Just as I was about to ask him if he wanted anything to eat, I noticed his eyes moving back and forth on the wall behind me. Turning around, I saw nothing unusual. There were no bugs on the march, the picture of the forest wasn’t crooked, and there was no one behind me. Then he asked, “Who is that woman?”
“What woman?”
Indicating with his hand that he wanted me to move so he could get a better look, he stared steadily at the wall as I got up and went to the other side of the bed and put my cheek on his.
“What does she look like?” I whispered.
“She’s beautiful and so nice. She looks like your mother.”
He continued looking at the vision of my mother while I stared at the wall.
Then I said, “It is Mom. She misses you. But, remember, you go when you’re ready.”
And just like that, she was gone and he was asleep.
For the next couple of days, he mostly slept. The nurses came daily, but there were no physical signs he was leaving—that is, until Thursday, when I had someplace else to be.
Michelle had been living in Los Angeles pursuing her acting career. She was filming a movie in New Orleans and was having a bed delivered that Friday. It was a gift from a friend who was cleaning out her storage locker, and Friday was the only day it could be brought to her home. We’d made the decision the month before that I’d come down and have a mini vacation in her apartment and receive it. At that time, all was well at home. I’d leave on Thursday and be back Sunday night. Arrangements were made with David and Tim to tag team and stay with our father. Since we hired Junior and Mike, I was completely covered. I didn’t really need my brothers to come, but something inside me suggested this would be a good time for them to visit.
On Thursday morning, I entered Dad’s room to let him know I’d be leaving soon. We’d discussed it many times over the past several weeks and he’d always been happy to know I was going to be able to get away. Today was different.
Hearing I was about to leave, he suddenly became frightened. Shifting his body weight from side to side, he tried to pull himself upwards, then, made retching sounds as if he were about to throw up.
“Oh my God, Dad! Are you okay?”
Grabbing a nearby bowl, he proceeded to lose the bile in his stomach. With scared, pleading eyes, he begged, “Please, don’t go!”
It was in that moment I knew he didn’t have much time left. Tracie had warned me of the signs when it came close to the end: fear, agitation, body discoloration, and loss of appetite. But I also remembered her saying, “He won’t leave unless you’re in the room with him. You two have made this incredible journey together and he’ll want you with him.”
Knowing he’d be with two of his sons, I made the difficult decision to go.
“Dad, once you’re settled, I’m going to go. I promised Michelle I’d do this for her. But I’ll come home Saturday morning instead of Sunday night. David will be here in a couple of hours and Tim comes tomorrow night. Even Michael said he’d be here when I get back. We’ll have a party!”
Four hours later, I was on a plane to Los Angeles, preparing myself for a life without my father.
What will I do without him? I thought as my eyes watered. I thought I’d be ready when the time came, but I’m not. The next day, I received my daughter’s bed, then sat on the Santa Monica beach and sobbed for hours.
On Saturday morning when I returned, Mike, David, and Tim were trying to change his diaper. His body had become such dead weight it now took three strong men to move him. As they rolled him over, I touched his shoulder. “Dad, I’m home.” Grabbing my arm, he cried, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go back.”
Wrapping him in my arms, I nuzzled my nose in his neck and whispered, “Okay, Dad. Okay.”
For the next thirty-eight hours, my brothers and I sat at his side. We talked, told stories just like we had when we were by my mother’s side, and held his hand. By 1:00 p.m. Sunday, David needed to leave. He had classes to teach early the next day at Sacramento State, but he planned to return in two days.
“What is that sound?” Tim asked Mike. Dad was making a gurgling noise in his throat. “It sounds like he’s got fluid in there but can’t cough it up.”
“They call it the death rattle,” he confirmed. “Saliva and other secretions accumulate in the upper chest, but he doesn’t have the strength to clear them out.”
Dad lay quiet, as if in a deep sleep, his breathing shallow. The only noise in the room was the rise and fall of the gurgling sound each time he labored for air.
“Jackie, I think we need to get hospice involved. I’m going to call them and let them know what’s happening,” Mike informed me.
Nodding, I sat down and held my father’s hand. In my heart, I knew it was only a matter of hours.
For the next five hours, hospice was on the phone every half hour, instructing Mike what to do next. Being that I was the main caregiver, it was up to me to administer the morphine, droplet by droplet.
Tearing the top off the tiny plastic vial, I kissed his cheek, then inserted the tube deep inside his mouth and squeezed the contents.
“How are you doing?” Mike asked at about 3:00 p.m. I hadn’t left Dad’s side the entire day.
Smiling, I looked into his compassionate eyes and grabbed his hand for comfort.
“I’m okay, I guess. It’s so surreal. All this felt like it would take forever, and now it’s here.”
By 4:30 p.m., our wonderful caregiver started preparing to leave. There was laundry to fold, the logbook to write the day’s notes in, the phone call to make that he was signing out, and one last vial of morphine. Cutting off the tip, he handed me the tube.
“He’s stopped rattling,” I said as I squeezed the last dose in. “Thank you for being with me today.”
Patting my shoulder, he said goodbye and turned to collect his things.
“Tim, aren’t the Giants about to play?” I asked, desperately needing a diversion.
“Yeah, if they win tonight they take the World Series.”
“Let’s get the headphones and put the game on. Dad can still hear. They say hearing becomes acute at the end. Let’s let him listen to his last game.”
Forty-five minutes later, the first run for the Giants came racing across home plate. With the audio going directly into the headphones, Tim planted himself close to the screen to watch in silence.
Just then, I heard a voice deep within say, “Talk to him.”
Talk to him? What am I supposed to say?
“Just talk to him.”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be saying, but taking off his headphones, I wrapped him up like an infant, holding him close to my chest. Magically, the words poured out. It was time to let him go.
“Dad, you don’t have to do this anymore. I know you’ve stayed here as long as you have because you’ve been worried about me,” I began, whispering in his ear. “I love you, I will miss you, but I’ll be just fine.”
With a final puff of air in his lungs, he let go and his energy took its wings and flew with a rush back to his family, my mother, and his friends. Back to the source that had guided him his entire life to always be an instrument of peace. He was gone and I was now a girl without a father.
“Dad just left,” I cried to Tim.
Turning away from the TV, my brother stared.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did. I gave him permission to go and he took it,” I wept. “I didn’t really mean it. Why would he listen to me now? He never did before. I want him back.”
As I crumbled into a puddle of tears, Tim came to my side and held me. Together we sat in silence with the body of the man we called father, but whose soul’s journey on earth was now complete.
CHAPTER 24
The First Hundred Days
For the next week, I wandered aimlessly from one room to another, lost and confused. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I’d spent fifteen years deep in
the trenches of caregiving for both my parents. I was now a career soldier without a war to fight.
Lying in my bed at night, I found myself thinking back to the days when our family was whole: four Madden kids bound by rules and expectations so they’d be on the right path for a positive future, but always surrounded with pure love. Our parents prepared us for everything that would come our way and provided us with the methods to succeed: how to get into good colleges, what jobs we should seek for financial security, tips for parenting our own children, and how to pray when life became challenging. But the one thing they never prepared us for was how to live in a world without them.
“How are you doing?” I was asked repeatedly as friends called to check in on me.
Knowing they were just trying to be kind, I developed a script, something easy that would roll off the tongue and not cause me to burst into tears.
“Okay.”
But if I were truly honest, I was devoid of feeling anything at all. It was as if a piece of me died along with him and all that was left was a dull numbness. I was now a sixty-year-old orphan with no direction.
There’s been a lot written about the loss of the second parent. Instantly, your own mortality starts tapping at the door, whispering, “You’re next.” You realize the people who loved you the longest, even before you were born, are gone forever and that no one will ever love you the same again.
There’d be no more Christmas or birthday presents from Mom and Dad, no more phone calls just to say “hi.” Gone were the days where I believed I could do anything just because my father and mother told me I could.
But the most troubling thing of all was realizing there’d be a rumbling shift in the tectonic plates that once held my brothers and I together on the same plane.
Without our parents acting as the tools in the needlework of the cable knit blanket that once enfolded our family, keeping us safe and protected, the missing yarn would soon cause their life’s masterpiece to unravel.
For over thirty years, my brothers came home because Mom and Dad were alive. Now that they were gone, there’d be no reason for them to come back. No longer would I see them at the holidays. I worried our connection would fade. They were free to focus on their lives with their families and I found myself crying that once again I no longer fit in. Other families fell apart when the last parent died. Why not mine too?
At first, people were kind, as they always are when someone experiences a loss. Cards flooded the mailbox with prayers and best wishes. How I wanted to read all the lovely things to Dad just like when I came home for lunch. He would have loved all the niceties.
“Your father was a remarkable man.”
“What a fabulous sense of humor he had with that dry wit of his.”
“His will to live was beyond reproach.”
On and on it went.
He would have also been proud to know people thought I was a good daughter. After all, he raised me as such. But as the accolades came pouring in, I found myself wishing they’d all just go away and leave me alone. I needed to process what had happened and how I would move forward without him. Going back to work would be the first step.
“Jackie, it’s now your time. You are free!” a colleague stated as she threw her arms around me my first day back. “Life is now all about you.”
Free? What the hell does that even mean? I thought. For over half my life all I’ve done is take care of people: my children, then my parents. I don’t even know who I am without someone to watch over.
As the first couple of weeks trickled by, I spent my days glassy-eyed and weepy. At first, I cried over his loss, but then I began to become emotionally unglued with worry. Did I tell him enough how much I loved him? Did I ever tell my mom? When someone’s gone permanently, we no longer have an opportunity to make amends for any digressions.
“I know I loved them both with every breath I took, but did I tell them enough?” I whimpered on the phone to Jenni. “Did I let them know what wonderful parents they were and that from the moment I was born the one thing I never doubted was that they loved me?”
Hearing her mother’s regret, Jenni lovingly stated, “Mom, sometimes telling someone you love them has nothing to do with words. It’s all in how they’re treated, and you were there for them every step of the way. Please, don’t regret anything.”
“I know you’re right. But I just can’t seem to shake it. The house is so empty now.”
I once heard loneliness described as fear, a feeling of helplessness about where to turn next. I remembered feeling that way when my husband left. I was the mother of four teenagers, and that was not only isolating, but scary. Teenagers have a way of playing whiplash with a parent’s heart. One minute they want and need you, the next you’re dirt under their feet as they walk out the door to do God-knows-what with who-knows-who.
Along with the Tilt-A-Whirl we rode together, teenagers were very expensive. I’d had no idea how I’d keep their finances and lives going with private schools and a big house, despite the fact Dave honored his legal financial obligations. I felt that just because their parents couldn’t fix their broken marriage, they shouldn’t suffer, so overcompensating and enabling became the mission of every day.
But this fear was different.
“I just hurt so badly.” I began to cry. “It’s like someone has taken my Cutco knives and tested each blade out on my stomach. I wasn’t prepared for this.”
I grabbed the box of tissues as my child let me simmer down.
“It’s funny. I don’t even recognize my face when I look in the mirror. I look so old.”
With a heavy sigh on the other end of the phone, Jenni searched to find just the right words to try and stop the bleeding in my wounded heart.
“Mom, we all look old when we’re tired. Once you start getting some rest, you’ll feel better. Are you still taking the Ambien?”
“Yes, the doctor said I should just continue to take it so I can sleep for a couple more months. Then she wants me to wean myself.”
“Well, do what she says. At least you can turn off the voices in your head at night.”
So, it was. I drugged myself at night to sleep and walked around like a zombie during the day. The one thing I could count on was my children’s concern for their fragile mom.
“How are you doing?” Lauren asked on her way to work the following week. We were nearing our first Thanksgiving without Dad and without my brothers. Our family would celebrate with just four women in our home. Even Timmy was gone, now living in Spain.
“I’m good,” I lied. “It’s so weird. I find myself just listening to the quiet. There’s no more channel 229, no more heavy breathing while he napped, and no calls for me in the middle of the night to chat. It’s all so strange.”
“Mom, remember how you complained how quiet it was because he slept all the time? Maybe you should think of this as listening to peace.”
How right she was. Peace is a different kind of silence. Peace is when you live in the moment with no concern for what will be or how it will affect you. I needed to learn how to live like that.
“Yes, that’s a good way to look at it. But even Maddie isn’t barking. I think she’s missing him terribly. I find her lying under his bed as if she’s wondering where he went.” Our now eleven-year-old pound puppy had attached herself to my father, and had stayed with him wherever he was
“They were so cute together,” Lauren reminisced. “You know, Grandpa would always ask if she were close by when I visited. It’s funny how he grew to love her.”
“Yes, it was so sweet. She’d sleep in his room until about 1:00 in the morning, then come to her bed in my room,” I remembered. “In some ways, I think it’s harder on her than me. At least I understand it all.”
Just as I was saying goodbye, Maddie found her way to my side and put her head in my lap. Patting her long, golden torso, a wave of grief so palatable I could taste the bitterness in my mouth came over me. For ten years I’d done a lot of crying.
I mourned the loss of my marriage, became sad over the depressed woman my mother had become at the end, and shed tears as I waved goodbye to my life’s only purpose, my children, as they left for lives of their own.
But the guttural heaving sobs that now spewed forth were coming from the deepest of all cavities. My life’s anchor had been unmoored from the seabed, and I became a tiny wrecked vessel floating aimlessly in the ocean with no beacon to show me the way. This was not going to be an easy process.
Thanksgiving came and went with no fanfare, no humongous meal, and no extra guests. We had decided to honor Dad’s life on December 20. His grandchildren would all be able to attend, and it would be as Dad would have liked, with those he loved praying in church together.
In our early discussions about how he wanted to die, he made the decision to be cremated.
“I don’t want you kids spending a lot of money on a coffin,” he stated one evening during a late-night chat. “You can just burn the remains and bury the ashes in the family plot.”
“Really, Dad? I’m surprised you would say that. Are you sure you don’t want to bury your body? That’s what you used to want.”
Taking his bed sheet and pulling it up to his chin, I wondered if he were trying to hide from the discussion. Then, peering those Irish blue eyes over the top, he shook his head. “Oh God, no! The idea of bugs crawling all over my body gives me the willies.”
The plans were made. The church was contacted, scriptures selected, and music planned. The mortuary took care of his remains. It was the same mortuary that took care of my mother, another of his final wishes. When I went to pick up his ashes, a precisely folded American flag was laid in my hands.
“We want to thank your father for all the years of service he gave this country,” the woman from behind the counter said. “I’m sure he was a remarkable man.”
Smiling as the tears streamed, I was never so proud of my father than in that moment. Like all men of that time, my father served, but he never saw action. Having a brilliant mathematical mind, the Navy felt his talents were better served in the Supply Corps. This bothered him for years, feeling he added nothing to the victory. We spent many nights in my house with me trying to convince him that without his service, those men overseas would not have received their paychecks or the supplies desperately needed to carry out their missions. His contribution to the war effort had been terribly important.
The Promise I Kept Page 20