Ed Madden reflects on the final moments he had with his father, and how they’ve rippled throughout his life as a man.
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“Are you going to hang out with us ’til your anniversary?” I asked my Dad.
“Yeah,” he said. He seemed certain.
He was lying in his hospital bed watching television, the bed they had wheeled him in on three months earlier, a long trip from the hospital back home to die. He held on to the rails like he wanted to pull himself up, get up and walk. We kept the wheelchair in my childhood bedroom, nearby, where I had been sleeping these three months.
“What about Father’s Day? Are you going to hang out with us ’til then?”
“No,” he said, quietly. Certain.
♦◊♦
Despite the doctor’s prognosis he had made it to my mom’s birthday, late May. Their 49th wedding anniversary was coming up, early June, only days away. We had had a few scares—days that he wasn’t with us, or afternoons when he couldn’t breathe easy and anxiety hit and he was sure, even if the hospice nurse wasn’t, that it was the end. Every day was a series of small things, pills to take, attempts to get him to eat, turning the television on or off, sometimes the visit from the hospice nurse, sometimes his sister, sometimes my brother. On weekends, my brother often brought his family.
I went to my nephew’s college graduation a few weeks ago. I texted my brother from the airport that I was headed their way, prepared to fulfill my avuncular duties. (The phrase apparently tickled both him and my nephew, as they reused it over and over that weekend.) It was such a pleasure to see him with his sons, to see how easy, how at ease they were with one another. Lots of joking, lots of playful roughhousing, but also care, honesty. The way that they talked to each other. One of the duties I assumed was taking pictures, my phone now full of photos of my brother and his son, the graduate, the two of them grinning.
I wondered if my Dad and I were ever like that. I think maybe we were. It’s just difficult to remember through the years of silence, the screen of anger and prickly conversations after I came out. Too many other memories from before push to the surface. I, angry that I didn’t get a summer internship at the local newspaper while I was in college, was forced to work on the farm, again. Dad, smoking his Marlboro, was fuming while driving us to the farm.
♦◊♦
“You’re going to work on the farm this summer,” he said. “And you’re going to like it.”
“No, I remember saying. I may have to work, but I don’t have to like it. We drove the rest of the way in silence.
I look in the mirror and see the quirky grin of my dad. He was about my age, now, when I came out to him.
Once, while I was home helping with his care, my mother, frustrated at me for something, blurted, “You’re just as bullheaded as your Daddy.”
Oddly, that made me happy. I thought to myself, ‘Do we become our parents without even knowing we’ve done so?’
♦◊♦
At the grocery store, Bert and I looked at Father’s Day cards for his Dad. There were lots of cards specifically marked “Father’s Day from Daughter.” There were no cards marked, “Father’s Day from Son.” Bert started looking at the funny cards, the smartass cards. It’s what men do. We joke. We do stuff together and we joke with each other. Bert said he would look again later at the drugstore. Nothing seemed right.
Sometimes, when it comes to our fathers, maybe nothing seems right.
As it turned out, my dad was right. He made it to my parents’ anniversary. They had 49 years together. A few days later, he passed away, Saturday, June 18, 2011, the day before Father’s Day. He didn’t make it to Father’s Day.
Now, every year this time, I think about the man I’ve become, and the man who made me who I am. I will always wish I were a better uncle, a better brother, a son that my dad had been proud of. I think about my brother. How do I say this? We are my father’s sons, and something about staying in touch with him, is a way of staying in touch with who my dad was, what despite it all he was to me.
On my phone, the image of my brother and his son, the graduate, both with huge grins.
Photo Credit: Amanjeev/Flickr