I Think My Father Is Dying

In one way or another, I’ve been mourning him for a long time.

Until my 30s, I held a lot of anger and resentment toward my father. He had not been a good spouse or parent. As soon as I came to understand these things, I was irritated that he’d made me another woman with daddy issues. How dare he make me so common.

I’ve never forgiven him for the harm he caused our household, but one day I woke up and I was tired. There’s that expression, “it takes more energy to hate than to love…” or whatever. I could feel how much of my spirit the hate was eating up. I didn’t want to die early because my anger was eroding me, so I turned it off. I couldn’t forgive or forget, but I could rebuild myself, shovel out the ashes of what the anger had burned, and put up something new. People pave over cemeteries often.

We’ve all learned to live with ghosts.

A couple of years ago, I had to help figure out my father’s care when it became obvious he could no longer live alone. The resentment roared back to life, a hidden ember ready for the slightest breeze to flame hot inside my head. He dodged his parental responsibilities my entire childhood and now I was expected to provide care I was never given. The smoke was hard to choke back. It stung my eyes. That’s probably why I kept finding tears on my cheeks after every phone call.

I think that’s when I started to mourn him… and what he could’ve been… to me, our family, himself. Instead of a girl with daddy issues, I was almost a daddy’s girl. I was his first born and he loved me. He told me I was smart and funny. But he hurt my mama and did other bad things, so he was my first lesson in learning that love is not enough.

This past Christmas, I visited him in his nursing home. He didn’t remember me or my brother, or that he had children at all. He kept speaking to me as if I were a stranger in a store: “Excuse me, ma’am. Can you help me?” The nurses told me he’d stopped reading. My father has always had a book with him– anything from the history of esoteric religions to science fiction. He loved reading. I guess that’s where I got it from. When the nurses told me that, I knew it was a matter of time before he was gone.

Today my father is in the ICU. He is better than he was yesterday, but the medical staff keeps gently suggesting we figure out DNR plans. Do Not Resuscitate. We have to balance quality of life against… everything. We made arrangements for the chaplain to visit him.

My father doesn’t remember our family. He doesn’t remember the hurt he caused, but the chaplain will offer forgiveness.

Does his soul remember? Will his spirit stay behind to make things right?

My father’s ghost has haunted me all of my life.