On August 6th, my dad died. I haven’t been able to figure out what I wanted to say. I haven’t been able to say anything without bawling my eyes out. I can’ t believe my dad is gone, although only a fool wouldn’t have seen it coming. I still hear his voice, I still pick up the phone to call him. After all he went through, all his struggles, the stage four prostate cancer, the stage four lung cancer, the aortal aneurysms, and gastroparesis, the straw that broke the camel’s back was a broken hip. “Complications of a fall with blunt hip trauma” is what his death certificate says. It makes Dad’s death seem like a freak accident, almost insultingly simple. His death certificate should read like a novel of strength and endurance. It should tell of his courage in the battles that he fought and won.
Four years of battles, four years of fighting hospitals that labeled dad as drug-seeking, my mom as combative, and medical complications popping up one right after the other. After each one, a grand comeback. Dad made a lot of those. He was starting to specialize in them. We joked around that like the prophet Elijah, Dad was waiting on a chariot of fire to take him home. Then one day, a couple of months after breaking his hip, he developed sepsis and pneumonia. That was his final battle and his final victory. God sent His angels to carry Dad to Paradise as his family surrounded him, holding his hands.
I don’t want to remember that time right now. I don’t want to think about the past four years and the agony that Dad endured. Some of the things we saw left scars on all of our souls. We never want to remember our loved ones as they were at the end of their lives. We want to remember them as they were in the prime of their lives, active and healthy.
As I think back to that version of my dad, I think of the dad that worked every day of his life from the time he was eleven years old until his first round of stage four cancer forced his retirement. I think about the dad who walked all the way from Patton Village to New Caney to work every day, because he couldn’t afford a car but had a family to support. He was an electrician, a heavily physical job that demanded constantly climbing ladders, crawling through attics and working in extreme Texas summers without air conditioning. Yet he spent the evenings and weekends not resting, but working around the house, playing with me and Jason, and spending them with family.
My Dad’s greatest loves were his family and the great outdoors. Summers were spent at the beach and at lakes. We didn’t have much money growing up, but we went every year to the zoo and the museum. He frequently grabbed nieces and nephews and took them along when he could. He and I played softball for fun, although I was admittedly very bad at it. (Hush, Uncle Larry.) He loved to go fishing, and complained until practically the day he died about the rod and reel that went missing off of the dam on the lake near Browder’s Marina. We haven’t decided if dad was a good fisherman or not, since we only have one picture that shows him with a good catch. We have plenty that show him with tiny fish from Harbor Point on Lake Livingston, though. He loved working in his garden, growing tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumber and squash every year. He also loved keeping chickens and making pets out of them.
There’s so many memories that I will carry with me with my dad. His awful dad jokes. (Jake took after him in this regard.) Playing ball with him. Working in the garden with him. Him calling me on Sunday mornings to ask me how many eggs I wanted for breakfast. (Zero, Dad. Zero.) Watching Star Trek with him. His baptism. Dad playing with my cat that hated him. His reaction to meeting Adam. (“Well, he hasn’t said anything stupid yet…”) Watching him play with his grandchildren, which included Fabiola and Penguin. His pride in all of his children, because Adam and Tara were no less his kids than me and Jason. Taking him on a family day on the Enterprise and giving up on finding him when he ran off, since he knew the ship as well as me within thirty minutes. Climbing around the riverbed in Brenham, climbing to the cave in Palo Duro. Dad playing with his Cookie, who used to bark at me when Dad was in the hospital so I could Facetime him. She knew that the magic box let her Daddy talk to her. She used to lay down beside Dad when he had uncontrollable anxiety attacks and help calm him. All of these memories sooth my mind and help me forget all the things that I don’t want to remember about the end of his life.
Out of all those memories, the one that gets me in the heart is the deep love that he shared with my mother. He supported her, cared for her when she was sick, and his whole life was about his wife and children. The marriage vows were tested in every single way that they could be tested. “For richer or poorer, in sickness or health, until death do us part.” They lived it, every single word of it. They were rich in their love for each other and their family. They didn’t have much money, but they had riches in all that counted. They stayed together in the good times and the bad. They supported each other through all of their trials. In the last years of his life, my mom came through with unimaginable strength and courage to care for my dad. She never left his side, except for the times we had to make her go home and sleep in her own bed.
Thinking of all this, I have to go back to what I said earlier. I said that I don’t want to remember how my dad was in his last days, but I have to now, because it helps define the man Dad was. He suffered horrible anxiety attacks at the end. What gave him anxiety?
It wasn’t the fact that he was coming to the end of his life. It wasn’t regrets about anything he had done. It wasn’t about anything he had left undone.
It was that he couldn’t care for my mother anymore. He was at the end of his life, staring death in the face, and he was still wanting to take care of my mom.
My Dad was the most selfless man I’ve ever met in my life.
A golden heart stopped beating, hardworking hands laid to rest.
Rest peacefully, Daddy. It’s our turn to take care of mom. Go see everything you didn’t have time to in this short life on earth. Go catch all the fish. Go climb to all the caves. We will join you one day, then you can show us everything. We love you. This separation is only temporary, and we can take comfort in that.
