magic to me when I was a kid. Looking up at stars with your Dad and learning that these specks of light have names. He hated hot weather, humidity drove him to groan and complain for two months out of the year. I remember one year he pulled a mattress out into the backyard and slept outside because he was fed up with the heat lingering in the house. We had an evaporative cooler when we were kids, Dad practically sat on top of it and still complained about the heat. Mum would always say that he was born complaining. He meticulously mowed his lawn, and cut edges like they were sheer cliffs. If you didn't step up enough, the edges were a tripping hazard. He loved cricket and NRL football. His team is the Canberra Raiders. He had a decent interest in politics. Yelling at the TV and berating politicians he loathed, was something he would do often. He yelled at the TV a bit when watching the footy too. Dad still had a beer or two in his later years. He never went back to what he was in the bad days. He said in the hospital he was starting to forget what beer tasted like. I wished we had snuck one in for him. My Dad was a good man. With the years he became quiet, humble, mellowed out. He was always sentimental. I hugged him and told him I loved him everytime we were together. I wished I had done it more. And taken more photos. More time. Always longing for more time.
My sister and I were with him when he died. We were with Mum too. In the end Mum's breathing became laboured, rattley with longer pauses in between, until she took no more. Dad was silent, like he had gone into a deep sleep. But forever.
It all seems surreal. When Mum died, it was utter devastation and heart break. I haven't even processed her death and now Dad's gone too. My heart is numb. My entire existence is numb. I liken 2021 to being pummeled by a tsunami of waves. Constantly. Not knowing up from down. And I still haven't been able to come up for air. Losing my baby girl Hazel in pregnancy in 2015, giving birth to her and holding her tiny lifeless body. That taught me a thing or two about grief. And courage. It's the experience of losing her, that helped me to find the courage to be with Mum as she died..to be there for her. It gave me the courage to do the same with Dad. The pain of grief will never go away. At the moment, I've actively packaged it up. Sitting in a locked box in my mind, heart and soul. A Pandora's Box of sorts I guess. I open it occasionally and allow myself to breakdown, but I close it up just as quickly. I couldn't possibly feel it all at once. It would kill me. So this box of grief sits in my mind, heart and soul, and it is a monumental ache. An ache I try to ignore for a bit, so I can get on with my day, looking after my kids and doing all the things. There are moments it bubbles out and I have to climb into bed and cry. I have Dad's pillow. I cuddle it. It still smells like him. Maybe one day it won't. And I'll forget his smell.
I could write words about how grateful I am that he and Mum are together again. I even said so at his funeral. Grateful that he never had all those firsts without her. First Christmas, first wedding anniversary, first birthday...first anniversary of her death. That now he is with his girl. I said all those things at his funeral too. Who knows where anyone goes after death. I just know what's left behind. Grief, sadness...and heartbreak so intense that it's an actual physical pain in your chest, it takes your breath away. I barely recognise my life anymore. Three people in this world I felt most safe with have died or ceased to be in my life as they once were. My parents and my former partner. Even though my ex is still supportive, it's not the same and it never will be. Sometimes I can barely look him in the eye, the pain of what's been lost and how we hurt one another, it just adds to the pain of everything else. And he's not without his challenges and struggles too. And grief. I feel ill-equipped to support him. I'm not strong enough. I sometimes wonder how I get through the worst days. But I do. I think of Mum and Dad. How the pain of losing them both is not something I want to leave with my children, not for a long while yet. Just survive the day and find the moments of joy. My mental breakdown taught me that.
Today I feel lonely and sad. I remember a month or so ago driving my car into town. I stopped at a set of traffic lights and as I looked ahead at the sky and trees, it was like the colours began to drain away from the world. Like a grey filter had been placed over everything. I'm not sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I know that's what happened. It has felt like that ever since Mum died, the world is less bright and vibrant. Now Dad has gone too. It's like everything has permanently turned grey and depressed. Last year I felt like I was stuck in the eye of a storm, a great tornado swirling around me. Now it's all stopped and my life has been decimated. I've been decimated and now I am trying to navigate this fucking wasteland of a life with no compass.
I'm angry, sad, depressed and lonely. I miss my parents. "Miss" isn't even the right word. There's a immense gaping ache and longing just to hug them and hear their voices, their laughter. Life is cruel and doesn't make sense. I could have written an uplifting post about seeing signs and feeling my parents with me. I could have written some bullshit about how their love endured always, through the good, the bad and all the inbetween. They clearly couldn't live or die without one another. At least they're together right?
It's all cosmic, written in the stars, fate and destiny, those 100 days between their deaths mean something... But do they? Really? It feels like destiny and fate, signs and synchronicities are all bullshit. Cosmic fuckery. It all feels meaningless.
My 80 year old father got sick and died. Maybe he really did die of a broken heart. My sister and I organised his funeral. Now organising his affairs and estate. If you can even call it that, what little he had. Mum and Dad were pensioners with very little in material abundance or wealth. In the end it's all stuff and things, no amount of anything could make it all better. They're gone.
I prayed for my Dad not to suffer. "If there is a miracle that can keep him here...please...If not...don't let him suffer... just take him quickly." That's what I prayed for. Once all the interventions were stopped. Within 36 hours he was gone. No Christmas miracles. I remember in the hospital after Dad had his final dose of morphine and medication to help calm him down, as he became a little anxious towards the end. He calmed, fell asleep, started snoring. Peaceful. My sister and I laid down on the mattresses that were on the floor that the hospital provided. She said to me, "Do you think we will ever talk to him again?"
"No...", I said.
Yet we did though. We spoke to, hugged and kissed his still warm body the next morning. I smelled his hair constantly, I didn't want to forget his smell. As we were leaving, we passed the newsagent. I stopped in and bought him his last newspapers. I rushed back to the ward where we just said our final goodbyes, and handed them to the nurse. Choking back tears I said to her, "I brought Dad his last newspapers, can you make sure he gets them?"
"Of course... it's so hard...you take care of yourself", she said.
I wandered back to the newsagent and met back up with my sister. We walked out of the hospital together and broke down.
In 100 days the world as I've known it, has been utterly destroyed. I've never walked Earth without my parents. Never breathed air from a world they don't exist in.
Neither have my siblings.
We're orphans.
I'm an orphan.
A devastated, heartbroken orphan.
Till we meet again... Some sunny day
.
Comments