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[Note: I'm posting this on HOF as well.]

A friend of mine just lost his father. He doesn't want to talk about it - doesn't want to draw attention to himself by announcing it to his friends. But I wish there was some way that I could show him that there are lots of folks out there going through the same thing, quietly, like ships passing through the night. It only takes a few words to reach out and release the intimacy of others. Which can be very scary, and very comforting. I'm sure he has other friends who really care about him and would want to know about his loss and would want to reach out to him, if they knew. So I'm starting this generic threads and will let him know it is here so he can read it. Maybe he'll just lurk. Maybe he'll decide to talk to his friends after he reads this.

I haven't lost my dad, so I can't speak from that experience, but I have lost others close to me. I know when my dad dies, I will have very mixed emotions. He was a very hard man to grow up with, since he was explosively violent - usually verbal but sometimes physical. There were many times when I wished he were dead. But in between the rage "benders" he was a great dad and husband. Fortunately, he's mellowed with age (and I've mellowed and softened, myself). He's also on a medication that has the delightful side effect of squelching the rage syndrome. So in the past two years I've had the opportunity to get to know him as a real person whom I'm not afraid of. I'm very slowly dropping of the emotional baggage, one piece at a time.

But now I watch him grow older, and slowly lose his faculties. I watched my mother-in-law slip into dementia over a 15 year period until she finally died, completely incoherent. I don't want to watch that happen to my dad. He's the constant caregiver of my mom, who is in chronic pain and unable to walk more than a few steps. He hovers over her and is constantly fetching and carrying for her. He can't leave her for more than an hour. Her care is his whole life, now. It is taking its toll on him. An 84 year old man, even one in good physical condition, is too old to be an 18-hour-per-day nursing attendant. Yet he must be in control - must be the one giving the help. He is not going to grow old gracefully.

So have any of you lost your father, or become estranged from your father, or are in the process of losing your father, or have very mixed emotions about your father? Got any words of wisdom about how to relate to your father when relating is about as much fun as hugging a porcupine? I know that several of you have posted about this issue over the years, and about the similar issues yet different issues of moms and spouses and other family members. Though I've only lurked in those threads, they have been of great comfort to me, and I thank you in advance for opening up again.

I had a strange, on-again, off-again relationship with my dad, due to the circumstances of my upbringing. He had just turned 17 when I was born, and my mom 19, and they were neither financially nor emotionally prepared for it (let's just say it was not a planned pregnancy nor marriage). So when I was somewhere around six weeks old, I was more or less packed off to live with his parents, and he joined the Army, that being the sort of thing one could do without a high school diploma back then.

Well, that marriage only lasted a few years (surprise!), and he went on to remarry a few more times, have a few more kids (when my wife and I went to the geneticist before our son was conceived, we ran out of paper trying to fit my immediate family in), and eventually settle down with the right woman...about nine years ago. In the intervening decades, I lived under the same roof as him once, when he had moved back to Missouri from California and needed a couple of months to build up a security deposit for an apartment.

Before that had happened, I had forgotten and rediscovered that the people I was living with were not my birth parents, but even during the years in which I wasn't sure exactly who he was, I was always glad to see him. I wasn't sure why, but I was. Partly it was due to the fact that he always had stories to tell, some of which were true, which were like candy to this particular child. Motorcycling cross-country and the like. It seemed that he lived an ever so slightly dangerous life, but not a truly risky one, and he enjoyed telling me about (some of) the aspects of it.

I found pot in his and his third wife's kitchen cabinet once. She told me it was oregano.

In retrospect, it was I suppose much like being a sailor's child must have been in times past, when one's father made appearances as the tides and itineraries allowed, and the time spent was full of foreign ports and exotic locales, with very little occasion for the everyday things "normal" relationships are built on to creep in.

It stayed like that until relatively recently, when he settled down and I settled down and we got some chances to talk in a more unhurried fashion. By that point I had my own tales to share, not so full of adventure perhaps, but tales nonetheless, and he could respect that. As I came to respect him. He overcame the loss of two infant children, and his faith, and his sobriety, and emerged from it sober, faithful (in his own way) and still a father, as best as he could manage, to the children he had left strewn in his path.

There are worse things that can be said about a man.

I also respected how he arranged the last months of his life. Knowing that some in the family would have been freaked out by his choice to not do chemo after his diagnosis, he appeared to waffle on the subject just long enough to make the question well and truly moot. I suspected this (we think enough alike for me to recognize strategic dithering) and didn't push the issue, even as I scouted around for research projects he might be eligible for. So he got six months and change where he felt he was in control of his life, instead of, as he saw it, the chance--not a sure thing--at a bit more time in which that wouldn't really be the case. I would have supported him if he wanted to extend his life, but I also know that there was little more important to the man than a sense that he was in control of his life. Maybe the years where that wasn't necessarily the case cemented that in him.

He wanted to die at home, in his own bed, with people he knew and loved near him. He got his wish Saturday morning. Only in the last 36 hours did he become unresponsive, although the drifting away had started a week prior. Given how colon cancer works, it could have been a lot worse. I saw him last Sunday and said what I needed to say, much of which could be summed up in "I have no complaints." And it was true. In a way the best decision he ever made on my behalf was 45 years ago, when he gave me to his parents to raise. Had he and my mom tried to raise me, I can only imagine how I would feel about him now, because I can't imagine how bad it would have been. But all the signs were there, and I guess he knew his own limits. For which I thanked him.

I think one of the reasons I waited so long to have my own child was because of how I came to be. But, curiously enough, I also find that I'm perhaps more conscious of how lucky I am to have the moments with my son that I do, because I know he didn't get them with me. He never had another boy, not one that lived. So sometimes I feel as if I'm playing with mine on his behalf too.

He didn't want a funeral. Tomorrow his wife, up from Tennessee, will be at his sister's house, with his parents (the ones who raised me), his other sister, and me, to receive condolences. In a few weeks I'll go down to Tennessee and watch while his ashes are scattered from a plane (he was a pilot, which shouldn't be a shock). I'll promise his wife (I can't call her my stepmom, really, but she's a lovely woman) that we'll come back, that she can see my son grow up, and it will all be true.

And I'll miss someone who wasn't really around that much.

Ax, my heartfelt condolences to you, buddy.

It's an interesting thing to me that how one feels about a person has as much to do with their absences as their presence - has as much to do with the relationship in one's own head.

My father died when I was seven - car accident. He was a pedestrian. I have few pure memories of him; most are reconstructions from photos and stories told by my mother. I miss him in a very odd way; so many what ifs litter my memories. I recall a very strange period when I was in my teens and very early twenties, I'd be in a tram travelling somewhere on my own and I'd have a very strong, totally illogical expectation that, "my father is going to get on this tram at the next stop." I don't know why; perhaps I really needed the idea of a father at that time. Curiosity, maybe.

In any case, as one who grew up with an 'absent father' also, I empathise with some of the feelings you have expressed at your loss.

Laurie - what a lovely woman you are to have started this thread!

Ax!
Your post is a moving description of your father. You have my sympathy for your loss...

I'm sorry for your loss, Ax, as conflicted as you may feel about it.

All of your stories are touching and sad.



Lali

I think reading this thread Saturday night triggered a dream about my father. Since I wrote about it in my livejournal, I'll just copy and paste it here since it's kind of relevant.

Quote:

Last night (well, this morning, I guess) I had a dream about my dad dying. And...in the dream, I was very distraught about it. Why, I don't know.

So that triggered a thought in my mind. How, honestly, would I react if my dad died today?

Perhaps I approached it too logically though, because every time I come to a conclusion, it is this: I would not be sad.

And this scares me. Surely I should have some shred of tender emotion toward that man, no? Somewhere in the corners of my mind I love him, right?

But...I can't find it. And, it scares me a lot.

But I don't even know WHY it scares me. It's not like he's taken an active part in my life. Yearly calls, or lack of them actually, do not constitute an active role.

Calling to say "hey! Good job on the ACT. I'm glad you didn't fry your brain on drugs like I did" is not a fatherly role...

But I should have some sort of love for him, no? My happiest memory involves him...Conversely, so do my saddest ones.

Gah! It's so confusing. I don't get human emotions! Can I be a cyborg, please?! I think I would be a good one.

Okay, so that last paragraph is straying a little, but the point remains.

Dealing with my father has always been like walking a tight rope - if I let myself read into his actions I could've gone either way...as in he either hated me or he loved me. I never let myself get attached, not after I turned 7.

So, I don't really have anything that will help your friend and I'm sorry for that.

I lost my father just over two years ago, one year after losing my sister almost to the day. Both from cancer.

My mother and father married because of me...yup an opps. They divorced when I was four, but had handed me off to my grandparents when I was nine months old. My mother has a heart condition and had the first of three open heart surgeries and my father could not take care of me, so off I went from the east coast to the southwest.

My grandparents raised me from that point on until I was six and my mother remarried a man I would not call dog shit much less a father figure. So my grandfather remained my father figure for most of my life.

When my father died I hardly knew him. He and I had talked some and I had visited him after I was an adult. He did apologize for not being there for me, even though he did remain in my sister's life. Anyway when he died I was sad because I will never know him the way a child should know a parent. That's gone now and I realize that is what makes me the saddest.

However, I still miss my grandfather and am tearing up as I write this. It's been 13 years since his passing and I have yet to get through hearing the song 'I thought he walked on water' with out crying. He was and will be the only father I will ever have. He died of lung cancer at 75. He was at home after being released from the hospital so he could die at home. He lingered for almost a month and was restricted to his bed. My cousin and I were at the house with our grandmother just hanging out because we knew the end was near. And at one point Shawn (cousin), Grandmother and I just got up to go check on grandpa, he was struggling to breath and it was time. So I took one hand and Shawn took the other and I whispered it was alright to go with his mother. And that was it, the passing happened within that moment. I was lucky to be there to see the transformation of death. It was as amazing to me as the birth of my own children, except it was much calmer, quiter and spiritual.

I still miss him and his role in my life, but every so often I still smell him and I know he is still around. And I still think he walked on water.

Quote:

It's an interesting thing to me that how one feels about a person has as much to do with their absences as their presence - has as much to do with the relationship in one's own head.

In the end, are not all relationships in one's head? And if one is lucky, the head of the other person involved?

I lost my father. Maybe not technically but it sure feels that way. I lost him about 7 or 8 years ago. It’s been such a long time I don’t even remember the exact date.

The process of loosing him began slow. It started with him walking out on us when I was 4 years old. I did the shared custody thing, go to his house on weekends and stay with my mom during the week. He moved even further away which meant I would spend the holidays at his place. But there he barely laid eyes on me and instead his new wife gave me tasks like change the new baby, give my step brother a bath, get some groceries. Looking back on it now I was a Cinderella.
He was strict on me( wasn’t allowed sleepovers and such) but not as strict as he was on the other siblings. My brother was hit not on rare occasion and made to parade around in a little Hamas outfit (yes my dad is a Hamas supporter). So that didn’t exactly help me liking him more. That and the fact he had given my bed with my name on it made my him to my brother and I was left to sleep on a mattress on the floor didn’t exactly make me feel more welcome in his new family.
He always made me promises: If I wouldn’t smoke during my teen years he would get me a car for my 18th birthday. Of course he never got me a car. Next week we’d go swimming. Not once in all the years I was there did he take me swimming.

So 7 or 8 years ago , I was just starting high school, I checked the answering machine and heard a message from my dad saying he was on his way to the airport , he was going back to Lebanon the place of his birth. No goodbye, no further contact information or date when he’d be back. A single message. That left me rather confused but life goes on. I missed my brother and sister a lot. Not having been able to say goodbye bothered me.

I graduated and he wasn’t there. I had my first few dance recitals and he wasn’t there. I had my first boyfriend and he wasn’t there. In short he missed all the ‘important’ things in a girl’s life.

So we fast forward to 2 years ago. We had just gotten home from a holiday and exactly the next day the doorbell rings. He’s back. Demanding to talk to me. I was shocked to say the least. My mother being a trooper takes him head on and refuses to let him indoors and will hear his story and tell me later. So the story goes his house was bombed and he was arrested on grounds of being thought a terrorist. He was tortured but having a Dutch wife the Dutch embassy got him out and placed him in some refugee camp. So my first reaction is what does he want? Why does he come knocking on my door now? I saddens me that that is my first reaction when my dad shows up. So after hearing his story I finally get to hear to story of what happened between him and my mother. It’s a heartbreaking story and it made me love her even more for letting me find out who he was without influencing me.
I made a decision to change my last name which is his to my mother’s. Because the name no longer holds any value to me anymore. Apparently I could not have hit him harder than by doing that. Soon after letters came, threatening letters calling me and my mother every name under the sun. A complaint was filed with the police. After the letters phone calls came. Silent phone calls. As the legal hassle of my name change started only last year more letters came and this year one came in which he implies abduction. However not explicitly so I cannot get him arrested. When the police asked me if I would want to do that if it was possible I said yes. I think I’ve been at the police station 3 times only last year.

At that point the man who was suppose to be my father died. I no longer have a father. There’s just this stranger who thinks I am a possession. The name change is still going I am hoping it’ll be finalised in six to seven weeks.

I know all of this will affect me later on in life. Fear of abandoning is very much present and has played parts in relationships. I wish I didn’t look so much like him but I fear just how much I might turn out to be like him personality wise.

So my only words of wisdom here are that a father is not a right you get when part of your DNA makes up a person. It’s something you have to work for to deserve. If you do not you loose the right to call yourself a father.

Jae It's tough enough to have a marriage to a person who turns on you. At least you can divorce him and go on to find a better husband. But you only get one shot at a birth dad. You can't divorce him, you can't influence him, and you can't ever give up, in the back of your mind, that wish to have a perfect or at least a pretty good dad. It's almost better to have a dad who's dead, rather than one who is dad in name only, mocking the office, so to speak. I'm so sorry that yours turned out so badly.

Ara, my eyes tear up when I think of my grandpa as well. Unlike my father who was too emotionally wrapped up in the day to day struggles of dealing with children, wife, and work, my grandpa could see me briefly and love me with a genuine unconditional love. He called me "pardner" in a western accent (like John Wayne) and played canasta with me. His love was what got me through most of my teen years, until he died of bone cancer when I was 16. He reminds me very much of the grandfather in "The Education of Littletree" which I highly recommend.

Dawna, that's a tough one. It is easier to be a cyborg, but you miss so much. In my case, I kept the door open, but it wasn't until I was 50 and my father 84 that we had both finally grown up enough to relate to each other in a loving way.

My parents were married 59 years. If my dad had lived 2 more months, it would have been 60 years.

He spent the last year of his life in a nursing home, suffering from dementia and COPD. Where the COPD came from is something of a mystery, as he never smoked anything but the odd cigar, or a pipe, and gave that up completely when warnings about tobacco and cancer began to hit the press. It could possibly have been 'farmer's lung' from the dust he was exposed to during threshing time on the farm. When he had his physical for entry to the armed forces during WWII, they saw shadows on his lungs, told him he had TB, and essentially sent him home to die. Well, it wasn't TB, as he never tested positive for the skin test, and lived to the age of 89.

Demetia is a strange thing. He never lost the ability to recognize his family, and could still read quite well until close to the end of his life, but his comprehension of what he read was no longer very good. He also lost the will to move. While still at home, he would sit for hours at the kitchen table after lunch, with a cup of cold tea in front of him, and not be able to gather the ambition to go upstairs and have his usual afternoon nap. Sometimes he would doze off at the table, and once he fell out of his chair, and cracked a rib. He also had trouble getting in and out of the bathtub, and mom had to call the fire department once or twice because he was stuck. (I bought him a bath seat, but once he decided not to use it, and got stuck again.)

The last year of his life was very sad. The nursing home's care was awful, and I deeply regret not yanking him out of there. I remember so clearly one day, when he was sitting outside in the sun with my mother. He was so sick, he couldn't keep his eyes open, and one eye was constantly oozing tears. Mom asked him about a certain birthday for one of his siblings, and he began to recite the birthdates of all 10 of them, including his own.

"Harvey?" Mom said, surprised he'd included his own birthday. "but Harvey's right here!"

"Yes," Dad responded slowly. "Harvey's right here. What's left of him."

I had to get up and walk away, to hide my tears.

When I took him back inside, I told the head nurse that I though my dad was ill, and asked if he could see a doctor. She assured me she'd look after it.

The next morning the phone rang. It was the nursing home, informing me my dad was developing a bed sore on his behind, and that the doctor had seen it and was treating it.

"Fine," i replied, "but what about his cough? What about the eye that's running tears, and him not being able to keep his eyes open?"

"Oh, the doctor didn't address that..."

It was one of the few times in my life I've ever totally lost it with another nurse. When I calmed down, the nurse assured me she would get another doctor to look at my dad.

Then next morning the phone rang. Again it was a nurse from the nursing home. "Mrs. Fuller? I'm sorry to report this, but we had to take your dad to the E.R. He has pneumonia."



My dad also suffered a minor stroke while in the home. I later found out he was on a medication which might have caused the stroke. I asked the doctor why he'd been on that medication, which was a tranquilizer. The doctor replied he'd been put on it in hospital, and they'd just never taken him off it!

Due to the stroke, he sat unevenly in his wheelchair, and eventually developed a stage 4 pressure ulcer, right down to the bone. He spent his last 6 months, confined to bed, with only the TV and the occasional visitor for company. By this time, I was having my own struggles with Roger's illness, and will always regret not being able to visit him more often than I did.

By April of 2004, it was obvious he was sinking. He had lost a tremendous amount of weight, and was having difficulty swallowing. It took him a long, long time to eat each meal.

The last time I saw him, he was lying in his bed, naked from the waist down, without even a sheet over top of him. The bed was soaked with urine, as was the flimsy disposable pad they'd placed underneath him, and even his shirt tails were wet. I couldn't change him on my own, as he would panic when rolled over, and grab the bed rails.

His lunch arrived, and I began to feed him. 45 minutes passed, and still, no nurse had come in to check on him. (The one person who did come in to feed him said she wasn't allowed to change patients.) Sizzling with anger, I went in search of a nurse. I found the RN doing her med rounds, and she said she'd get someone to come and help (which she did, ASAP.)

Finally, Dad was finished his lunch, and lay down to rest. I told him I had to go, and asked for a hug. He put his good arm around me, smiled, and said, "Hugs. I like lots of hugs. Like to give them too."

"I do too, Dad," I said. "I love you."

"I love you too," he replied.

That was the last time I saw him alive.

I may write more later, about our relationship, and what he meant to me, but right now, I have to go and deal with real life. I'ts 10:30 and I haven't even fed the dogs! I just had to get this off my chest, though. There were many reasons we did not move him out of the home (stress of adjusting to a new place, the staff knew him now, and he was starting to 'fit in' and contribute to some of the activities, it was close for my mom to come and visit, not to mention my own troubles with my very sick husband, etc.) Still, I cannot help but look back and wish we'd been able to do things differently. The long term care system in Canada needs some serious overhauling!

Long term care is dreadful in the US as well. We have a double standard when it comes to people who have outlived their minds - we want the best for them, but at an affordable price. And the nursing homes are generally for-profit, so they want the most money for the least work. It may be that some clients are able to pay whatever it takes, but there are few such facilities available. So the minimalist care is what runs the market. Most are just warehouses. How do you get caregivers who will love and comfort these people, for years on end, when they are paid minimum wage with no benefits, assigned too many people, are ill trained, and often speak little English?

Sunny, I know that you work in pallative care, and were one of the rare people who can do so while keeping her heart intact. But the people they get off the street to do most of the care in these places are there because it was a job they could get. They are surrounded and overwhelmed by death and need, and the ones I've met were either hard-hearted or heading for a burn-out. I saw this when my mother-in-law was in a dementia unit for several years, and when my mother was in a nursing home for two months recovering from a fall and pneumonia (the pneumonia, which nearly did her in, was caused by the poor care associated with the fall - they didn't notice the three smashed vertebrae or the cracked ribs until she'd been there for two weeks, complaining about the pain daily).

I dread having to go through this with my parents.

I have wanted to psot here for a long time, but never had the time to type everything that seemed meaningful to me.

This month I will see my father again. I have not seen him since novembre last year.

In December, he started to have problems to walk. In fact, he had metastas growing on his spine and it compressed the nerfs, so he found himself paralysed, had to go to hospital and be operated. Then, he had radiations against the cancer on his hips, his spine. What did he do, when he was out, the idiot? Go on a walk on an icy field. He fell and broke his leg. One more thing weakening him. And a few months to wait until he could walk again to start rehab necessary after the radiations. Now, he is in rehab. But he can’t do most of the exercices because he is weak – lost more than ten kilos of weight and he so hurt – there are other tumors on the hip and he needs at least radiations again. Next week, there will be exams to see if the cancer has spreaded from the bones in the organs. If it has, he will get a chimio. If not, radiations are sufficient. But, his wife and his doctors say that his life is not in danger. Next year he will turn 70. My father in law died this year of cancer (or my ex-father in law? I don’t know…) He was 71.

I was never close to my day, emotionally close. He did not care so much for his children – he did not come to my graduation for some social Lions-Club event… his career was more important. Sometimes, now when I have the news of his cancer, it dreads me that my fist thought is how ennoying it is. I have to go to Germany and meet him. I’d like to go elsewhere. And I do feel guilty about not being close to my father. He was not such a bad father. He just did not care so much. Oh, he was proud if he could show us off like some trophy at his social events, his so successful, so cultural kids, so good-looking daughters, who studied so well. But care? Wonder how we were, my brother, sister and I, how we managed to turn on our student’s budget, what jobs we did? Never!

My father is a smart and very cultured man. We can talk about the books I read for hours, about politics and history and about classical music. He is very happy that I introduce my children to classical music. But about personal fears and doubts? No. When we talked about the end of my marriage, it became a historical analysis of the institution of marriage. That’s the way things are. Little children are boring to him and he looks for intellectual challenges.

So, I will go to see him and I am afraid. He has become old and now, he wants his children. I understand it and I regret for him what he has missed. My brother has said that he fears that sometimes my father’s mind is troubled, at least it was that way when he went to see him.

I am also very aware of the fact that my orcs are separated from their father in every day life. But that is another post.

I am also afraid that M’s children are estranged from their father by my presence. But that is another post too. It is half past midnight, and again, I do not have enough time.

And I apologize for not referring to all your beautiful posts. I read them all. I have to come back one here...

Nin, I started this thread for one person in particular, but I made it vague, because I knew we all had mixed emotions about are dads. It is sad to hear how much pain you have been through, yet comforting to know that others have gone through the same private hell at the same time. I see a resemblance between your dad and your ex - both closed books who could not express their hearts. Please post more when you can.