What it’s Like When Your Father Dies…

Part 1 (Wednesday): Singing the Jeff Buckley Version of ‘Hallelujah’ in the car while crying…

If you told me when I was 19 that I would *long* to move back in with my parents, I would have thrown a pumpkin into the air and shot it with a shot gun while smoking a cigar in a mini skirt, and then I would have laughed and told you you were fucking nuts. But, alas, a breaking heart will always call you home.

My father is the sickest you can be without being dead, or this was, at the very least, my belief a week ago. Today, a social worker named Andrea with a sympathetic face told me that I was incorrect. “The fact that he is rummaging through papers indicates to me that he may have 3 more months before he dies,” she directed.

“I need to ask you questions, but I don’t know how to ask them.”
“Okay. Let’s go in the other room.”

When someone is dying, one of the most important things you need to know how to do is completely feign ignorance of this ever-present fact.

Yes, Andrea. Let’s talk in the piano room! We wouldn’t want to interrupt dad from planning his fucking mountain-climbing trip by being all maudlin! Quick: let’s secretly discuss what breathing and eating habits indicate your inevitable demise… but we can’t just chat about it in front of dad. It would be such a shame if he knew he was dying. He might be upset and sell his ice skates and then he’ll never become the 64 year old ice skating champion he has always wanted to be.

Sorry to be thinking bitchy thoughts while you’re trying to help, Andrea.

We sit in the piano room and she tells me the truth. There are stages of death. Hospice people, medical professionals and social workers are used to seeing the phases. Rummaging around a box of papers high on Haldol and Morphine searching for your employment records means you have 1–3 months left yet.

“Well, he’s peeing blood so that’s bad,” I tell her.

“Right. That’s because his kidneys are failing.”

“How long can you go without kidneys?”

“It all depends on the person,” says Andrea. She looks concerned.

“Kidneys seem important,” I say, but I feel like a dumb ass. I’ve never really considered the hierarchical importance of a person’s internal organs. I mean, I’ve had them my whole entire life. Longer even. But apparently I don’t know the deal about how necessary they are.

After you are no longer able to sit at a table, Andrea explains that a few things are going to happen in a specific order, thus:

1. You need a walker to walk.
2. Then you need a wheel chair.
3. You will breathe heavily.
4. You will no longer eat very much (which he already isn’t).
5. Your skin will get cold.
6. Someone will charge you $20/ hour to bathe you.
7. You will need round-the-clock care so that there is a person responsible for making sure you won’t die alone / no one forgets to give you Morphine and Haldol every 3 hours.
8. Everything will get worse and worse until your heart keeps you alive while everything else about you is completely fucked up and in pain.

She also told me that people can hold on for major life events like a wedding or a kid you love coming to visit. I find myself admitting to Andrea that my final wishes are to be put to sleep like a dog and she looks at me like she’s worried I’m going to mercy-kill my father. I assure her I won’t, but she seems concerned. My mom says she doesn’t think putting people to sleep like dogs is a good idea because religious people wouldn’t like it. “To religious people,” she says, “it is the same as suicide.”

I get irritated because religious people don’t have to watch my vivacious father shuffling around in pain. They just get to boss people’s deaths around on no good-authority. I think about what a nice funeral my husband’s ex-wife’s dog had. I immediately decide, with some confidence, that some day I will probably just strangle myself instead of going through steps 4–8.

My mom interrupts this train of thought by askinig Andrea a question about “affordable cremation,” and Andrea gives her a list of convenient options in the Kentuckyana area. Mom feels tacky but Andrea reassures her that it’s a good question. “Advantage Cremation is only $720, plus a $100 delivery fee since they are coming from Oxnard.”

“That place got a 2-star review on Google, but there was only 1 review. I hope they’re not mixing people’s ashes up,” my mom says.

Andrea isn’t sure.

“I saw my husband’s ex-wife’s elderly dog be cremated,” I tell them for some reason. “The guy who did it was really nice.” I wish I were Johnny Depp so that I could afford to pay $5 million dollars to have my dad’s ashes launched into the sea by cannon, or maybe we could throw his ashes from a chopper onto Mt. Reneir. He climbed that mountain and he was proud of it. Instead, I was comparing dog-cremation prices to human-cremation prices. I think of the person who has to put the final outfit on my dad. I wonder if they’ll use the same blankets and maybe we can pet him or hold his hand like we did at the dog place.

After Andrea leaves, my mom and I go to the Ford plant to find out about the absolutely bullshit pension she is entitled to.

We went to dinner and she got sort-of-drunk on 1 glass of wine. I drove home and we held hands and listened to Jeff Buckley in the car. We only cried for a few minutes, but I wish the guy who cremated my husband’s ex wife’s dog would at least be the person putting the outfit on my dad. He was very respectful and tender, and I swear to God I will rip someone’s face off if they don’t do a good job being gentle with us that day.

Part 2 (Thursday): The Longest Days

It’s 11:40 at night on a Thursday, and I just emailed one of my (favorite) employees to request that she steal a bunch of chord-holders from work and mail them to my parent’s house:

Natasha,

If we have any left, will you grab me about 20 of those chord holders I ordered for the event and mail them to me? Just stick them in a big envelope from the shelves by my cube and put it in outgoing mail. I’m setting up a work station at my parent’s until my dad passes away and this chord situation is stressin’ my ass out.

This is a lesson in not being afraid to ask for what you need to be successful as a business person. Thank you in advance.

AP

—

I don’t know what the longest day of my life has ever been.

I haven’t ever invaded Normandy beach, so there’s nothing that stands out in my mind. I’ve been to Normandy beach twice. Both days were pretty nice and involved me listening to historical facts from Europeans tour hosts and lunching on crab legs while contemplating what it would be like to run into Nazi machine gun fire. The first time I invaded Normandy beach as a tourist, I was reading The Longest Day. It was a phenomenal book and gave me all of the necessary facts.

The second time I invaded Normandy beach as a tourist, I brought my father. My husband and I took our wedding guests on a guided tour of the beaches as part of the wedding deal. Seems a little joyless, but historical tours bring me delight like almost nothing else. I regaled any of my wedding guests who I could trap into a conversation for more than 4 minutes with an encyclopedia of wild and unexpected D-day details (d-etails. No?). Our tour guide was a boring-ass internet professor-type, and so I frantically supplemented his bland lesson with a visual painting of what ships were where, troop movements, and other critical information like the fact that Band of Brothers was actually filmed in England, and this one Nazi (whose name I forget) had a dog with him while he watched 200 ships appear on the horizon. You used to be able to just chill with your dog by your side during major war events.

My dad did not mind the internet professor of Normandy, France.

Part of being in a major war event is that you don’t know that it actually is a major war event, so dogs aren’t expressly off limits during these important historical moments.

Today started with my dad leaking intestinal fluids all over the bed and ended with me working until midnight.

Notes:

• I learned to change a pick-line
• Mom cried all day
• Dad wasn’t lucid because he was on Morphine
• My pregnant sister visited and her naked baby ran across the street into the neighbors yard
• I rage cried at the gym

A super pretty hospice night-nurse named Morgan came over to deal with the incredible amount of biley-liquid from my dad’s bed. He basically has a gigantic hole in his stomach with a medical-looking straw in it, because once your body starts shutting down, you just fill up with fluid like a water balloon. The medical-looking straw was leaking, which is not ideal.

No one commented about what a babe Morgan was, and I was proud of my mom for not accidentally sexually harassing her.

What *was* difficult, however, is that my mom took “something to relax” and she wasn’t paying attention to other human feedback. Basically, it was like managing a drunk sorority sister (who you love!) as she is dominating the conversation / trying to close the A/C vent on the ceiling by hitting it with a decorative glass dolphin / forcing my dad to eat ice he didn’t want as he got more and more stressed out, etc. Morgan was very patient. Granted, mom had spent 40% of the day crying and this was around 9 pm. I was patient too.

The days are getting longer. His body is weak, he can’t shuffle around today, and he didn’t really get out of bed. He is losing trains of thought easily. He winces most of the time, even if he is on Morphine. He can’t think, he can’t focus his eyes, he doesn’t know how to use the remote, and he needs to be reassured that things are where he thinks they should be. He is thirsty all of the time. He breathes with his mouth open. He stares at the ceiling blankly. He only wanted two watermelon pieces this morning. I gave them to him by hand. This morning he was concerned about doing it himself. By night, he just understood it was easier to eat the ice chips out of my hands instead of using his own. He can’t.

He asked questions about when Kristen’s baby is coming. I told him not to worry. We will all take care of each other. All of the love we have for him we will have for her. We will all take care of Kristen just like we are taking care of him.

He was relieved by that. He slept all day, but when I adjusted his pillows turned out his light at 10:30 he asked if it was 11:00 yet. I told him it was very close. He feels like it’s important to stay up until his normal time.

I said “You did great. You almost made it.”

The night is coming.

Part 3 (Friday): Eating a Salad in the Upstairs Bathroom

I woke up to mom crying. I was dreaming I was being shot at by terrorists at some kind of Buddhist temple and that had a tiny city growing out of my forehead. Mom had been up all night with daddy, who is losing control of everything you specifically need control of if you want to maintain your dignity in your twilight years. She’s slept an hour. She was searching for an index card with all of the phone numbers she needs, and I woke up and re-wrote them down for her.

If there’s one thing I have learned, you don’t give an imminent-widow the only copy of critical paperwork that she needs. You just give her note cards to lose over and over and keep shit organized on your own.

I hugged her and then called UAW Local Chapter 862, who are getting a decent reputation by me thanks to a fellow named Adam. My dad worked at the Ford plant for most of his life, so he’s part of the union. Despite being an active union-hater (“I have to ask to do anything! It would be faster if I could just do it myself”), we as a family have majorly benefited from this solidarity of other factory workers. Fist bump to the UAW Local Chapter 862, and I thank you for the college money and dental care.

Mom is, of course, solely focused on getting his retirement paperwork done and in a complete panic. I am not since the UAW boys and I have it under control.

The hospice nurses came back this morning while I was on the phone working through the bureaucratic process with Adam. I came out of the bedroom to find Nancy standing in the upstairs bathroom eating a salad in a nightgown while the nurses asked her questions. Nancy is doing a *wonderful* job of entertaining hospice by:

1. Using dad’s new walker and pretending to be an old woman.
2. Sitting on the portable toilet kicking her legs around.
3. Joking about how she is going to super glue daddy’s stomach wound back together with the Lydicane she “took from a hospital.”
4. Telling stories of our insane, histrionic 82 grandmother who hit on a 19 year old neighbor the other day by telling him she preferred men of his specific race.
5. Making fun of my dad for calling the nurse Trisha instead of Tosha.

I announced it would be fun to take the portable toilet outside to traumatize the neighbors. I am not sure the nurses were in agreement. The women informed us that most families were either crying, angry or indifferent and so they seemed to be amused. Maybe they were not, but I appreciate that they pretended to be.

We had to decide whether to send dad to the hospital to get his pick-line fixed. If he doesn’t have it done, his blood pressure will drop quickly and he will likely die in a week. If he does have it fixed, he will likely live an additional week. I decide to stop mincing words and explain this point-blank to my father.

“Daddy, what do you want to do?”

“What is going on with that paperwork.”

“Mom is panicked about it but she doesn’t need to be. Pretend the paperwork doesn’t matter. What do you want to do?”

“But the paperwork does matter,” mom says.

“I know mom,” I tell her. “Just hold on a second. Let’s find out what daddy thinks.”

He is overwhelmed. “Geez. What does…”

“Daddy, it’s okay. What do you want?”

“I’d rather just get this over with.”

When mom leaves the room I assure him it’s going to be okay and that the paperwork is going to be handled. He then wonders when my husband is coming and I tell him it’s okay, we will rush him out.

It is 11:15 am.

Part 4 (Friday night): Listening to Cheyne-Stokes Breathing on a ‘Project Nursery’-brand Baby Monitor

Apparently, Winston Churchill was best friends with a racist named Frederick Lindemann who allowed Indian people to die like unnecessary crops. On the other hand, Churchill uttered sentences like “if you’re going through hell, keep going,” and “if you see a Nazi, punch him in the balls as hard as you can.” While he had a despicable Asiatic policy, his tenacious-sounding quotes have been keeping me from collapsing in my darkest hour. I don’t know what kind of society you need to grow up in to internalize strength from a young age, but today I have figured out strength for the first time.

When I was going through my divorce, I thought I felt legitimate sadness for the first time. I felt the kind of sadness that leaves you heartbroken and bed ridden. I looked at all my past sadness with bemused pity: girl, you have never known heartbreak. You have never known loneliness. You have never known sobbing withdrawal from a person whose presence you are addicted to and whose friendship you have failed. I lost 20 lbs. I laid in bed shaking on Christmas Eve. I thought I would die of heartbreak. I had failed at love and I was gutted.

I was being a big fucking baby.

I give divorce it’s credit for being a burn-your-world-down kind of pain, but have you ever helped your favorite-and-only father die? Hold on to your back teeth. Buckle up, Allison, because the only thing that will help you now is Winston Churchill quotes and the ability to imagine yourself as a war nurse at all times to keep your shit together. In order to keep my shit together I literally had to keep imagining way-worse shit.

What if you were trying to deal with this in 1919? What if your entire family was dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail? What if you had to do this in a country that didn’t have tender and knowledgeable hospice nurses putting in catheters for you? What if you didn’t have liquid morphine? You would clench your jaw and get to work.

It is hard to stay sharp. Mom is tired. She doesn’t want me to accidentally kill him with Morphine because she still needs to have the retirement in hand before she can actually let go. I have come to the conclusion that it is easier to focus on paperwork than it is to admit that you are objectively terrified to let go of the man you’ve been in love with since you were 15 years old. I do not blame her at all. My goal, however, is to keep my dad from the degenerative agony he is in.

He was coherent when he woke up, and there was something kind of hopeful about it. We had planned to put him on the bed hospice set up in the downstairs sun room. He will have a view of birds! His land! It’s sunny and bright in there! When his favorite cousin comes (sorry other cousins) they will have pretty chairs to sit on.

I heard him calling to me in the early afternoon. He was shaking uncontrollably from pain and he was freezing.

“I’m really really cold,” he told me. He was shivering. I think the word “shivering” is overused. It wasn’t “a shiver,” it was a series of vicious muscle spasms. It was a full on, Babylon Berlin style seizing breakdown. I piled blankets on him. Mom was, for reasons of full panic and sleep deprived insanity, mowing the lawn.

I gave him Morphine because he hadn’t had any that day. I felt like a cat waiting for a bird while I watched him trying to do anything I can to make him not in pain.

Mom was downstairs, in sleep deprived insanity, vacuuming for guests.

He got up to go to the bathroom after a couple of hours and he sounded like Darth Vader. I called called hospice back to put a catheter in. Again, monstrous amounts of pain. On a scale of 1–10, he was a 9. This is a man who went to work at a factory with broken ribs and never missed a day of grade school. Not one. He was horrible. I turned back into a pain-management cat, ready to pounce. Everyone I know called 4 times and needed updates and logistical explanations. I was proud they were looking to me, Mister Manager, the trusted person helping mom and dad.

My very pregnant sister Kristen came over, and magically, she tackled the disastrously messy house.

I walked outside for a minute and started crying like a lunatic on the phone to Mike. Kristen whisked me away to Costco for one of the best vacations of my actual life. I hadn’t eaten anything in a long time, and they had samples of bread and capri suns. I bought food and helped an old lady put a TravelPro suitcase into her cart.

Like a man-angel, my brother David came and took over. I could write 400 pages about how incredible David is but doing so would make me cry. I was so suddenly relieved by my baby brother: a medical student with a stethoscope and glasses. He was so much better than I am at this. His bedside manner was professional, he knew what to ask, he knew what to look for, we called hospice together to get the medicines fixed, and he knew what I didn’t know I didn’t know.

Then he and his wife Hannah and I talked in the living room about things that weren’t even sad. I love them and I love their marriage. Their is sheer relief in having someone witty and prepared around when you’re hiding from the wolves that are on their way. It’s so trite that people say “laughter is the only way to stay sane,” but my entire nervous system was reset as the wolves came stalking.

It is midnight. I am off duty, but I have a baby monitor in my room so I can listen to my dad’s heavy breathing so I can hear my name if he calls.

Until tomorrow.

Part 5 (Friday & Saturday): The 11th Hour

The day my father died was, outside of the gripping rattle of labored breathing, a wonderful day. It was a Saturday. I had tried my best to communicate his steady decline day-by-day, with breathless updates into the phone, to my brother Daniel who was all the way in Texas.

On Wednesday I thought he might have a week. By Thursday I hoped he just had days.

He told me he just wanted to “die so bad.”

There was a point where mom thought the morphine was messing him up too much. When David came from his hotel, he was “irritated” with the medical instructions which, by then, had seemed based on symptoms so far in the past. When David is irritated, it is because he is patient, centered, and basically incapable of the type of red-headed rage that plagues and emboldens me to do dumb, daring, and stupid things. I, for example, will want to break a window if I hear the sound of a harmonica. David can see his father dying with the wrong amount of morphine being administered (or not administered) and his response is to raise his eyebrows and announce that he is “irritated.”

By the way, someone is *currently* playing “O! Suzannah” downstairs on a harmonica. Either Nancy or my grandma. I don’t understand why the only harmonica songs anyone ever plays are public domain songs from 1864. No one wants to hear “I’ve Been Workin’ (on the Railroad)” or “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain (When She Cums).” Play some Sufan Stephens or get out of here with that bullshit redneckery. Sherman should have gathered up all the harmonicas and thrown them into the fiery hells of downtown Atlanta when he burned it to the ground.

Friday night, the older of the little brothers, Daniel, packed up his wife and baby and drove all night straight to Kentucky to hold my dad’s hand.

All his kids were all here: me, Kristen, Daniel, and baby-doctor David. Mike took a red eye in. The day was bright, emotionally beautiful, and mercifully, a harmonica-free-zone. We were all together for the first time in years. Our spouses were here to support us and to be amazing. We sat by my dad’s bed. Everyone cried and talked to him one at a time. I checked on him gently in a non-frenzied way because other people were watching his breathing and listening to his moans.

My mother and Daniel’s wife Katty sang Trem Bala to him in Portuguese. The lyrics, awkwardly translated, are this:

“Hold your child in your arms
Smile and hug your parents while they are here
Because life is a bullet train, buddy
And we are just passengers about to leave…”

I didn’t aggressively cry because I didn’t understand them so well.

I cooked mussels for the family, drank wine, hugged my brothers and sister and my husband. Baby Olivia ran around with her cute voice repeating me like a baby parrot. We held each other and we held our mother. At the end of the day, everyone went to Kristen’s, and David and Hannah drove back to Lexington. David had his hospital rotation the next day.

And then the night fell.

I had my list: check stomach bag fluid, catheter position, lotion, put the little sponge in his mouth if he will let me, chapstick, wash cloth on his face, lotion in his hair, check his feet for swelling, move his bed up and down to change his position, roll him a tiny bit one way or another until he furrowed his brow. I took his pulse on someone’s Apple watch or with a timer and by counting like David taught me. If his pulse was elevated, and sometimes it was extremely elevated, I knew he was in pain.

As he declined, he and I both understood my routine. He would say “thank you,” “yeah,” “I guess so,” (if it was something he didn’t want to do but had to), “I want ice,” “I love you too.” “Uh-uh” meant “no.” His phrases became mechanical as he declined further and further. By Saturday, they were just approximations of the phrases. They were moans, but after 4 straight days and nights I understood this language.

Part of the problem with dying is that it is embarrassing to the person doing it. His catheter pain was unbearable. He had to have it because getting up to go to the bathroom turned him a wheezing breathless mess. I thought he might have a heart attack.

“Daddy, I’ve seen Kristen have a baby. You don’t need to worry.”

“Okay.” He said. He didn’t want to be in a diaper and he knew it and I knew it. He also felt like he couldn’t pee, which we agreed is a nightmare feeling.

“Just pretend it was me in that bed. Would you want me to be embarrassed?” I asked him. He wouldn’t.

I put a sheet over him so he was cooler.

“Imagine doing all of this before modern medicine, daddy.” We agreed that it would be unbearable. We agreed that this situation of dying was no problem if we keep perspective. “This is easy for me, daddy. You’re such an easy patient. I can’t think of an easier patient. And on top of that, you still look so handsome.”

I have followed death in the best possible circumstances: my father and his children at home in their big, beautiful Kentucky house. Hospice nurses sanitizing the process and managing the fucking unbelievable amount of liquid there to deal with coming out of him. Bags for bile, bags for urine, gauze for everything. Tape, plastic bottles to empty bags, portable tables, walkers, portable toilets, gloves, alcohol pads, sponges for his mouth. Piles of supplies cluttering the room. While he could still talk, he was groggy and insistent that things be a certain way.

I set up the DVR to record Another 48 Hours but that I put it on the *lowest* priority (which took me 10 minutes to figure out and I eventually just pretended I had done). He never watched it. I knew he was never going to watch it but I wanted him to know that Another 48 Hours was definitely available should the desire arise.

He insisted that his favorite shorts, the ones with the belt loops and the chapstick in the pocket, stay on the floor in case he had guests. He was, at this point, effectively in a diaper connected to tubes. I just told them they were “right here,” but I had washed them and put them on the dresser two days prior.

He wanted for the “non-essential” items be in top drawer (including other chapsticks and alcohol pads). He wanted fresh water with ice in it and didn’t like his water room-temperature. His phone should be plugged in and his iPad should be near by. He needed control of the things he couldn’t actually control. My father was the least-fussy person I have ever known. I only really ever remember him telling me as a child that I wasn’t allowed to horse around with his desk. For example, I couldn’t take all of his index cards to color on and lose his scissors. He wanted to know that his stapler was available if and when he needed it.

We did our best to respect his desk when we were little, although in retrospect he did get annoyed about it a lot, so maybe on the sliding-scale of how much respect had for his office supplies, it was probably around a 6.

I would definitely rate myself a 10 for how much respect I gave his preferences now. He felt his current situation to be very organized. “No problem,” I would say when he wanted me to move his belt to a different dresser. Then I would run downstairs to freshen his water and get him new ice chips.

Like I was saying, we were in the best possible circumstances and I tried to remind both of us of that as often as possible.

“Wow, this makes it easy, huh?”

“Daddy, it’s no big deal, we can just wash that towel.”

“Oh my god, can you imagine doing this without any pain medicine?”

“I am glad you were a Marine. You’re just so tough. Imagine doing this in a third-world country or in the 1700s.”

“You’re like Florence Nightingale,” he said. “I wish I could just hurry up and die.”

“Well I would put you into a sleeper hold but I would probably go to jail for murder. I would prefer to go through my entire life without murdering anyone.”

“Ha ha ha,” he said, and I thought of the time he killed a baby bird in his hands because he thought it was in suffering. It wasn’t in a “House of Cards” way, more like a “Old Yeller” situation. He looked sad about it so I didn’t judge him. I just felt sorry for him to have to crush a baby bird.

Once the night fell and the heat of the day broke, his hospice nurse came over. Her name was Nina. She was a 49 year old woman from Atlanta and she was breathtaking. She only admitted her age because I assumed she was about my age, which is 37, but she kept talking about her grandchildren.

Nina was, no joke, one of the funniest human beings I have ever interacted with. She had my mother who was, between fits of crying, laughing at tales of how difficult Nina’s adult children were. She was vivacious and bright. She had a real authority about her. She told us around 10 pm that my father was in the phase of “active dying.” This could go on for a very long time.

My father’s lungs were full of fluid and he couldn’t swallow any more. Nina told us to lay him flat and put him on his side. Mike let daddy put his weight on him as we rolled him onto his side. When we tried to re-position him, he began begging for something.

“Ahh waa ahhh… Ahh wah…”

He wants something.

“What do you want, daddy?”

“Ahh waa…”

Mom and Mike and I were in rapped attention.

“Ahh wahh ah.”

“He wants ICE!” I yelled as I sprinted downstairs. I am sure that is what he wants! I speak his language!

I came back upstairs and gave him ice. He thanked me in our secret language. He said “I love you,” and he said it to my mom and I told her.

“She has been doing this for days,” mom said to Nina. She was proud of that.

His lungs were filling up and his death-rattle was getting worse. The ice was melting in his mouth. Mucus was spilling out and I would wipe it with a towel. No big deal. The wonders of modernity makes this much easier, I would assure everyone.

Mike gave a little speech to him about how he was a Marine and how he could be honorably discharged, Captain. My mom was there and we were all affirming that it was time to go. “To Valhalla!” I cheered, and he moaned with the same cadence, “to Valhalla!” he was trying to moan with his eyes still half-closed.

Nina gave him morphine but we agreed as a group that this was inhumane. Nina told us that she would call an ambulance and that it would be best if we could take him *into* hospice so that they could administer and IV and increase his morphine. Part of me was like “WHAT THE FUCK? THIS WAS AN OPTION?” but the overwhelming majority of my personality decided to stay cool. We ordered the ambulance.

“It is going to be an hour,” Nina told us.

“An hour! That is ridiculous!” and Nina agreed. It was late and that is just the way this works. She assured us that this was all very standard.

Mom left the room for a minute and Mike and I were paying a lot of attention to my father. Suddenly, Nina stood up and took my father’s blood-oxygen and checked his pulse. Then, she walked over to dad’s face and leaned over him. His eyes were closed.

“Ernest, I need you to listen to me and I need you to trust me. You need to go. You need to walk into the light.” His eyes opened wide. I leaned in front of him so he could see my face.

She kept on. “You are surrounded by people you love and it is time for you to go to the other side. People are waiting for you there. It is time to let go of this life, Ernest.”

“We are proud of you daddy,” I said. Mike agreed that we are proud. “You are so strong, Marine.”

“Go get his wife,” Nina commanded. Mike went.

As he lay dying, his eyes focused on my mother as she walked into the room. They followed her, his big blue eyes, with all of the strength he could summon. “I love you so much, Ernie. You are my heart,” she told her dying husband as her heart was breaking. I could feel all of our hearts breaking.

His eyes relaxed and I put my face close and I knew he was focused on my face then. “I love you,” I told him and I could see that he was in there, but that his brain was shutting down.

Thanks to a Discovery Channel documentary I saw in the late 90s on brain activity on death probably titled “Is There An Afterlife?” where scientists tell you “here is the deal with your brain as you die,” I knew that there was approximately 11 minutes of electrical brain activity after your body stops technically being alive. Nina tried to shut his eyes but I told everyone I needed 11 minutes. My dad’s tongue moved and I announced the 11 minute fact and Nina said “take as long as you need.”

I stayed there and stayed with his face. I was completely calm and in control. I think my mom and Mike were crying in the background but the house could have been on fire and I would not have noticed. His body changed. I knew that he had been changing now, for a year and a half. His earlobes, for example, had mysteriously disappeared over time. His lips, his skin, his ability to laugh. His ability to hold me. His ability to chop a tree down, to eat giant bowls of ice cream like we did in Paris. The man who flipped me over his arms when I was little and let his four children climb him like a tree was gone, and had been gone. The man who flew airplanes and climbed mountains had faded into the background. Cancer has tested his mettle. He’d gone through organ-removal for a Whipple surgery that put him back together wrong, and he still got up one day later to set goals of how far he could walk around the hospital. He shocked the nurses and the doctors by pushing through pain like it didn’t exist. “Pain pills will only slow me down,” he said as he climbed out to bed to fight on.

The only thing we had left in the end was his heart. The only thing we had left in the end was our heartbreak.

“Families are forever,” he always told us.

According to our DNA profiles, I share the Paternal Haplogroup R-L21 with my dad. I am 50% of him. Kristen is 50%. She has his feet, his parenting-style, and his soft heart. Daniel is 50%. He has his toughness, his kindness and his eyes. David is 50% he has his mathematical mind, his calming quiet, and his mannerisms. I am 50% and I have his love of history and his face when I laugh.

All we need to do is be together and we can see my father. Like a magic trick, a small mercy. It is something that he would have been cheerful about.

Part 6 (Saturday & Sunday): The Aftermath

At some point during the last 11 minutes of possible brain activity, my mother left the room. My husband might have been floating around. The angels could have been fully visible and screaming further instructions or warnings, but the only thing I could focus on was my father. I was locked on his face as the minutes went by. One of his pupils dilated and the other did not. I have since learned that this symptom is called Anisocoria and can be a “symptom of serious medical problems.” Also, certain cats are born with this feature, and Marilyn Manson does it to look cool, which I suddenly resented.

My mother was in shock in her bedroom sitting quietly on her bed. Nina was in the kitchen gathering medical supplies. Mike came back in the guest room with my dad’s body and I fell fully apart, wailing “I need to make sure my mom is okay,” which is ironic since my mom was keeping her cool and I was a basket case after all the horrible days of keeping it together. I tried to stand up but I am fairly certain Mike was just keeping me from crumbling to the ground. I wailed biblically.

I got in bed with my dad’s dead body and clutched him. I knew that after this I could never hug him again. I understand why in crime scenes, cops are always pulling away frantic, screaming loved-ones. In some ways, the alive-person is in denial. There might be something he still needs. There might be even just one cell of him that would like some comfort. I am sure that the medical community could give me clearer picture, but for reasons I feel are complete bullshit, I was never given this picture during my 13 years of public school education. I am left with handfuls of arbitrary details, like a person’s hair or fingernails kept growing. Upon writing this, I have come to find out that even this is not actually true — hair just looks longer as a person becomes more dehydrated. Death, however, is not like a lightning bolt. Instead, death is a series of events. The difference seemed obvious in the moment, but also shocking.

I talked to him, but I don’t remember what I said. I cried and cried and cried. It was around midnight. In the moment, I realized I was laying in bed with a corpse. I thought if “Another 48 Hours” (or in this case a less-violence-based, boring version of the show where people die of cancer) was doing a reenactment, I, as an audience member, would have agreed with the lead police-detective that hugging my dead dad was bizarre behavior.

“It didn’t feel strange at the time,” I would explain to the detective. “A dead person doesn’t stop being the person you love.”

“But he couldn’t hear you. He had been dead for 15 minutes.”

“Yes, but I felt like I could hear him,” I would tell the police detective. He would exit the room and tell his partner that I was an unreliable personality going forward. Then, they would drive around drinking burned coffee and driving through socially-disadvantaged neighborhoods.

They would be wrong.

I went in my mom’s room. She was sitting on the bed. “I am like a stone,” she said.

“You’re just in shock.”

“I was like this when Sarah almost drowned. What is wrong with me?”

“You are good in a crisis,” I told her. “It’s a really good quality.”

She paused, “…what do we do now?”

“We need to call someone from the church to put him into his priesthood robes. I think it needs to be priesthood holders.”

Before all of this, I used to say a lot of sassy shit about Mormons. I was raised in the church my whole life, but fell out of love with it around 15 as an angsty youth. As a little girl, I’d held up the church on a pedestal and, as I tried to climb onto the pedestal of my faith in my teen years, the structure came crashing down on top of me. By 16 my faith was gone. I was afraid that the God I didn’t believe in wouldn’t like me, and I was afraid my family, who I did believe in, wouldn’t love me anymore. I lied about my beliefs (or lack thereof) to my family who, end the end, didn’t judge me at all. The transition from curious, proud Mormon 12-year-old to bitter ex-Mormon 17-year-old was harrowing. That having been said, the Mormons are a particularly supportive people with their round-the-clock-willingness to bring meals, drive people to and from the airport, and dress a dead body in the middle of the night according to their customs. I can take issues with their politics or their doctrine all I want, but theirs is a spirit I admire.

“Jim Smith said we could call anyone. He said that anyone from the church would be honored to help,” mom said.

Jim Smith was one of my father’s church-best-friends. He is a mechanic with a wicked sense of humor. He and his wife Dina had been perpetually available during the last year and a half to cheer up my dad, make us food, and fix things that broke.

“Let’s just call Jim Smith.” Poor Jim Smith, I thought. He was casually helping us make a plan, and instead, he’s going to have to get wake up in the middle of the night, find two other priesthood dudes, and dress my dad in his outfit.

I went back in the room and Nina was there. I gave her the rundown. “Three priests are coming over and they’re going to put a ceremonial outfit on my dad.”

“That’s wonderful,” she told me.

“I don’t know when they’ll be here. Here is his shirt. We’re allowed to put this one on.”

“We should do it. Once rigor mortis sets in, it is going to be really hard to dress him,” she informed me.

I was glad to be helpful again. Being helpful is much easier than swimming in your own choking sadness. Nina cut my dad’s catheter tubes and helped me get him dressed. We rolled him side to side to put a white, button-up shirt on him. I buttoned the buttons. I put a towel over his mouth upon Nina’s professional advisement. At this point, he was just a body. He was heavy in the way that a three year old can make themselves impossible to pick up by just going completely limp. He seemed too heavy for his size. Nina showed me the trick of rolling him from side to side instead of trying to push him up. Nina went downstairs to continue her work.

I noticed his robes on the bed. I thought to myself “what if I just started putting them on him? That way, when the priesthood gets here, they won’t have to do much.”

“Don’t fool around with those,” I felt my dad say, and I thought “oh, sorry,” as I left the room.

Part 7: The Last

The last thing my father ever ate was watermelon. I cut up a giant watermelon on Wednesday morning, and I think he had 4 or 5 pieces. From then on, that is all he wanted. The days felt so long, that when my sister tried to make him a bowl of strawberries and blueberries on Friday, I thought she had lost her damn mind. She might has well have been trying to serve the poor man a rich, delicious seafood paella.

“He can’t eat that.”

She looked surprised.

“There is skin on those berries!”

“Well he needs to eat something!”

“No he doesn’t! It’s all just getting stuck in his system!”

She put the berries down on his dresser. “Well, he can have them if he wants them.”

“… okay.”

“Awwww,” she said.

“Awww,” I said as we marveled at our shrinking father.

And the last time I will ever hear his voice, my father said this:

“Hey Allison, it’s Dad. I just want to call and wish you a happy birthday. If you’re busy just… that’s all right but um… we talked yesterday but I love you, my darling. Bye.”

I knew how sick he was in February and had the good sense to save his voicemail. I feel stupid for not making him record more into my phone, but I was plagued with the pointless notion that I shouldn’t be so morbid. Maybe if we all bury our heads in the sand like a bunch of idiots, his cancer will disappear. As so many people told me, “miracles do happen,” and if we acknowledge reality to any degree, those miracles might scamper into the night. Attracting miracles requires the same behavior as attracting squirrels: ignore reality and hope the squirrel changes it’s nature and decides it doesn’t hate humans after all. You can’t just openly request a miracle to come to you. You can’t even offer it peanuts.

Two weeks and three days after he died, I remembered I had the birthday voicemail. I listened to him for 13 seconds over and over again. 4 seconds from the end, he says “but I love you, my darling,” and I played the last clip on repeat. I cried listening to it because I love his voice and I want him to tell me he loves me and call me his darling on every birthday I ever have. As I cried, I was slightly offended that no ghost appeared to comfort me, but not surprised given my religious propensity.

The last song my father ever heard was called Trem Bala, which is a Brazilian song my mom loves. Mike recorded a video of Katty and mom singing along in Portuguese to the Spotify track. I am lying on the bed with my feet bouncing to the music and my auntie Brenda is sitting on the floor. In the video, Brenda and I look like lunatics. My dad is nearly comatose with two women affectionately singing an emotional song. Brenda and I are practically dancing.

When I watch the video now, it seems inappropriate that we did not embody the stoicism that goes hand-in-hand with death. Our smiles seem maniacal. My father is confined to his failing flesh, and we are singing and smiling as we watch his ship sinking. I wanted his environment to be joyful, but in embracing the small moments of happiness, we look so out of place. We look like should have all been dressed like Whistler’s Mother, quietly crying by candlelight and wringing our hands on a kerchief.

***

My father told me that one of his proudest moments was when I played Little Orphan Annie in Annie at the Fox Theater. My sister played Little Orphan Kate, who I had played two years prior, when I was her age. The fellow who played Rooster on Broadway in the 1970s, his name was Bob Fitch, directed the show and played Rooster, only older. All of the costumes, blocking and choreography was from the original Broadway production. I assume, in retrospect, that they had to replace the wigs over the years as wigs might not hold up as well as choreography or Grace’s vintage fur coats. My “orphanage” wig, after one production, was so sweaty and danced in it looked like a family of woodchucks had occupied it and left.

I recently looked up Bob Fitch. He is now a magician and performer living in Los Angeles. I thought of reaching out to him on LinkedIn when I moved here, but I realized that 1) he probably doesn’t have LinkedIn since he was born in 1934 and 2) there is a pretty rare chance he could get me in to the Magic Castle. I never wrote him.

My father was a lineman at the Ford factory when I was Annie at the Fox in 1991. One night, he saw his friend from the factory in the lobby of the theater with his daughters.

“Well hey, John,” his friend said. His friends at Ford all called him “John,” which is his middle name, since “Ernie” apparently doesn’t make him sound tough enough for a factory.

“Oh hi Dale!” he said.

“My girls are so excited to see the show. We got great seats.”

“Oh good. I’m in the font row. It’s great! I’ve seen it five or six times now,” my dad said casually.

During this part of the exchange, my dad realized that he was a single man, no children in sight, who had front row tickets to see Annie, which he had already seen “five or six times.” Tickets were not cheap. The Fox Theater was built with all of the decadence and splendor of 1929 when it opened and seats 4,665 people. Every corner of the building is stunning, except the backstage, which is horrifying, probably haunted, and likely not up to modern fire code. The ladies rooms in the theater, however, are nicer than any apartment I have ever lived in. It is an absolute palace.

Dale gave him a look that said “I don’t know what to make of this, and I can’t even come to the conclusion that you might be some kinda pervert because my brain isn’t processing this situation fast enough.”

“Oh, my daughters are in the play,” he said to Dale’s relief. “They’re orphans.”

“Wow! Who do they play?”

“Uhhh…I forget. Check the program.” And then he strolled away like an unrecognized king, knowing that Dale and his kids would be watching me play Annie and Kristen play Kate for the next two hours.

***

My mom described herself that week as “drowning,” and it is a metaphor I had used to describe depression before. A little thing can pull you under. A little song can have you bobbing along, forgetting the sharks and the submarines with their torpedoes all around you.

The last show that he watched was, obviously, “Another 48 Hours.” His last real shirt was a navy polo with white horizontal stripes. His last shorts were khaki and they had a lot of pockets. They were not the shorts he wore in Paris, but I remember him arguing with my mom about what he would wear while exploring La Ville Lumière.

“You need to wear clean shorts! We are in Europe!” my mother insisted.

“I’m wearing the ones I wore yesterday! They have a lot of pockets! They’ll make me happy!”

Despite her request for the minimum amount of sophistication, he was happy that day. It was the first and only time he ever went to France, and, outside his Mission to Scotland, the only European vacation he ever went on.

“I can’t believe I thought the French were sissies my whole life!” he admitted as we stumbled upon statues of American heroes and visited Napoleon’s tomb and the Musée de l’Armée.

“They are the reason we won the Revolutionary War. They were our greatest allies,” I reminded him. “Plus,” I thought “all of the women here look like they just woke up from a wild night, which is a beauty standard I fully embrace.”

We took a boat ride on the Seine. We saw the Arc de Triomphe. We ate giant bowls of ice cream on the Champs-Élysées. We walked for miles and miles, marveling at everything and taking bites of comically large baguettes as we went.

As we looked down across the city from the top of the Eiffel Tower, daddy said to Mike “I’m just so glad I got to come to Paris. I have the feeling this is the last time I will ever get to do this.”

“Oh don’t say that,” we assured him. “We will come back.”

My wonderful dad, Ernie Beaman, eating ice cream in Paris.