I'll fly away

Four years ago this morning, my father took his last breath.  My mother and I were standing beside him, sipping tea that the nurse had kindly brought in for us.  The doctor had just been in moments before.  She examined him and said that it seemed as though death was not imminent after all.  My heart sank when I heard that.  I wanted him to let go.  He’d been fighting for so long- seven years! His poor dear body had been through so much, his chest opened up twice, his chin stitched to his collar bone, his veins filled monthly with someone else’s blood.  I imagined him lingering for weeks in this condition somewhere between death and life.  It was time for him to rest.  If I were to be completely honest, I’d have to admit to some self-interest (self-preservation) in my reaction.  I couldn’t stay forever in this home-town hospital.  I had a life in Toronto, 400 kilometres away. My mother would need me more when he was gone.  I couldn’t expend my emotions and my strength on a protracted death when more would be required when it finally came.  I couldn’t ask for more favours, more special considerations at work.  I couldn’t be absent from my marriage when it was still getting off the ground.  And I needed sleep, badly.  Did he hear my thoughts?  Did he feel betrayed by them?  I heard one long exhale and then silence.  He did not inhale again.  I turned my ear to his lips, fully expecting to hear him breathe in as he had been doing all night, a rattling sound- like a tailpipe dragging on the road.  I looked at my mother.  She told me to get the nurse.  “I think my father has stopped breathing”, I said to a woman whose face I do not even remember.

In the years since, I have wondered what it would take to be allowed to see him one more time, to pull into my parents’ driveway and see him come out the door to help with my luggage, to wrap my arms around him and press my face into his chest where I would encounter, in his shirt pocket, a pen and the  case for his glasses, these 2 items stored there for as long as I can remember.  What I would give to sit in the same room with him again, to ask those probing questions about his youth and childhood, the replies to which were always prefaced with “Times were different then, honey.”  Though I wished him a quick journey to his Maker on this day four years ago, I ache now for having done so.  I want him back, God, just for a while longer at least.   I ache for the sound of his voice, but I cannot yet watch the home videos he made with such care.  I am afraid of the grief that would catch me up and drag me under if I were to hear him narrate our family stories again.  We are not a family anymore without you Dad.  I am happy that you are free of that treacherous body that failed you too often, too soon.  But I miss you terribly.  I wish you could be here to give me advice on my marriage, on the rest of my life.  Not a day goes by...