On The Loss of My Father

My father began undergoing treatment for stage four colon cancer after he was diagnosed last May. It had already taken several months of weakness and weight loss to get him to go to a doctor at all, and then only after much pleading from my mother. He hated going to doctors, hated being sick and weak, hated having to take pills, and especially hated having the colostomy which he had to undergo. But reluctantly he did it, and only at all for the sake of his wife and his adult children. For my part, I had really hoped that my return home following an absence of twelve years would lift his spirits and reinvigorate him, especially since he long anticipated having me home again. For many years we looked forward to bass and fly fishing together, and hoped to do that this coming spring. Back home in New Jersey in the 1990’s we camped and fished together whenever we had a chance.

On Wednesday January 14th he was at his regularly scheduled weekly treatment and although over the past few months the chemotherapy had sapped much of his strength, things appeared to be holding up. Then on the night of the 14th through the morning of the 16th he had diarrhea, and my mother took him to the hospital in Binghamton on the 16th, where they hydrated him and gave him more medication. After the hospital, he was strong enough to get my mother to take him to the Sears store and to a restaurant in Johnson City, and she said later that he ate rather well there that day.

Two nights ago, Tuesday evening, Dad passed on while I was at his bedside. It was a hard thing to endure, and it will probably be some time before I can set it aside in my mind. In spite of the medication they had given him on Friday, he had diarrhea and nausea for several days and had hardly eaten anything, yet he was up and around through Sunday, when his condition began to deteriorate very rapidly. We wanted to take him to the hospital on Tuesday morning, by which time he could barely walk, but being as stubborn a man as was customary, he refused. He would only agree to attend his regular weekly visit on Wednesday morning. He stayed awake in bed much of Tuesday, and made an earnest attempt to eat the crackers and soup broth that my mother gave him hoping that he may get some nourishment, and then in the evening around 7:30 or so he told my mother that he wanted to go to sleep. When I went upstairs just before 9:00 I went into my parents’ bedroom to check on him, and found him on the floor near the bed. Some time before I found him, he had expelled a lot of coffee-colored fluid, which we only found out later was blood mixed with fluids from his upper digestive tract. This certainly explained the nausea and the recent difficulty he had when trying to eat. Obviously things were happening inside of his system that weren’t readily evident to us or to the doctors. Upon my finding him, he was still alive although barely coherent. Calling to my mother, she came in and we wiped him up, and after talking to him, although he wasn’t in any shape to respond, she went to call for an ambulance. I lifted him back up onto the bed and asked him to hang in there. I held his hand and told him that I loved him and he responded only by squeezing my hand weakly, and then he went limp. It was if he had held on only to that very moment. Later on I realized that his effort to fight his disease was much greater than we realized it was when he was still alive. The lucky men are the ones who die quietly, unexpectedly, and suddenly in their sleep. The ambulance came minutes later, but he was already gone. Yet for nearly 30 minutes an entire crew did all that they could to revive him while my mother and I clung to each other in hope. It was a valiant effort on their part, but he was gone. I am quite grateful for the earnest persistence they displayed when trying to revive him.

My Dad and I were always close when I was a kid, even though he was hardly home. We always had our differences as I got older, and still more even later once I started having kids of my own. Yet we managed to overcome those, and he stuck by me and supported me more than I could ever express gratitude for after I got into trouble and went to prison. It just doesn’t seem fair, that he waited for me for all of those years, but once I got home we didn’t get to go fishing together. Growing old is a difficult thing which we all have to endure, and it certainly is true that youth, as they say, is wasted on the young. I am really going to miss my old man, and it really hurts to lose him, especially so soon after getting home from so long an absence. Yet I can thank Yahweh my God, and my father’s fortitude, that we did at least have much of these past six weeks together.