Here is a personal essay I wrote about my experience with my mother's death, my father's grief and my reaction:
Father’s Day
It was a Friday afternoon. My mother walked into the family printing shop, smiling, looking pretty after having her first haircut since her chemo treatment had left her bald. The hair was still very short but it was soft and downy, and she was grinning, happy to come in and show us her new hairstyle. After months of hiding under wigs and hats, my mother flittered around the shop with enthusiasm, being the funny, friendly and outgoing woman who had always drawn people into the shop just for a friendly chat, jokes included.
There are few days that I remember as well as that particular Friday. I remember the open door and a flash of bright green. I remember the sound of my mother’s laugh as I turned to see a bird perched on her new hairdo. The bird sitting on my mother’s head was incredibly out of place, not only on its matriarchal resting place, and inside the printing shop, but also in an industrial park in Ontario. The wild Canadian birds that we would see on the trees by the parking lot were never that colourful. They were brown, grey, white, sometimes blue jays or yellow finches, but never lime green with a bright orange beak. It must have been an escapee from someone’s private cage. I can still see it sitting on my mother’s head, not royal and graceful as some tropical birds can be, but cartoon-like with an overly cute pudginess. There was a sparkle in my mother’s eyes as the bird made himself comfortable in her newly coiffed nest of hair.
Am I remembering the day as it actually happened? Or are last moments seen through a magical lens? A long time after the shock of my mother’s death, I would spend time wondering if that bird had perhaps been sent to come and claim my mother, like a messenger from another world. I hope so, because I hope that my mother is in a place full of cute, pudgy, funny creatures, full of unexpected magic, just like her.
On Monday morning, two days after we had brought the bird to a wildlife center, the phone rang at the printing shop. My mother was not feeling well and was asking to be taken to the hospital. My father was busy. He wasn’t concerned. He was taking his time. I told him that I could take care of everything and that he could go right now, that he should go right now. Despite my frustration at him and my feelings of urgency, I was still unaware that every minute counted, that if I had made him leave earlier, or if he had not delayed, the day might have ended differently. It probably didn’t matter in the end, the four hours my mother waited in the emergency room, barely able to breathe, probably killed her, not the hour delay to get her there. But then again, maybe it did make the difference, maybe the first hour was the deciding one.
The nurse behind the desk was attractive, rosy-cheeked and blond. The look in her blue eyes made me feel like a nuisance as I asked to go in to see my dying mother. I must have interrupted her busy schedule with my untimely demand. I still have an aversion for emergency room nurses, especially blond ones with blue eyes. Inside the room, I could only stay for a quick visit. My mother couldn’t speak, she could barely breathe. As I was told I needed to leave the room, my mother struggled to sit up as best she could. Her dark eyes were open wide, aware and intense, penetrating the darkness of my eyes. Her soul was staring into my soul, she was taking in every last part of my being. I didn’t know that it would be the last time that I would look into my mother’s eyes, but she knew. I know that she knew. When I recall that moment it brings forth the reality of the space between life and death, the place of love and fear, gratitude and despair, strength and frailty.
Septic shock, I had never heard of the term before. I knew that a simple infection can end up being deadly, but you don’t delve into these types of subjects unless you feel you have to, when it’s too late. It starts simple and ends in shock. A weakened body can’t handle the poison travelling through the blood. The organs fail. The person dies. For the family, the process is reversed; the person dies, the organs fail, shock takes over, the poison flows and the body is weakened.
When I woke up the next morning I wondered if my heart and mind had transferred all their contents to my limbs, making them heavy and cumbersome. The weight I felt dragging down my body, my legs and my arms, was an uncomfortable contrast to the emptiness I felt inside. I went in to open up the shop at the regular time. I shared the news of my mother’s death with the employees, with family and friends, with the people she knew. I did everything that my empty mind and heart directed me to do, all so that my father wouldn’t have to. The next two years were spent the same way, my body dragging with the weight and my mind void of anything of mine except my sense of duty, but full of my father’s pain.
My father’s grief filled the shop. It filled my life. It filled the emptiness inside that had been created and left no room for my own grief. Unlike my grandmother who had reached out to her family for comfort and company when her spouse had died, my father isolated himself emotionally and retreated to a world of dark thoughts and self-pity that had no room for love and healing. My mother didn’t have a choice. She was taken away. My father chose to leave us behind in the world of the living.
The weight of my father’s pain filled up my mind and heart day by day so that my insides became just as heavy as my limbs. Every day I absorbed his pain, hoping that it would lighten his burden, hoping that I would see his shoulders lift up, his brow release and his mouth soften. I would live my days at the shop, with my father’s sorrow soaking the air and dragging down business. My evenings and weekends were spent at home trying to give a normal life to my two young sons. How can you tell what is normal when your insides are filled up with another person’s suffering? Was it normal to force a smile for my sons when I felt like it was a lie, like the makeup on a sad clown’s face? Perhaps the real lie wasn’t the smile but the stolen contents occupying my heart and mind. Since I had been powerless to save my mother, what made me believe that I had any more power to save my father, or even the right to do so if he didn’t want saving?
Two years after my mother’s death, my father had begun dating. I was still heavy from the accumulated feelings. He had met a woman and decided to take a trip to Europe with her. For two weeks I ran the shop by myself, and rushed home every night to do all the things that a mom needs to do. I barely had time to sleep before I had to be at the shop again the next morning. Through these two weeks I didn’t have time to think of hope, but it was there, somewhere in the background. I assumed that my father was having fun and that he was going to come back standing tall, smiling and relaxed. That is what kept me going as I dragged myself back and forth, everyday, dragging myself out of bed, dragging myself back home.
My father walked in after his trip looking despondent. Where was the happy relaxed person that I had expected? I was exhausted, I had done everything I possibly could to be his support system, to give of myself so that he could heal. I was drained and in shock, all of my efforts had been for naught.
I learned that the woman he had been travelling with had rejected his romantic advances. He was a jilted lover. I suppose I understood why he would be upset, but what I didn’t understand was why he couldn’t see the love that was surrounding him. It may not have been in the form that he wished, but it was love still, and one that gave and gave no matter how little came back.
The following Sunday was Father’s Day. I sat at mass and my mind began to fill up with thoughts about my dad. I couldn’t stop them from taking over, pressure built-up in my chest, my throat tightened painfully, and the tears began. I could see blurry movements, heads turning, bodies shuffling uncomfortably. Years of self-control came to an end in that moment and I had nowhere to hide. As quietly as I could, I let the tears flow softly, continuously. I had no more fight. I had failed. Like an addict that needs to go right to the bottom and face his demons straight on, I had reached the point where I had to see what I had really been doing. By trying to slowly syphon away my father’s emotional anguish I had really been creating more pain. What was now overflowing from my body had not been taken away from my father’s mental and visceral suffering but had been multiplied and recreated inside of me.
I walked out of church, tears still travelling on my face. I couldn’t drive home. My limbs were now barely functioning as my internal organs were coming back to life. I sat on a park bench and let my body rest as it emptied itself. I watched the birds floating across the clouds and the sun, landing on branches with ease. I imagined the tears carrying out all my weight so that I would become light enough to fly.
