The Process of Death..

Death is such a weird thing.  For some, it comes suddenly without warning, just poof!  And they are gone.  Ripped from us and this world. No notice.  No nothing, they are there, present, living their lives, and then just a great expanse of nothingness.

For most people, there is a process to dying.  Dying is not short circuited by some jarringly tragic accident.  There is a progression and a tenor and pace.  Some people take a long time in this process, while for others, it moves rather quickly.

We all know the general process:  cessation of mobility, confinement to bed, sleeping more, refusing food then water.  Then it is just a matter of time.  The body takes over and begins to shut down one functional unit at a time until there is no more energy left to sustain life.

What I am grappling with isn’t so much the process, I am currently observing it in real time, it is what is going on in the mind.  What is occurring for my dad as he lays dying?  What are his thoughts?  Is he reliving trauma, resolving it perhaps within his own psyche?  Is he getting that end of life review we all are told we will get?  What is his assessment of his life?  Does he have lingering regrets?  How can we help him to release all of that and know that we know he did the best he could?  That he tried every single day to become a better version of himself?  That like the rest of us, there were mixed results.

My father was not a saint.  He and I had a difficult relationship for most of my life.  Both of us getting sober helped improve that relationship 100 fold...but still, I do not think I was ever the daughter he wanted, and I know he was not the father I wanted.  But the universe had other plans for us.  He was mine and I was his.  Whether we liked it or not.   Whether we would have preferred some other configuration. I think my dad would have been a better father to a boy.  I think that is what he wanted not because he didn’t love me, but because he just had these parts of himself that he could not reconcile with all my femaleness.  I used to hold this against him, I do not any longer.  He felt the way he did...and that was not his fault anymore than it was my fault that I was this headstrong, take charge, defiant, stubborn girl.  He was him and I was me.  And that was pretty much the issue.

But I know, as he lingers between life and death currently, he did the best he could and that he loved me dearly in his own way.  I always wanted and needed something else from him.  And I know now, he just didn’t have that to give, to me, or to anyone.  But regardless of the final outcome, I know and see and acknowledge and appreciate he really did try.  And he never, ever gave up.  And for that I am grateful.

To be honest, I would not have been sure what to do with me either.  I was not easy.  I was not compliant.  I had my own ideas about my life at like 2.  And I would not, could not capitulate to his fatherly authority, ever.  That could not have been easy to parent.  To love.  To manage.  I get that now after having several bouts in the ring with my own children and their ideas about how to live their lives.  I get it now in a way that was impossible before.

I know we are moving rapidly through the process of dying now.  He is leaving us, one breath at a time.  And I know our job is to bear witness to his life and to his death because both have always been equally important, one just got a lot longer and the later blessedly more curtailed.

I pray he is not suffering.  That in these final hours he is given all he needs to assimilate the lessons of his life.  That he is granted peaceful passage into the great unknown.  I hope he knows that he and I are good.  I have no malice or hardness where he is concerned.  All of that has been eroded by time and sobriety.  Having spiritual principles to frame our conflict and issues.  We are clean.  There is nothing left to say, except goodbye.  That is all that remains in this process of dying.  And suddenly that feels like way too much to say. How do you say goodbye?  I am truly not sure...really.

I know I will find the words, I always do.  It takes some time and a lot of heartbreak but the words always come.  And even if they don’t, then I can just be present.  Allowing my presence to speak the words I cannot seem to find.  There is a process to dying...and strangely this provides me a sense of peace, of surety, of grace.  I know I am part of that process of my father’s dying.  I know it and I see it and I bear witness to it.

Not again, still, but rather, now, for the first time, I will sit bedside to death and witness it take everything, once and for all.  It will not be easy but it will, hopefully, blessedly be dignified.  And I pray that I may be granted all that I need to help him move forward in this process of death, unafraid, free from pain and tethers to a life that slips away with every precious breath he takes...until there are no more breaths and he moves into whatever awaits us next...

And I know I am honored in this process even as it crushes me.  And I know that this is what we get to do for the people we love. To be present and attend and witness and do our best to ameliorate their suffering. I assist death’s process because death has a way of making us all handmaidens to its wretched task.  And, I feel that death could use a friend also.  That it is not some cruel avenger here to cast aspersions and blame and cause suffering.  No, for me, in this death, he is showing as mercy and grace.  I pray I may be so lucky when my time comes.  For those that remain to see death not as an enemy to be fought but a comrade to life’s most difficult task...