I Still Miss You, Dad

Super Bowl Sunday brings me mixed emotions these days. Five years ago, we were watching the Super Bowl with my dad, and waiting for him to die. He had esophageal cancer that had spread through his digestive system…he’d had 90% of his stomach removed four months earlier to try to delay the inevitable. His 79-year-old body just never recovered from the surgery, and succumbed to the cancer faster than he would have without it, in my opinion. Don’t get me started on the wonders of modern medicine when it comes to geriatric patients….

I think about him today. I still miss him so much…I can’t believe it’s been five years since he was here with us. I wrote this the day he died. I thought I would share it here:

February 2, 1999

It is on this date that I must record the death of my father. He died at about 9:45 this morning. A rainy, blustery, Oregon winter Tuesday morning.

…Even an hour before he died, you could tell he was still fighting. He was too weak to even be conscious, but you could see his lips moving and his face twitching, his head shaking…whether he was trying to "shake off" the encroaching darkness of death, or arguing with those on the other side who were urging him to cross over, I don’t know. But I could tell he wanted none of it.

Luckily, we had a good hospice nurse with us who told him what we couldn’t find it in our hearts to tell him: That his body was trying to die, and that we loved him, but that he needed to find peace now. He needed that permission to die, and I was unable to give it. I knew how hard he had been fighting, and how much he didn’t want to die. … I knew Dad was struggling with it, and I just couldn’t be the one to tell him he’d lost.

Hospice told us that we had done a good job. That we should be proud of ourselves. That we carried out his wish to die at home…the wish that he never really voiced in so many words. ..But we did make it happen, and we didn’t kill each other. I think that can be credited to him. To dad, who was everything good about our family. Who inspired us to be moral, caring people, people who love each other because we are family, and look past each others’ flaws.

I love him so much. And I can’t for the life of me imagine the world without him. …he was my dad…I have never known life without him. And at this moment, I just feel like a lost little girl.