Death Do Us Part

Death is odd, isn’t it?

One minute you’re present and then the next, you’re not. Your body is still there but the essence of YOU, your breath life, the life that God breathed into you when you were born, is gone.

We all know death is part of life – it’s a given. It’s guaranteed that you and I will die at some point in the future. The bigger question, in my opinion, is what happens after we die?

But that’s a post for another day.

I’ve been very blessed in my life. I never had to deal with the grief of losing someone close to me. Of course I’ve been to funerals and of course I have felt sadness but I was more of an outsider looking in – my heart wasn’t really IMPACTED very much.

And then, my father died.

It was sudden and very unexpected. He woke up on March 24, 2023, had a nice long chat with my mother, then went for a bike ride around the block. He came back home, told mom he was back from his ride, sat down in his chair and died in his sleep.

Before any of you think it, no, he wasn’t vaccinated. No, he wasn’t sick. He was a very healthy 78-year old man who was active and seemingly in good health. This was why it was so shocking – it came out of left field. NONE of us expected it and NO ONE saw it coming.

All we can do is speculate as to what actually happened. He had fallen off his bike the week prior to his death and he said he thought he might have blacked out for a bit. A few friendly by-standers followed him home that day to make sure he made it okay. Dad said he hadn’t bumped his head, but … we’ll never know for sure.

Was it a blood clot from that accident? A slow brain bleed, perhaps? I work in neurosurgery, I know, firsthand, what a brain bleed can do to people if left untreated. It’s sneaky and if you ever fall and hit your head, it’s ALWAYS a good idea to go to the hospital and get checked out.

But dad told mom he hadn’t hit his head so there were no red flags.

He routinely drank caffeinated coffee. He was active and rode his bike regularly. Did he overwork his heart? Did his heart simply stop?

He was borderline diabetic. He wasn’t on any medications for it because he controlled it by watching what he ate. Could his blood sugars have been too high for too long and it stressed his heart out?

He never complained of feeling sick. He commented to my mom that he was tired but who isn’t? He was also a 78-year old man who rode his bike around – maybe he was simply tired from being more active than your typical 78-year old man.

These questions will never be answered. We will never know what really happened to him. And the not knowing is almost harder than dealing with his death. There is no closure; it’s a mystery.

Mom went to wake him up to ask what he wanted to dinner. When he didn’t respond and she reached out to touch him, she knew – he had slipped away.

She called 911 and they advised her to get him out of the chair and onto the floor and walked her through how to do chest compressions. The ambulance arrived shortly after and they escorted her to the kitchen and took over CPR. They called it shortly after that.

They were estimating that he had died shortly after he sat down in his chair after his bike ride – two hours previously.

We’re a family that texts. We don’t really call each other. So when my phone rang at 7:42 PM and I saw that it was mom calling, I knew something was wrong. Was dad hurt? Was something broken at their house? Did they get into a car accident? Did they lock themselves out of the house? All of these scenarios ran through my head but the possibility of death never entered my mind.

Not once.

My mom was so calm when she told me what happened. I thought it must have happened hours previously and she was able to control herself to call me and tell me but I found out later that dad was still in the house and she was waiting on the funeral home to pick him up – a police officer was with her when she called me. But she didn’t tell me any of this until afterward.

I was in my office when she called me and I got up and walked into the living room where Kevin was watching TV. I had her on speaker and I don’t remember what she was saying, all I kept thinking was, “my dad died.”

I must have said it out loud because Kevin turned off the TV and said, “What??”

The phone call didn’t last long – I’m sure it was taking everything in my mom to hang on to her sanity and I when we hung up, I sank down into a chair and just stared at Kevin.

“My dad died,” I kept saying it over and over. I just couldn’t believe it. I was so shocked. I thought if I kept saying that then someone would correct me – tell me I was mistaken.

For the first time, in a very long time, I lost control of my emotions.

I started to wail. That’s the only word I can think of to describe the tsunami of emotions that poured out of me.

Wailing: noun

1. The act of expressing sorrow, grief, or the like audibly; loud cries of sorrow; deep lamentation.
2. A loud drawn out scream and howl.
3. loud cries made while weeping

I’ve never wailed in my life but I was definitely wailing at that moment in time. I think I shocked Kevin. He has obviously seen me cry and be upset over the years but he has never seen me like this. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. I cried for my dad, of course, but I was also crying for my mom. I knew this would be devastating to her and it has been.

I called our youngest son first, he didn’t answer. There was no reason why I called him first, I just figured he was the one that would most likely pick up. When our youngest didn’t pick up, I called out oldest son. He picked up. I could barely get the words out but I asked him to go to his brother’s room and close the door, that I had something important to tell him. (They live in our rental house across the street from our house). To my surprise, he said, “we already know, mom.”

“How do you already know? Who told you?”

Apparently, when my mom spoke to my sister and she told her sons, who were already online, they contacted our boys online and told them.

Bad news travels fast.

I agonized over whether I should go see my mom that night. But ultimately, I decided not to because I knew if it were me, I would want to be left alone with my grief. I wouldn’t want an audience. I wanted to give her privacy – some space – to sort out her feelings first before being forced to deal with the harsh reality later.

I didn’t sleep that night. In fact, I listened to music nearly all night just to distract myself from my thoughts.

At 9:30 AM the next morning, I called mom. She was pretty tearful, as you can imagine, and said that the funeral home had called her to see if she wanted to come in at 10:00 AM to talk about arrangements because they had a cancellation. I was shocked that they called her so quickly! I hadn’t even taken a shower when I called her and was looking pretty rough but when mom said that “she felt so alone” I said screw it and told her to wait for me and I would go with her. She didn’t need to do this by herself!!

I pulled some clothes on, tied my hair back, doused my body with body spray and headed to mom’s. I didn’t want her to drive, though truth be known I wasn’t really in very good shape to drive myself, either. I cranked the radio on full blast on my way to her house and tried to distract myself from my thoughts. I had a stern conversation with myself on my way over there – now was not the time to lose my shit because mom needed me.

She was talking to a neighbor in the driveway when I pulled up. The neighbor was checking on her because she had seen the ambulance the night before. Mom seemed to be holding it together when she was talking to the neighbor, but I knew it was false bravado.

We headed to the funeral home and she filled me in on the details. I was very distracted and took a few wrong turns though to be fair, the normal route to the funeral home was blocked by construction so I had to veer off into a neighborhood I wasn’t familiar with – which only added to the stress of our arriving late. Mom had called the funeral home to let them know we would be late because she was waiting on me.

I felt guilty for looking so rough but I figured funeral directors were used to seeing people at their worst so I squashed the guilt and turned my focus on what he was saying.

We went over quite a few things and I had the forethought to take notes on my phone because I knew I wouldn’t remember most of that conversation later. I’m glad I did – they came in handy.

Here were some of my notes:

• Who speaks at the graveside?
• Pictures for video
• Need 6 pallbearers – didn’t need them after all – keep reading
• Don’t need gravestone, military will provide.
• Only have 15 minutes at graveside.
• Contact Social Security office after receiving death certificate.
• After 4:00 PM Thursday for viewing.
• Obit on Greenlawn website
• Visitation at 1:00 on Friday.
• Gravesite on 4-3.

Dad was an Army Veteran. He served during the Vietnam war. He wasn’t actually deployed over there, thank God, but rather he worked on radio communications with the troops stationed over there. My dad was an electronic whiz and that’s where they used him. He participated in a few top secret missions that he told us about a few times but he couldn’t go into details.

He was active duty for three years though he was “on call” for three years after that. I don’t believe they ever had to use him during the on-call years.

Because of his service in the Army, he was eligible to be buried in the Veteran’s Cemetery which was where he wanted to be buried. However, they still had to approve it and since it was Saturday when we went in, the funeral director wasn’t sure if anyone would be available to take his call and start the process. After discussing several details, he walked us to the room to look at caskets while he went to make some calls. It was tough, and a little surreal, to be shopping for dad’s casket less than 24-hours after he passed away. It almost felt disrespectful in some ways to even be talking about what to do with dad’s body less than a day after his death. We had ZERO time to process what happened let alone have the wherewithal to make arrangements.

Not to mention the sticker shock – caskets are EXPENSIVE.

Mom chose a simple, but pretty, box with a Bible verse etched into the sides. She felt like that one best suited dad’s personality. He wouldn’t have wanted anything fancy and definitely not anything expensive.

After choosing the casket, we went back to the office to wait for the funeral director. We had to wait for quite a while. We weren’t really sure what was taking so long but it gave us an opportunity to sort out our thoughts and grabble with our emotions.

And cry. We cried a lot.

The funeral director came back in and told us that he had good news and bad news. The good news was he was able to reach someone at the VA office but the bad news was, they wouldn’t be able to get dad in for the graveside burial until the following Monday, in another week. And that was assuming the VA approved dad to be buried there. We made arrangements for the visitation/funeral to be at 1:00 PM on Friday and then, if all went according to plan, the burial would be that next Monday. They would also have a private viewing for immediate family only on Thursday after 4:00 PM.

So – we had to make arrangements super fast, less than 24-hours after his passing but the funeral and the burial wouldn’t be for another week. Wow. Talk about stretching things out. Waiting that week was torture, not going to lie. I know it was even worse for mom.

I went ahead and went to work on Monday. No one knew what sort of weekend I had and I kept it quiet for a bit. About mid-morning, I told my immediate co-workers what had happened and that I would need Friday and Monday off, for obvious reasons. I could barely get the words out when I first started to tell them and I had to walk away to get ahold of my emotions. When I returned, I told them I was just going to have to blurt out the news as I didn’t trust myself to drag it out and that I didn’t want to talk about it. They respected my wishes, of course.

Life went on as normal as it can go on after losing a parent. Little by little, word of what happened reached the rest of the clinic and people were messaging me their condolences. Actually, I was pretty annoyed with my manager because on the next week’s schedule he put, “Karen – bereavement leave” so everyone knew that I was going to be out because I lost someone. I would have preferred to not broadcast it all over the clinic but whatever, the cat was out of the bag.

Again. I refused to talk to anyone about it though by the end of the week, I did tell my immediate co-workers what had happened. I was very thankful for work, to be honest. It kept me distracted and I was able to stuff my grief into a deep, dark pocket giving my mind a break and to do my work as usual.

But when Thursday came around and it was time to make a trip to the funeral home for the private viewing, I had no choice but to take that grief out of that deep, dark pocket and air it out a bit.

Kevin went with us. It was just the three of us.

It’s hard to describe what I was feeling when we walked into the funeral parlor and I saw my dad laying in the casket for the first time. It almost felt like a dream. Things started to get fuzzy around the edges of my vision and I felt a little … off kilter. It was like I was walking into an alternate universe – it didn’t feel real though there was my dad in the casket in front of me. Kevin stood back and me and mom walked up to the casket. I held back for a bit but I could see mom was really struggling so I went and stood by her placing an arm across her shoulders for support. I held it together pretty good. Dad looked pretty good though they hadn’t really worked on his hands and they looked mummified. I think his hands disturbed me the most.

We were there for a few hours. I’m REALLY GLAD that mom had that private time with dad. She stroked his hair and leaned down to speak to him. It was private and intimate and Kevin and I left the room to give her more privacy. She was in with him for another fifteen minutes and I could tell the staff was starting to get a bit antsy – it was probably time for them to go home and just when I was about to peek in to see how mom was doing, she came out.

Though she was in no way ready to say goodbye to him, I think having some alone time with dad really helped her and I was grateful to the funeral home for giving her the opportunity to have that one-on-one time with him. Everything happened so fast when he died that she really didn’t have a chance to say her goodbyes.

Me? I was surprisingly okay. I had tears in my eyes but I wasn’t sobbing – yet.

The day of the funeral was finally here. It was such a mixed bag of juxtapositions – we didn’t want to say goodbye but at the same time, we put off saying goodbye, officially, for a whole week. It was time.

I picked mom up from her house. Her brother and his wife had driven up from Texas and were at her house when I picked her up. They were going to follow us to the funeral home. We drove to the funeral home and then we left again to go pick up my Aunt, my mom’s sister, from her house. (My Aunt no longer drives). We returned to the funeral home and several more people had showed up while we were gone. My sister and her husband were there as well as my brother, his wife and their two boys. Kevin and the boys were there as well as dad’s brother and sisters.

Again, I was doing okay. Teary eyed but not sobbing. Kevin’s mom, dad, sister and brother-in-law arrived and we spent some time talking to them. It felt like it took forever for the funeral to start but when it did, that’s when I started to lose it. I sat by mom and my sister sat by me. We had a pastor from a church we didn’t belong to, (none of us belong to a church), direct the service and he did a good job. He and mom had a lengthy discussion about dad before the funeral so he had a lot of stories and facts about dad’s life – it was nice. The pictures mom and I collected of dad’ ‘s life were showing on a slideshow throughout the funeral. We obviously stayed until the very last minute and spoke to everyone that came.

To my shock, one of the people to pass us by and offer condolences was the nurse practitioner I work with! I thought that was sooo sweet of her to drop by! I hadn’t told her my dad’s name so she had to do some research to figure out who it was.

Since the burial was on Monday, (by the way, the VA approved dad), my brother and sister stuck around all weekend so we all hung out and got reacquainted. It’s so sad that it takes a death in the family to bring a family together. My sister and I hadn’t talked for about … ten-ish years? So it was REALLY GREAT to reconnect with her.

(My brother and sister have both come down a few times to hang out since the funeral and again, it has been SO NICE to see them. We’ve had some laughs and did A LOT of talking – it’s been so nice).

Monday came around and it was time for the burial. The boys rode with me and my mom rode with her brother. We all met at the cemetery where they gave dad a 21-gun salute and a really nice send off. I absolutely sobbed the entire time. Like, an ugly cry. I don’t know why I was crying so hard at the burial but it all seemed so … final, somehow. Also, it was just so nice that dad was being honored for his service – it was respectful and quite impressive. He would have liked it, I think.

It was a short service, only about 15 minutes. Then we were asked to leave. They said it would take about two hours for them to dig the grave and place him. So, my brother, sister and the other out-of-town guests left and two/three hours later, mom and I returned to see his grave. She had made arrangements for his tombstone before we left the burial so all we had to do was wait about six weeks for his tombstone to arrive. It was very emotional to stand there and stare at his pile of dirt. Mom also made arrangements for her to be buried on top of him when it’s her time. Her name and information will be engraved on the back side of dad’s tombstone. They will place her casket in the same hole on top of his casket – she’ll have the “top bunk” as the lady at the VA office told her.

I’ve been back a few times to see his tombstone and to say hi. It’s so weird to not have him around. We all thought he would stick around till his 90’s at least – both of his parents lasted that long.

My mom is handling it but she’s having a really hard time. Dad was her soulmate and she’s known him all her life – since 14 at least. She always knew she wanted to marry him. Seeing her hurting is heartbreaking and I wish I knew how to comfort her. This is a new territory for me and I feel a bit lost and completely out of my element trying to navigate this difficult time.

It’s amazing how you take life for granted. There is so much to do and so many excuses not to do it because you think, “there’s plenty of time for that.”

But there’s not, not really. Life is precious and every second/minute should be cherished and savored because you never know if you’ll go to sleep and never wake up.

Thanks for reading.