About a month ago now, I got the call from Roy on a Friday morning that Dad was in the hospital. Few details at that point, but the message was clear. This is serious.
I found a phone number and called the hospital. A recorded message that basically said, we're too busy to go find your loved one and put them on the phone. Screw off. Oh and you can't come and visit because Covid. Goodbye.
Graeme called me in the afternoon and said that he had pressed buttons until he got a person and then said, "I'm calling from Australia, I'd like to talk to my dad" and they gave him the number to dad's room and he was cheerful and chatty. I agonized for a while as to whether to call him or not, as I didn't want to wake him up if he was sleeping or bug him if he was feeling badly, but in the end, I did call. He answered the phone and was his usual self, said that he was waiting for the nurses to come and poke him with needles and could I call back in half an hour. In about 45 minutes I called back. He answered and before I could say anything he said, "Hi, kid," like he always does, and told me he'd just got back into bed and was settled. We chatted for a while. He asked about the kids, I told him they were good, I asked about the hospital, he said everyone was friendly. He started to cough (fluid on his lungs) and I said, "I'll call you again tomorrow if you're still in hospital."
One of the things about calling dad is that he was always happy to hear from me. Invariably. I loved the moment when I said, "hi dad," and he would reply with joy in his voice. Hi, kid!"
The next day, he was still in hospital, but it was a different hospital with a cardiac unit, courtesy of a nice helicopter, and he was getting ready for surgery. This is, coincidentally, the cardiac unit that Roy works on, so he went to dad's room with his phone and facetimed us. I have to say that I remember very little about that conversation other than that dad seemed tired and drawn. There would be more agonizing facetime conversations over the next three weeks.
His condition was deteriorating. I'm tired of the gruesome medical details. there was a non-invasive cardiac operation. It was successful. he was in a sort of coma state for a breath-holding few days, during which time I wandered around in my woods and cried in whooping bursts thinking about what happened if he didn't wake up. He woke up. We jubilated. But he was delirious. He told Roy that some people were coming to visit him from Yorkshire because they were going to offer him a job. Roy said, you might not be fit for work right now. His blood pressure fluctuated. then his kidneys, damaged by the heart drugs, began to fail. dialysis ensued, was successful, but.
Perhaps you have noticed that I am referring to him in the past tense. this is incredibly hard for me and I still can't believe it.
Roy facetimed us for dad every day, but it became an increasingly painful procedure, probably for all of us. dad could not speak much because while he was in his comatose state he had a breathing tube and it had done something to his throat. He sometimes seemed to recognize us and a couple of times stuck his tongue out at us, which sounds weird but he would do that, if he was behind a window or in a car and saw you. we knew what he meant. but I so wanted more. I wanted him to tell me he loved me. I lost count of how many times I told him. Sometimes he just stared into space and then fell asleep while we were talking. He looked dire, a feeding tube, a dialysis line in his neck, a bunch of machines. They kept getting him out of bed and putting him in a chair which looked like a scene from Weekend at Bernie's. Graeme and I, who were not there, were appalled. We kept talking to each other in the middle of the night about how much we didn't want him to die but it really looked like he was going to. Mum and Roy, who were with him a few minutes a day, were living in hope.
On the 22nd of February, the doctors told us they could not do anything more to help him. Doctor-speak for: sorry, he's going to die. We tried. I asked if I should come. Roy said yes. I told all the kids what was happening. Our groupchat was kinda dire, for those weeks, full of updates and downdates. Dad had a good day, dad had a bad day. During those three weeks, my world had contracted, the only important things the daily facetime ordeals, walks in the woods thinking about him, talking to the kids about him, listening to his music. I stopped sleeping and really had to force myself to eat and drink water. I drank a lot of tea. Ate bananas, which was the only thing I wanted. Miguel made me suppers and I tried to eat them, with limited success.
On the 23rd of February, a facetime call, he spoke a bit. Mum told him I'd passed my last PhD exam that morning and he said, clearly and distinctly, "wow". As in, I understand that this is a big deal. That was the first time in a week or so that he had seemed to be with us. We told him we loved him, again. Roy called later and said that he had told mum he loved her (fair enough, only so much breath, they were together almost sixty years). Roy called afterwards and told us that he was getting better. I'm a bit hazy on some of the timelines of what came after. That was Tuesday. I got in my car and started driving. I got to Peace River after dark and checked into a motel. I started smoking the cigarettes that Miguel had kindly given me before I left home. At 4:30 in the morning, awake, I went outside to smoke. As I was standing there in the quiet darkness, I suddenly thought, I'm not going to make it in time. I went back to bed. Lying there, half-awake, I had a vision of his hand, his ridged nails and his backbent thumb like mine and I reached out to grab it. Then I had a feeling of intense peace, as if all the breath had been expelled from my body and I was empty.
In the morning, I left a note for the cleaning staff with a twenty dollar bill, saying, "Thank you for the lovely clean room. I'm on my way to Vancouver to see my dad who is dying. Please have coffee on me." I packed up, pleased with my efficiency. Made a thermos of hot water for coffee for the day. I dropped off my motel key and went to my running car to get in and drive off to see him.
My phone rang. It was a facetime call, I could see Roy and Mum, and they were crying. But i couldn't hear their voices. I knew what they were saying, though. I messed with my phone and somehow hung up. They called back and then I could hear them, saying that the hospital had phoned and said that twenty minutes ago his heart stopped. He was asleep and the nurse was sitting with him and she just watched it go to nothing and that was it. He was 83.
I didn't cry. I called everyone who was awake - Jorden first, because I knew Rachel wouldn't have left for work yet but it's an hour later in Alberta. Jorden said Kirsten had just texted him so I should probably catch her at work. She asked if I wanted to her to come. Honestly the answer was yes and if it wasn't Covid I would have taken her up on it. Ian had worked a graveyard shift and was asleep so I asked Madelena to get him to call me when he woke up. We discussed waking him, but my thought was that dad would still be dead at 3pm but at least Ian would be rested when he heard the news.
I did some strange things during the day. I somehow didn't communicate the news properly to Eric. I misread a text of Rachel's as "I declined to go to work" when it was "I decided to go to work" and tried to call her. I stopped at a gas station and bought another pack of cigarettes. I was driving along and I was thinking about my greenhouse and thought, "oh I must remember to ask dad when I get there what kind of tomatoes I should grow". And then I had to pull over because the crying had started. I was doubled over crying in a rest area parking lot and a passer-by came and talked to me gently. I told her that I was on the road to see him but it was too late, and now here I am in the middle of nowhere. she said I should keep going. Told me I should go be with my family. Ian called. Madelena had told him, for which I was very grateful because I'd already done more next-of-kin notifications than I wanted to. I talked to him sitting on the side of the road in a reserve somewhere around Cache Creek, where the entrances to the communities were manned by guards keeping people out because of Covid. Graeme sent me "Always look on the bright side of life" and I laughed and cried at the same time.
Cruelly, it was a beautiful sunny day with a few fluffy clouds, and the mountains were gleaming in the sun. I listened to Paul McCartney and Dvorak, and there was a measure of elation somehow in my pain, that the natural beautiful things that he had loved, all the peaks and the valleys and the miles of trees, were still so amazing.
Went to Victoria. Arrived late at night after catching the ferry. Roy fed me. Mum was there. We had a glass of wine. Low-key in shock. But then sleeping was impossible. I dreamed that I was being asked to build a casket for dad out of old pallets. I laid and looked at the ceiling for a long time. Although today is only Saturday it feels like seven hundred years since Wednesday morning. On Friday morning I realized with a jolt that it had only been 48 hours, it didn't seem possible. I would have guessed two weeks at least.
I had a panic attack in Whole Foods on Thursday, feeling like I was going to pass out or throw up or both simultaneously, all over the polished floors, because the other customers were blithely and brutally going about their business, unconcerned. I was so angry with them, leading their lives and shopping for food for their families as if the most important person in the world hadn't died. I turned to Roy, who was closest, and said, "I have to go be outside, now." He said, sure. I left. Called Jorden and he talked me down. Reminded me that I should get food and fluids. Which I hadn't done. None of the food in the grocery store looked even remotely edible.
Mum is her own difficult self as usual. At one point I was standing in the road, 2 AM, smoking, and the clouds were scudding by overhead. I looked up, and asked dad why he had left me to do this?
Friday we made arrangements. A funeral home sent paperwork. We dutifully filled it out and sent it back. Cremation, date unspecified, no service because of Covid.
We alternate between talking normally of mundane things, memories of dad, bouts of Mum crying, but also catching up as it's years since we've seen each other in person. I get to spend some time with my niece, who was a child last time I saw her and is now a teenager. Dad should be here. I smoke. My emotions fluctuate too, and we set each other off. Robyn yells at Luci about something and I find I'm crying in the porch, so I go outside. Mum follows me and hugs me and I can't stop crying. I want my Daddy. I don't want to do this. Like the bit when you're having a baby and it occurs to you that it has to come out the way it went in and you think, ok, I've changed my mind. I run past the hospital and find myself weeping, tears in the pouring rain, because I think about dad being in the fridge there. My mind says, well, they're going to take him out of the fridge and put him in the oven soon. Rachel says, he'd be joking about being a popsicle. He would. This new surreal place I find myself in sucks. Make it stop.
But it doesn't stop. In fact it gets worse. Today mum is mad at us, a misunderstanding but it drags on and requires fixing. We go to their house and dad's not there, and we look for documents. Luckily the will we find doesn't say, "I want to be buried" because I suspect it's too late. He has organized and labelled everything we will need. I am touched to find that he kept a note I sent him with a present for his birthday, in his bedside drawer. I annex his bathrobe. It smells like him. I am no longer crying but I'm jagged and can't settle at all now, I want to go and walk until my legs give out but I should probably stay here with everyone else.
All the roads in my head lead to him. He always seemed so indestructible, so strong and upbeat. I keep thinking of all the things he loved to do, and how he's not here to enjoy them any more. The cooking and woodwork and gardening and sailing and climbing and photography and drinking beer. He shaped my life with his so-large life, in so many ways. Genetically, with our height and build and endurance. And so much more - it was his love of the mountains that brought us to this country, his musical taste that shaped mine, his work ethic and devotion to other people that drives my life, his curiosity and passion for adventure and walking that runs in my veins, his love of Monty Python, Red Dwarf, Blackadder that makes me spout quotes, his tendency to say out loud the things that should probably be kept in one's head that I suffer from. If I can live even half the life he did, I'll still have done more than most people ever dream of. I am proud to have been his daughter for as long as I was, and I will miss him until the day I die.
