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Tomorrow will be my father's 97th birthday...perhaps!
He stopped eating around two months ago for no clear or apprarent reason, at least to us. But then again, my father has never really openly shared feelings. That has always been my mother's job...to interpret dad to the world. Even when it came time to do their "pre-planning", he simply said, "I'll have what she has". This deferral strategy seemed to work in life (and at restaurants), so why not at death?
While I am blessed to be almost 60 and still have both of my parents (at least for the next few days, perhaps weeks), I am trying to figure out this mourning, anticipatory grief thing...whatever you want to call it, on the fly. Can I rely on good old Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and guauge my reactions along a continuum that will take me from denial to anger to bargaining to depression and finally acceptance. Would that life (and death) move so evenly and sequentially! Or perhaps the work of Kenneth Doka or Therese Rando can anchor me. Afterall, psychology has always been there to provide causal explanantions for me, even if they have been little more than explanatory fictions.
Friends, family and well-wishers attempt to provide solace, offering their best possible "he lived such a long life", "you are so lucky to have your father for so long", or "he'll be out of pain soon". These don't help. I want someone to tell me what to expect (silly me, right!).
So, I turn to Hollywood, and one of its most recent life/death stories, The Notebook, the story of devotion and love across the lifespan, that finds peaceful resolution in death. It was actually voted the biggest tearjerker of all time. I won't spoil it for you. Go see it. Bring hankies.
Well, my dad's imminent passing will be no Hollywood blockbuster. His notebook will, as my wife quipped, be more like a sheath of looseleaf papers, bound together by 74 years of marriage to my mother, unceasing dedication to his three children, 9 grandchildren, and 7 great grandchildren, and simple lived philosophy.
I'm beginning to accept that there will not be a last moment emotional denoument, after which he breaths his final breath and gently leaves us. I am hoping for a Hollywood ending...Hell, I would settle for a Hallmark moment. I will take what I get and be grateful. I hope.
