HIS LAST YEAR

My father had been declining a little every year since he was around age 85. Heck, truth be told, we all decline a little every year, beginning at birth.

He was almost deaf and refused to buy costly hearing aids, settling for ones he could not hear out of and only magnified what he didn't want to hear. For the last few years of his life, he would sit at the end of the couch and watch the action around him when the family gathered at my parent's house. He was unable to participate in any meaningful conversation. Oh, he would always pray before the food was served. Before he gave the prayer, he would usually praise my mother for taking care of him. He wanted everyone to know that he acknowledged her hard work and appreciated her.

When I visited, about 3 times a year due to living and working in South Florida, he would tell me how his head felt 'fuzzy' and how annoying it was. He'd ask me what I thought caused this. I'd usually tell him it could be small strokes or a brain getting older. We'd laugh about the old brain part, and he'd carry on telling me about something that happened in WWII, which was his favorite topic and often-repeated story. At age 90, memories of long ago bring happiness.

Frequently, he'd start complaining his chest was hurting when I visited. My older brother swore that this only happened when I was there. I'm unsure if he was implying that I caused the chest pains or if the chest pains were just coincidental. Whatever. The first few times he complained during one of my visits, I called 911. They'd check him out and find that his blood pressure and heart rate were normal. He acted like he enjoyed the attention and would joke with the EMS workers. Since he complained of chest pain, they'd take him to the hospital anyway.

On one of my visits, I arranged for a private personal care company to send an aide to their house for several hours daily to give my mother a break. I believe I had gotten on the airplane when my mother canceled the home visits. She told me my father didn't want someone else in the house. According to her, 'they don't do anything anyway.'

After a few days on the hospital's heart monitor, he would be discharged. On one such hospital stay, a Psychiatrist saw him. He diagnosed him with a panic disorder and prescribed medication for it. My father refused to take it. I believe my father suffered from a panic disorder all his life, which explains his belligerent attitude on frequent occasions.

When our family gathered at their house, a male neighbor would often be there. He was in his early 80's and a recent widow. I watched as he looked at her with admiration when she was talking. My brothers and I would comment that 'something was going on' between our mother and the neighbor. 

About a year before his death, my father complained again about having chest pains. I wasn't there. My mother called the ambulance, and they took him to the hospital. Again, they couldn't find anything wrong with his heart. She refused to get him when she was notified that it was time for him to be discharged. The hospital social workers scrambled to find him a placement at the Texas Veteran's Home. Mother insisted that he be kept in a locked unit, as she didn't want him to try to come home.

I came home for Christmas about two weeks after this happened. I hadn't been there for more than an hour before my mother told me that 'Hal,' the widowed neighbor, wanted to see me while I was there. I asked her why he would want to see me. She responded, "He likes you and just wanted the three of us to get together. He had asked me for a date after I put your father in a nursing home. I told him I was a married woman and couldn't do that, but we did anyway." 

When we visited my father, he seemed to be doing okay. He was accepting the story that he was placed there for rehabilitation because 'the doctor ordered it.' He appeared mentally alert at first but would repeat himself if the visit lasted longer than an hour. Many family members came to visit him that Christmas. He recognized everyone and was overjoyed that they visited him. It would be the last time most of them saw him alive.

I visited him three times that year. He seemed to decline mentally and physically each time, but he always knew me. It was noteworthy that every time he saw my mother, he would ask how the divorce was progressing and wanted to ensure she didn't sell the house without his knowledge.

My mother called each of her three children about a month after my father's placement in the nursing home. She wanted to tell us that she was in love with Hal and that they would marry as soon as our father died. Furthermore, she described him as the 'best lover she ever had.' My mother was 87 years old at the time. The 'boyfriend' was 81. They went on road trips together, stayed at relatives' houses, and attended informal family reunions. I knew this because their picture would be posted on Facebook...all while my father was sitting in a nursing home.

When I called her every Sunday, she frequently asked me when I thought my father would die. I would respond that I had no idea but that there was nothing physically wrong with him to indicate that his death was imminent. One day, Hal called to tell me that my mother was depressed. He stated another neighbor had told her that her husband had lived seven more years after being put in a nursing home. I told Hal that it was inappropriate for him to call me with this information, as my father was still alive, and for her boyfriend to contact me with this news was creepy. I also told him that my mother had a massive issue with self-pity and being manipulative, but 'tag, you're it.'

Her behavior wasn't shocking to me. If one totaled all the hours she complained to me about my father over my lifetime, it would equal at least several years. Her hate for him was apparent in every move and comment she made. My father was clueless about how she really felt about him. As they say, 'ignorance is bliss.'

The last time I saw my father was about a month before he died. I had just retired, and my younger brother and I drove across the country from South Florida to Seattle, where I would live for a year. My father had visibly declined even further, but he still knew us. My brother was so upset to see him in this condition that he couldn't stay in his room very long. We talked while my dog rested on the bed with him. He told me that he rarely saw any of the family and that while it made him sad and lonely, he understood. I told him I would see him more frequently since I retired. Our mother wasn't with us during this visit, and he never asked where she was. After about 20 minutes, he wondered where Dana was. I told him that I was Dana and that I knew I had aged, which was why he didn't recognize me. He responded, "No, you just got better."

I kissed him on the forehead to say goodbye to him for the last time. I told him I loved him. He replied, "I love you too, sweetheart." 

I visited their home for a week after my father died. My mother was taking calls from Hal at least 20 times a day. I asked her to cool it with Hal until we got my father buried while I was visiting. She did not stop. Not surprisingly, she and Hal married a couple of months later.

It's good that she has a companion. Everyone should have one. Seeing them in marital bliss is disturbing. After almost two years, negative feelings still linger about how the whole thing went down. It's a new reality, and I'm trying to deal with it.

An aunt told me that my mother had visited my father and told him, 'he had no family...his family was the people in the nursing home.' It wasn't long after her visit that my father refused to eat or drink anything and died a week later.

He might have been a brute to our family from time to time, but he didn't deserve to suffer the way he did in the last year of his life. 

I still weep for him.