My Father's Death

I've been thinking lately of my father's death. My dad lived a mostly unhappy life. Dealing with depression and a childhood history of abuse and neglect, he had little skill at relating to others or expressing his needs. A car accident when I was a child left him with disabilities that became a badge of wounding he proudly displayed and used to avoid responsibilities. He lived with dreams that he could never fulfill, and left my mother bitter and lonely.

He lived into his eighties. The last few years of his life were spent in bed with progressive diabetes. As the powers of his body waned, his fantasies grew, and he would talk about going into to New York soon to ride the trains, while his legs deteriorated. He refused to exercise or do the physical therapy the nurse prescribed for him, or follow the diet he needed - instead he would sleep and dream.

I had struggled with this shell of a father and the needs of mine as a child had not been fulfilled. He had found sexual excitement in my child's body, and like an innocent without conscience, took his pleasures from me when he wanted. Years of therapy helped me wrap my mind around what had happened and lessen the shame and confusion I felt. And yet I wanted to confront my father before he died - to tell him what I remembered, maybe ask him why he did what he did. I wanted to hear an apology - no, more than that, I wanted to know he loved me, and somehow did not intentionally hurt me.

Three days before his death, something odd happened. His nurse told me that for the first time, he became serene, peaceful, and his lifelong troubled face and spirit let go of their distress. He asked to see his two children - something he had never done before in my memory. The only times he had ever played with me were when my mother urged him to "spend time with the children". But at the end of his life, for the first time, he wanted to see us. My mother, in her bitterness, never delivered the message until after his death, telling me she thought we wouldn't care.

I still wonder deeply what happened in his spirit - someone who lived his life in self-pity, fantasy, and loneliness, who apparently suddenly became capable of love in his last days. What happened as it finally sunk in to his soul that this was it, that the end was near? It seems that the stages of regret and longing were already past - that in his silent revere he must have already forgiven himself for the way he lived his life and the things done and undone. Somehow, the self-pity and self-absorption were apparently gone. And when all the human failings of his life were stripped away by the immenence of death, it seems like something else showed through - something deeper than the scars left on him from the abandonment and pain he had experienced, something deeper than the self-pity, the blocks to really caring about anyone else but himself, the absorption with pleasure that was a relief from the pain of his soul. Somehow, a deeper being that I had never known spoke from a broken body, and sought to touch me and my brother, this time with love.

I think of those who come close to experiencing death, and experience light and love, and they lose all fear of death. I have never heard of anyone coming close to death and hearing the screams and smelling the brimstone. No, hell is here on earth, and is of our own making. My dad lived in hell most of his life - yet, in those three final days, perhaps the curtain was pulled back, and he saw a different truth, a truth where the time wasted no longer mattered, a truth that required no preaching or condemnation for not believing.

What would life be like if we could fully see that truth today?

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 5/21/2006 8:37:00 AM
I want to live in knowing the preciousness of every moment and knowing what is important and not living in fear. this is a beautiful reminder. I wish that you would have had the opportunity to hear what your dad had to say before he died.