My father told the ER doctors his daughter was dating a dictator and traveling through Peru at St. Mary’s the last week of his life. Boy, were they surprised when I showed up in the hospital that very afternoon!
Even in the depths of his dementia, Dad was a convincing storyteller delivering with equal conviction the absurd and the sublime. Under the cover of night, a midget snuck into his room to take illicit photographs of his framed painting of a duck. His neighbor in Oregon Hill hunted squirrels with a spear. When I was 4 he dreamed I was from Atlantis and it surprised him so much he fell out of his chair.
Dad laid the foundation of my imagination. He was the mythological spinner of the storyline threading through my life. Nothing about me isn’t stamped with the imprint of him.
But the way I miss him does not adhere to the holiday calendar. I was at peace on Father’s Day last Sunday, but his absence stung like a slap when I woke up this morning. He was in my dreams all night but sometimes this presence makes his absence more profound. When my father chose to enter hospice in July 2020, the grief was electric, but I agreed with him that it was time to go.
The decision to put him in memory care tormented me relentlessly the last 17 months of his life. He begged me to let him live alone in a cabin in the woods. Even the biggest institution in the world would have been too small. There are a million indignities in dying and my dad tried to suffer them with grace.
When barbed wire memories surface, I repeat the Hawaiian prayer of peace, Ho'oponopono.
Dad, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. And I know he knows and feels the same way about me.
In less than 3 weeks, I actually will be traveling through Peru. I don’t plan on dating any dictators while I'm there, but I do expect I’ll run into my Dad as I do, everywhere I go.