RIP Dad xx
Dad was admitted to the hospital mid Oct w/congestive heart failure. Despite the hospital not listening to me when I told them that he did not want them to treat it aggressively (another post for another day when I have had time to heal & decide if I want to pursue any legal action) they were able to get him well enough to articulate his wishes cognitively that he wanted to go home on hospice & die peacefully in his own bed.
He was able to go home on Nov 1st under Hospice care, & true to his wishes, he passed peacefully in his sleep on Sat Nov 9th. I was blessed to have been able to care for him that last week as his primary caregiver & was holding his hand when he took his last breath.
It was a peaceful ending to what has been a long & painful journey for both of us - him & I (as well as the rest of my family) for the past two years.
I am sad, but I am also happy for him because he is finally at peace. I am relieved for him and myself because now he is at peace, I will be able to heal & I will be able to find my peace. I don’t mean that in a hateful way towards him, I truly do love him, I loved him at his best and I loved him at his worst despite all the painful times.
For those of you who are still struggling with an elderly parent who is hurting you emotionally, causing you stress, exhaustion, & are making you feel like you’re drowning at times because they don’t want to listen or fight back with every fiber of their being (again, please don’t think I am being mean, I love my dad, I am just being brutally honest) for some of you I have learned something over the past couple of days that might give you some comfort for when your loved one is also at peace. It might sound odd, & obviously anyone who hasn’t been through childbirth won’t understand what I am talking about but for those of you who have been through childbirth & have experienced the pain that can come with it, what I say might help you. I hope it does.With two of my children when I was in labor, I didn’t have time for any kind of pain medication/epidural. I know/remember that it hurt & and that it hurt a lot, but I honestly don’t remember how bad it was or even how the pain felt. I know that is an odd comparison, but that’s exactly how I feel now about everything that dad put me through over the past few years. I know he hurt me, I remember his words & actions brought me to tears many times, but I honestly don’t remember how the pain he caused felt. I am able to forgive him, I amable to understand that it wasn’t him, it was the brain damage from multiple strokes & countless TIA’s compounded by depression, anger & frustration caused by his inability to do anything more than sit on his couch watching TV. He was once a very active man, in fact up until he was around 81 he was still gardening, growing vegetables & fruit. He was able to cut his 2 acres of yard riding his lawnmower up until roughly 16 months ago. But once he started declining physically, he was barely able to get in & out of bed, leading to my needing to do just about everything for him because he refused to move into any type of facility or accept any help from anyone else. That meant phone calls & life alert type calls at all hours of the day, everyday.
but, that is over now. He is at peace, & I can begin to heal from my grief & start moving forward with living my life without the constant fear of my phone ringing. It’s crazy but this morning when I woke up, instead of being filled with dread knowing that any minute dad would be calling w/his first demands of the day. (I absolutely hated feeling that way. No matter how upset I was, he was still my dad & that feeling sucked) but today, that feeling of dread was at the realization that I won’t ever get another phone call from him for any reason.
so please know that this won’t be forever & you will be ok. I truly hope the universe gives you the same gift it gave me - to forget exactly how the pain of the last few years felt.
Anyone that cared for a loved one for any length of time, will have both good and bad moments, but as I can vouch for, the good moments over time far outweigh the bad ones. And that is a true gift for sure.
I pray that God will continue to heal you and give you His peace, comfort and strength in the days, weeks and months ahead.
I didn't have to do hands on care for my parents, but they lived well into their 90s, and I can still remember the sense of peace that came with their deaths. I remember going outside and looking up at the stars and knowing I no longer had to witness a single loss more for my Dad, no longer had to fear for my mother, no longer had to stand witness to what age does to our loved ones, the trauma and fear it puts them through. It was a relief I felt, a letting go. And in all honestly they stay with us, but in a different way. Kind of "adult-to-adult" in relationship. And we can think of them, laugh with them even, about all of it, about life and its vagaries.
Again thanks, and may he rest in peace.
But literally every single bit of anger and frustration and hurt I felt died when he died. And I do not say that in a "good riddance" kind of way. It felt like a gift, to me. Not his death -- which was also from heart failure, and was a drawn out and extremely painful process. It isn't that his death was a gift. But it was as if as he died he somehow looked at me and asked himself what final gift it was that he could give me and that was it.
You are a better person for how you loved him. And you are a better person for how you cared for him. And your life will be better and easier now for his having passed away. Nobody could possible begrudge you that.
Hang in there. What you have now is simply love and relief. No father could ask for more for his child.
I'm deeply sorry for your loss, Dad is at peace now.