One More Good-Bye

This year and last have been years of "goodbyes."

I had to place my father into what turned out to be his last nursing home, on November 5th of last year, when I determined he couldn't take care of himself. I found him curled up in the fetal position on the guest bed in his home. I wrote then:

Yesterday, I had to place him in a nursing home. And it cuts me to the quick. I feel like the worst possible betrayer, a bad son, and it literally tears my heart.

In the process of physically lifting him out of the house and placing him into my car for the trip to the nursing home, he turned and, in a small voice, looked through the window and said: "Goodbye, house."

My father finally succumbed to a number of physical ailments and, eventually, the leukemia with which he had been diagnosed. He lived a full year over what the doctors thought he would.

The family visited him in the hospital Tuesday night, February 10th of this year, absent my mother -- who had herself passed away in the hospital on May 14th of 2002. He was on oxygen and kept trying to push the mask away in order to talk. My wife that night kissed my father goodbye. She said: "Kiss your father. You might not see him again." I should have listened to her.

Instead, I held his hand, squeezed it, touched his shoulder and said "we'll see you tomorrow." None of his sons kissed him goodbye that night. Just my wife. And I'll regret not doing so until the day I die.

Because at a little after 3:30 that next morning, we received the phone call.

We went to his bedside that morning. He was still warm but drawn, mouth open. Maybe he knew his death was near, maybe he didn't. If he did, he played the game: "see you tomorrow" he'd said. Then, as I held his hand once again, I thought: he died alone. Completely alone. In a cold, sterile hospital, with no friends about, no family around. Alone. In a room. How terrible, how horrible that must have been. Because he had family. He had children, unlike me.

But we left him. We walked away. He had to face that night, his final night, completely abandoned and alone. That haunted me then, it haunts me now and at this moment as I write these lines. My eyes are, admittedly, clouded with tears.

I spoke to him a little bit that morning. We marveled that we discovered he had his wallet in his possession, hidden in his hospital bed. He was anal about his wallet. It went wherever he went. We found it with him. How very Dad was that? My final words to him, before I had to turn and leave him, again alone, in his hospital room: "Goodbye, buddy."

That first night of the 11th, I had a dream. I awakened with it in my head. Carole King was singing "So Far Away." I remember that most distinctly.

It is now Sunday on August 16th, after 6 PM, as I write this. I am up at my cabin in the mountains. The air is smoky from some local fires. But I am still far away from civilization. I reminisce about my father. And I now tell you about my -- perhaps -- final goodbye.

I had to sell my father's car yesterday. It hurt me to do so; it really did. Yes, I am completely aware that it is an inanimate metal object. It makes no sense to feel empty after selling a car. Yet I feel despicable for having done so.

Three initial people wanted to buy his car, a 2004 Nissan Maxima, which was in pristine shape: the realtor for my father's house, the man who conducted my father's estate sale and a friend at my former work site. None of them "came through."

I then had to try to sell it privately. There wasn't even one nibble.

In the meantime, for almost 6 months, it sat in my personal care -- first at my former work site, then it was parked outside my cabin. I would start and drive it sparingly, mostly to keep the battery up and charged.

Yesterday, the 15th, I sold my father's car to CarMax in Roseville. Overall it was a streamlined experience. The CarMax staff was, I must say, considerate and professional. Yet it still hurt.

It was just a car. It was just some cold steel. Though again, yet, I felt I somehow abandoned my father. Of course I know, intellectually, this is silly. It was just a car. I need to sack up. Get over it. Move on. Get a grip. Be a Man.

But selling my Dad's car was like my final good-bye. I lost him. Then I lost his house. Now I gave up his car for cash.

I know, rationally, it's stupid. But it hurts all the same.

I guess: goodbye again, Dad. Please don't hate me.

BZ