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| Roy N. Buchanan, Canadian Air Force Veteran WWII |
My ninety year
old father passed away on July 26, 2012 in his own home and it was my privilege
to be with him as he departed. I have written personal tomes about my father
over the years in therapy journals, more than one fourth step for those who
know that process and on my blog in a lifelong attempt to reconcile loving such
a difficult, brilliant and complicated person. I am the middle of three children
born close together. We all grow up longing for our parents love and approval
and have been rewarded or let down in our own ways, not always in equal
measure. Our story from innocence to forgiveness, a journey fraught with
obstacles, ended for my Dad with peace and grace.
I believe Dad both loved and loathed us as he
vacillated between the extremes of his emotions over the course of his life. He
was not articulate in the language of feeling so it fell in our individual
courts to interpret his confounding behavior. A person in a fit of rage sucks
the air out of a room destabilizing everyone. On the brink of insanity anything
goes. Love does not trifle with rage. In a room filled with anger fear is a new
best friend. When the fever of wrath cools love does not exactly come rushing
back. Over time each of those unexpected incidents becomes another stone placed
unwittingly on a wall. With parents, there is no divorce. Sure we can walk away
and never look back, but I did not. Every time I made the decision to ignore my
parents a gaping dark chasm opened before me devoid of the resolve I so
desperately needed. Ignoring them simply lacked courage. Dad tested all of us by
scattering just enough clues of the love we craved to keep us coming back for
more. Had I not suspected his brilliance, played out in a highly successful
career as an engineer, or seen evidence that he could suspend his anger and
judgment in acts of kindness and generosity to his wife, friends and neighbors
I might not have had such an unshakeable compulsion to spend a lifetime
examining each of the stones on the wall between us in search of forgiveness
for and from him. And I had my good moments with him too.
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| Me and Dad fixing my truck |
In the last
months of life Dad thanked me and told me he loved me and I believed him because
those moments cut through stone like a laser. In the days he fell into delirium
the marginal filters that had provided some air of decorum fell away completely.
I experienced the full force of his hellish rage, judgment that would shrivel a
hardened criminal and a lack of compassion so thorough that I compared it to a
person with a conscience capable of slave trading. That might have been a tad
harsh. After many difficult years of badgering him to stop moving heavy objects
with double hernias, hiding the pick axes and sledge hammers he used to break
up dirt clods and bashed his shins with and then getting up every two hours for
months to stop him from making addled repairs to the house he told my brother
to, “Get rid of that blonde woman”. I was the only caregiver with light colored
hair and clearly a thorn in his side. There were times when I threw my hands up
and walked away, wondering if I would be brought up on charges of elder abuse
for leaving him bent over asleep on a hard chair with his legs crossed after he
threatened to hit me, then being woken up hours later to a tirade for the pain
it caused him. My Father was as complex as the monolithic feats of engineering
he designed. Most days I could step outside of my feelings and care for him
when he could no longer manage on his own. His medical problems involved
complicated decisions and I listened to the advice of doctors, read his advance
health care directive to interpret the directions for his care that he had drawn
up with lawyers when he was still cognizant and I followed my heart when
information was not forthcoming. I appealed to Hospice to insert a catheter but
they insisted he merely suffered from gas, not the inability to pass urine and
they left. I found someone who would do it because it was clearly inhumane not
to and it turned out he had not been able to relieve himself for many days. I
gave him morphine because Hospice advised me to, but I stopped because simply draining
his bladder ended the moaning agony he was in. I did not know that the drugs
they use, morphine for pain and haloperidol to calm people down also slow the
respiratory system. Dad could have died from twisted intestines because he was
too weak to undergo hernia surgery or from the runaway infection in his leg or
from the contagious bacteria, clostridium difficile (CDF), in his intestines
that caused a month of violent diarrhea, dehydration and massive weight loss,
but in the end he simply stopped being able to breath. Complicated by dementia,
fits of delirium and the self-abuse of a salmon swimming upstream to spawn his
days were clearly numbered. I knew that, but it was no reason to give up on him.
I rubbed his legs, moved him gently and carefully held him up so he could drink
water. We hired many helpers over the years including one who spent lots of
time on the couch channel changer in hand increasing her girth with the food my
father purchased but could no longer eat. Finally we were fortunate enough to
find a woman with the ability to care for difficult patients and another man
who spent time with Dad in the weeks before his final decline. Larry J. Miller is
a caregiver for the elderly with multiple layers of compassion and training and
I mention his name because it is a recommendation. He gave our Father much
peace and I thank him sincerely for the heartfelt conversations they had in the
final weeks.
And Dad’s last
moments were peaceful. In the end two loving women, myself and a kind caregiver
each griped one of his hands. I asked him if he knew he was home and he blinked
his eyes, the only way left for him to communicate. I asked if he knew his family
loved him and a tear formed in the hollow eye socket of his emaciated face. The
caregiver, who prefers to remain nameless, advised him to ask forgiveness so he
would move on to heaven assuring him that Jesus loves him. He found the
strength to squeeze our hands as we watched him take his last breath and leave
this world. I felt the presence of his parents in the room and whether I made
it up or not it gave me comfort to believe his soul was not alone.
Hospice nurses
showed up shortly after Dad died and I was not kind to them because they
recited phony platitudes probably from a handbook for the recently bereft. In some
ways I’m just as obstinate as Dad and I said what he would have. I called Larry
to let him know he would not need to come over and told him why. He showed up
anyway and I am glad he did. Shortly after I lost my Dad forever he said
exactly what I needed to hear. Exhausted from lack of sleep and the burden of
so many decisions that had either spared or contributed to my father’s demise I
could have easily walked into the dark woods of self-incrimination. He told me
that the mark of a true caregiver is meeting a person’s wishes whether you
believe in what you are doing or not. In the past I had chosen treatment by a
traditional Samoan healer instead of a doctor of Western medicine and he knew
that about me. He took a picture of us, after Dad was dressed in the suit he
wore so often to the job he was so proud of, and then Larry handed the camera
to me. Two black suited men pushed the gurney with my shrouded Dad out
through the garage that he spent half his life tinkering in. I raised the camera
to take one final picture as the van drove away. The lens flared as it tried to adjust between the
intense sunshine on the driveway and the dark garage. This is Dad going into the light.
Before he was
taken away I had my Mother, who suffers with advanced Alzheimer’s, hold his
hand to say good-bye one last time. For a moment, she understood and her grief
after sixty five years of marriage and unflagging love for her husband was palpable.
Then she closed her eyes and when she opened them again a minute later she asked
who the person on the bed was. We will not revisit Dad’s death with Mom in her
present state of mind as she would experience the grief again and again as if
for the first time. Mom has several loving caregivers now and we will keep her
in her home as long as possible. Dad was a good provider and she will be well
cared for. We will not be having a memorial service at this time, but will save
Dad’s ashes until we can take a boat on the open ocean and scatter our parents
together when the time comes. It was their wish and also the kindest thing for
Mom. She is not able to comprehend or process condolences. If you knew my Dad,
please wish him well and remember him fondly no matter what I have written. The
part I have left out is that he was selflessly polite, charming and an asset
and friend to the people he worked with. He was respected and accomplished in
his long career as a pipeline engineer with Bechtel Corporation.
Dad, I wouldn’t
have changed anything and I have no regrets even though I’m sure I could have
done better and I apologize again for being such a crappy teenager. Please hold
the door open for me, I’d love to see you again after I’ve had a few more adventures.
