A son just out of prison tends to his dying father’s last needs.
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In the first days of a bygone June, I visited a family as their hospice chaplain. I wouldn’t have guessed the patient–a husband and father—had cancer and would die before that summer’s end. He was puttering around his garden when I drove up. That would be the only time I saw him outside. A visit or two later, he remained on the couch, and eventually couldn’t leave his hospital bed. His loving wife was attentive, sweet natured, and always exhausted. During many of my visits, I focused more on her needs.
With her worries and fears. With her requests for prayer. With holding her hand while the hospice nurse adjusted the patient’s medication or the home health aide gave him a sponge bath.
Their adult kids rotated staying overnight, giving their mother a little relief. One of the children was never present, but everyone mentioned “John.” John was in prison. It was nothing serious, except that incarceration for several years was always serious. His mother said John was a good son, a loner with a temper, and a quiet guy that seemed a magnet for trouble. He was soon to be released, with the family wondering if he’d make it home to see his father. Sure, John called his parents, but a farewell in person trumped a phone call six ways from Sunday.
There was another problem.
One of John’s brothers still had a restraining order against him. They couldn’t occupy the same room. As I recall, their mother described the sibling relationship as “love and hate” and “both of their faults.”
Families, poor or rich, small or large, are dysfunctional. Of course, labeling any family as dysfunctional seems redundant. In my experience, most families don’t “operate normally or properly.” Those that love you the most also know the worst about you. Grudges can be hoarded like gold coins. The details of old resentments may fade, but continue to create rifts as wide and muddy as the Mississippi.
The brothers’ disagreements broke her heart.
John was released from prison while his father was still alive.
Several of the children, including the brother John had conflicts with, had become reluctant about visiting their father. It’s easy to criticize or judge if that happens, but it can be depressing to return to your parents’ home when you’ve said tearful goodbyes a dozen times. It’s painful when a father’s body—once vibrant, once strong—is ruined. A month before there were conversations and reminiscing, but now Dad was grimly silent. And the other children had their families, along with careers and non-stop obligations.
I arrived at the home just after the patient died.
I was present when John, who’d been behind bars a hundred miles away in the prior week, softly told his mother that he’d take care of his father . . . of her beloved husband.
In the still, fragile seconds after the death, John approached the hospital bed in the middle of the living room. He tenderly bathed the man that gave him life. A Hollywood stereotype of a convict, John sported swirls of tattoos undulating over weight room biceps. His thick shoulder muscles rippled as he gently hoisted and adjusted his father’s body. Then he dressed his Dad before the funeral home staff arrived to remove the “remains.”
His mother sobbed in the hallway, mostly averting her eyes. The other children were on the way.
John had muttered to me that he wanted his father to look as nice as possible before his mother reentered the room, before his brothers and sisters—save one—would arrive.
I have no idea what happened to John after that day. Did he and his brother mend their relationship? I like to think so, though complicated families are often permanently . . . complicated. It’s likely that months later, ever the hothead, John would again be in trouble with the law. But for a few treasured moments, a son tended to his father’s final needs, cleaning and dressing his cancer-wrecked body.
Years later now, in the montage of my memory, I see the patient—the father and husband—as he sauntered across his front yard and watered his verdant garden. And I can recall John, leaning over his Dad’s body, bathing him with warm water as tears streaked his own cheeks.
Aren’t all families dysfunctional? Yes.
And also, in unexpected times, blessed.
Photot: Fickr/Mic445
Hi Larry, my name is Marc and I live across the pond in the uk. I stumbled across your article and found it deeply moving. You have such a way with words, “Grudges can be hoarded like gold coins. The details of old resentments may fade, but continue to create rifts as wide and muddy as the Mississippi” The image of John tending his father’s body will remain with me. Thanks for sharing and articulating their story for us.
Thanks for your kind words, Marc!
I have one general and one specific point about the situation described in this memoir. The general observation is that the purpose of such writing is not to evoke concern or prayer about the principals here related, but to acquire the attitudes, those that worked and those that didn’t, for those times we encounter the same situations in our lives. Specifically, I wished there had been more about the enmity between the brothers, and how it may have been resolved. My experience with such matters is the role of God’s forgiveness is not to let us forget the circumstances which… Read more »
Thanks for your comments, Bruce.
“A Son’s Final Gift” is as rich and layered as a poem,evocative of a cascade of memories. The essay is so compressed that my emotional response is stronger than the content can explain. Someone (I think it was Thomas Long) has said that congregations once followed the body of of a departed brother or sister from home to the grave. The object was not to extend mourning but to accompany all that was left to them to the very edge of eternity. Something of the eternal lends an almost visible aura to the portrait of The Prodigal, Ishmael, Esau coming… Read more »
Thanks, Mickey!
This article is beautifully and gently written. The words reflect Larry’s experience,–my experience too.
Thanks, John.
Thank you for your heart warming and well written story. It hit home on so many levels. That could have easily been my family. Thanks again for your insights
And you are welcome. Thanks for your comments.
What a lovely, heart-warming and heart-breaking story.
Thanks, Pat.