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My friend's post about his father....what a read!
Locust Fork
Member Posts: 32,057 ✭✭✭✭
This is a friend of ours from Larry's college days.....he is a wonderful person and I thought I'd share what he has written about his father. Its a wonderful post, so sad, but I can relate so much to what he has written.
........
Everyone has to say goodbye. It's just a part of this glorious life, and now it's my turn.
My father will die soon. This past weekend I went back to Alabama to be by his side for what will likely be the last time to hold the hand I'd let go of long ago.
The landscape of my childhood is defined by the roots from which my father grew in the cotton fields of Limestone county. That land is flat, low, and open to a far-off horizon save for homesteads like the one he grew up on. It was a little country oasis - a small piece of land forfeited by the crops around it for the yield of a family doing the best they could to get by. This was the place that held my dad's heart.
It was a place that had a hold on him and, for a long time, kept his heart from everyone around him.
By the time I was born - the third of three boys -- my dad was thirty years old, married, and probably not living the life he wanted at all. Not that he even knew what that was. I suspect this left him slightly pissed at the world and far from capable of carving out happiness from the good fortune he'd been given. But, like the well-worn road of duty and expectation that led him there, he stayed put. He probably figured going through the motions was enough to call life done. He probably figured the ways he acted out could simply be tilled under, covered up, and ignored.
But it doesn't work that way. Wives will eventually reach their limits. Sons will grow tall enough and fast enough to run away.
And even though I got out of reach, I still reached back. I wanted the father he was to act like the man I knew he was capable of being. Not that I had many examples to prove this - in fact, after mining the memories of my childhood as an adult, I truly only found three. Three. Three times do I remember him doing something for me without guilt, shame, or simple exasperation. It's not lost on me that I had a roof over my head and food on the table. I wasn't locked in a basement for years. I had more than many kids in this world, and I'm grateful for it. But it's true.he was such a bully, constantly acting out and intimidating everyone to line up and act the way he told us to. Every single day with him was spent with some level of fear. He rarely planted seeds of happiness or fulfillment. He, instead, beat the ground with a shovel and demanded the soil give up what he asked for.
After I left home, went to college, and got married, there were years of trying to wring out a relationship with this man. It never worked. Things would get hijacked. I would get sideswiped. The road would just fade away.
And then I stopped trying. I let it go, I guess. About 7 years ago along with everything else, he did too. I moved to Austin, and looking back I see I stopped expecting anything from him. I truly stopped hoping for anything more. And he seemed happy to see me moving on. He, too, stopped his games, his tug-of-war with emotions, his carrots of promise. He let me go. We settled into a routine of seeing each other at Thanksgiving for a couple of hours and talking on the phone on each other's birthdays. That was pretty much it, and it was enough.
Our relationship had settled into just what it was capable of being and nothing more. Letting go of wanting more and accepting what was left seemed to work.
After a few years of this, I realized I liked where we had landed. It was simple and sparse like the wide open fields we had both spent our childhoods running through. I didn't need anything else from him and he wasn't afraid of having nothing more to offer. He had developed a slow-growing, elusive prostate cancer during this time, but it didn't really take hold. Until recently.
I learned the first week of January that he'd been put in the hospital, as he had been falling a lot. They found the cancer had set up shop in his abdomen and spine. And, on the 6th of January we heard the word "hospice." The real harbinger of an ending. Death would be coming sooner rather than later.
And how did I feel? Steady. That's the word I land on. I was steady and prepared to say goodbye. I wasn't off-balance from being knocked around by the lost man he was when I lived under his roof. I wasn't unsettled by his games and manipulations while we were both trying to grow into men. We had a few years together as fellow men who had let go of lives they weren't meant to be living. I had a few years to say, this.this is enough. It is minimal, less than others, and simple.but it is enough. And I'm fine with that. Therefore, steady.
I was told he may be days away from death, so I flew to Alabama last Saturday. I found him sitting in the lobby of the care facility confused, agitated, in serious pain, and quite unkempt. Thinking about it now, I suspect there were many years I would have either dreaded having to step into the role of caregiver or done so out of hope he would love me more because of it. But not this time. I wanted to. I wanted to care for him and needed absolutely nothing in return. Why? Because we had both let go of wanting something from the other. We both just accepted each other for who we are. No expectations. Just those wide open spaces for each other to live as we were meant to live. Very, very, very different lives - but both completely fine with letting it be what it is.
I find this an important lesson for us all in everyday life. If we could just allow others to be who they are meant to be, what's it matter? All this does is allow people to find the place where their heart soars freely. It gives people permission and the space to be kind. When we are all doing that, I can't imagine there would be much pain in the world.
My dad isn't gone yet. He's stabilized a bit, and I think gaining the strength he needs to go home to die. I got to spend a few days and couple of sleepless nights with him, during which we shared both tedious moments of deathbed caregiving along with times of profound focus and love. We held hands a lot - sometimes the grip was strong as he agonized through intense pain and other times we just held onto each other in silence. The hands that had let go of each other long ago were able to hold on easily while we said goodbye for real, this time.
I am grateful for what was likely a final goodbye that anyone on this earth would be lucky to have - slow, vicious cancer at least gives us moments like this. Holding each other's hand and eyes for a long, long time, we exchanged thanks and love for what is. For the simple, pure, expectation-less love and thanks.
Thanks be to letting go.
If you'll all take a moment to wish him well as he sets foot in the wide open fields of the other side and thanks, too, for a gift I'll never forget.
........
Everyone has to say goodbye. It's just a part of this glorious life, and now it's my turn.
My father will die soon. This past weekend I went back to Alabama to be by his side for what will likely be the last time to hold the hand I'd let go of long ago.
The landscape of my childhood is defined by the roots from which my father grew in the cotton fields of Limestone county. That land is flat, low, and open to a far-off horizon save for homesteads like the one he grew up on. It was a little country oasis - a small piece of land forfeited by the crops around it for the yield of a family doing the best they could to get by. This was the place that held my dad's heart.
It was a place that had a hold on him and, for a long time, kept his heart from everyone around him.
By the time I was born - the third of three boys -- my dad was thirty years old, married, and probably not living the life he wanted at all. Not that he even knew what that was. I suspect this left him slightly pissed at the world and far from capable of carving out happiness from the good fortune he'd been given. But, like the well-worn road of duty and expectation that led him there, he stayed put. He probably figured going through the motions was enough to call life done. He probably figured the ways he acted out could simply be tilled under, covered up, and ignored.
But it doesn't work that way. Wives will eventually reach their limits. Sons will grow tall enough and fast enough to run away.
And even though I got out of reach, I still reached back. I wanted the father he was to act like the man I knew he was capable of being. Not that I had many examples to prove this - in fact, after mining the memories of my childhood as an adult, I truly only found three. Three. Three times do I remember him doing something for me without guilt, shame, or simple exasperation. It's not lost on me that I had a roof over my head and food on the table. I wasn't locked in a basement for years. I had more than many kids in this world, and I'm grateful for it. But it's true.he was such a bully, constantly acting out and intimidating everyone to line up and act the way he told us to. Every single day with him was spent with some level of fear. He rarely planted seeds of happiness or fulfillment. He, instead, beat the ground with a shovel and demanded the soil give up what he asked for.
After I left home, went to college, and got married, there were years of trying to wring out a relationship with this man. It never worked. Things would get hijacked. I would get sideswiped. The road would just fade away.
And then I stopped trying. I let it go, I guess. About 7 years ago along with everything else, he did too. I moved to Austin, and looking back I see I stopped expecting anything from him. I truly stopped hoping for anything more. And he seemed happy to see me moving on. He, too, stopped his games, his tug-of-war with emotions, his carrots of promise. He let me go. We settled into a routine of seeing each other at Thanksgiving for a couple of hours and talking on the phone on each other's birthdays. That was pretty much it, and it was enough.
Our relationship had settled into just what it was capable of being and nothing more. Letting go of wanting more and accepting what was left seemed to work.
After a few years of this, I realized I liked where we had landed. It was simple and sparse like the wide open fields we had both spent our childhoods running through. I didn't need anything else from him and he wasn't afraid of having nothing more to offer. He had developed a slow-growing, elusive prostate cancer during this time, but it didn't really take hold. Until recently.
I learned the first week of January that he'd been put in the hospital, as he had been falling a lot. They found the cancer had set up shop in his abdomen and spine. And, on the 6th of January we heard the word "hospice." The real harbinger of an ending. Death would be coming sooner rather than later.
And how did I feel? Steady. That's the word I land on. I was steady and prepared to say goodbye. I wasn't off-balance from being knocked around by the lost man he was when I lived under his roof. I wasn't unsettled by his games and manipulations while we were both trying to grow into men. We had a few years together as fellow men who had let go of lives they weren't meant to be living. I had a few years to say, this.this is enough. It is minimal, less than others, and simple.but it is enough. And I'm fine with that. Therefore, steady.
I was told he may be days away from death, so I flew to Alabama last Saturday. I found him sitting in the lobby of the care facility confused, agitated, in serious pain, and quite unkempt. Thinking about it now, I suspect there were many years I would have either dreaded having to step into the role of caregiver or done so out of hope he would love me more because of it. But not this time. I wanted to. I wanted to care for him and needed absolutely nothing in return. Why? Because we had both let go of wanting something from the other. We both just accepted each other for who we are. No expectations. Just those wide open spaces for each other to live as we were meant to live. Very, very, very different lives - but both completely fine with letting it be what it is.
I find this an important lesson for us all in everyday life. If we could just allow others to be who they are meant to be, what's it matter? All this does is allow people to find the place where their heart soars freely. It gives people permission and the space to be kind. When we are all doing that, I can't imagine there would be much pain in the world.
My dad isn't gone yet. He's stabilized a bit, and I think gaining the strength he needs to go home to die. I got to spend a few days and couple of sleepless nights with him, during which we shared both tedious moments of deathbed caregiving along with times of profound focus and love. We held hands a lot - sometimes the grip was strong as he agonized through intense pain and other times we just held onto each other in silence. The hands that had let go of each other long ago were able to hold on easily while we said goodbye for real, this time.
I am grateful for what was likely a final goodbye that anyone on this earth would be lucky to have - slow, vicious cancer at least gives us moments like this. Holding each other's hand and eyes for a long, long time, we exchanged thanks and love for what is. For the simple, pure, expectation-less love and thanks.
Thanks be to letting go.
If you'll all take a moment to wish him well as he sets foot in the wide open fields of the other side and thanks, too, for a gift I'll never forget.
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Comments
Ask me how I know about this.
I was never any good at multi tasking!
Thank you Locust Fork for posting this letter.
Perhaps there is still time to try and untie some complicated "knots" in my own life.
There were many things I tried hard not to pass on to my sons, but many more that I did.
Seems some of them have stuck.
They expect to be hugged when we meet and when we separate. Not afraid to say "I love you."
I have told them I'm proud of them many times, unlike the few I remember from my dad.
He's long gone now. We lost him to Alzheimer's years before his body forgot how to live.
And with birthday 68 lurking around the corner I'm coming to realize it's time to make sure I've done the things I really want to get done in my life.
Thanks for the post. Makes you think.
I was there for him in his final weeks of an 18 month battle with cancer, and told him I loved him the last time I saw him, hoping somehow that it may eventually become true.
Not really sure that it did.
Brad Steele
He has dementia and arthritis, so he sometimes abuses his medicine. Twice he has ended up in the hospital and didn't know who I was until it was pointed out to him....and he was happy until he realized I was the one deciding what happened to him and was telling the doctors to keep him there against his will. I don't think there is a way to change how things are....but it could be worse. He was a good provider and I'm really proud of him for what he did while he was younger. His stores were AMAZING when they were at their peak.
When I read this post earlier it just read too much like my own.
I spent a lot of time with Dad. Wrenching on cars was a passion we both shared. He was the most gifted mechanical mind I ever encountered, and I have made quite a living with the skills he taught me. Maybe because of that connection, I had a different/better relationship with Dad than my siblings.
When he died in his sleep, my two sisters hadn't seen Dad in several years. I had been with Dad 3 days before.
The last thing I said as I left was "I love you, Pop".
It was enough.