Resting Up for the Next Adventure

"I am doing very well."

I call this “Tatyana in My Heart” (after Diego on My Mind).

When my dad first entered hospice, three-and-a-half years ago at 94, we received a handful of brochures on how hospice works, and what to expect. I leafed through them with a heavy heart, adjusting to the fact that my dad was in a home, but stopped at a section titled: “Signs that your loved one is nearing the end.” Here’s what raised my antenna.

Your loved one will start sleeping a lot.
They have to rest up because they have a big job to do.

I figured there’d be a lot of sleeping; but I hadn’t thought much about the work, the effort it takes to actively die.

In the cases of people who die slowly, from an illness or old age, the idea that it’s not just a simple fading away, but a revving up of the departure engines really blows my mind. Even though I’ve been with people days before their deaths, and witnessed the labored breathing—I put that down to anguish, not preparation.

Think about it for a moment. The fact that death requires a well-rested body/system (even though some humans are frail shells of themselves when passing)—it’s trippy, don’t you think?

Let’s take it a step further. What does this say for people who linger with what we might call No Quality of Life for long periods of time before dying? Beats me! But all the days sitting with my dad, attempting conversation and sharing a new kind of love (as he made his home in a recliner chair), got me wondering. Is this endurance sport of lingering, which is so often painful for attending family, a resting up for something big that comes after the dying process? Is my dad resting up for a) dying and b) his next big job in his next incarnation?

The more I entered the mystery of my dad’s existence and was willing to enter an I KNOW NOTHING state, the more I became fascinated by the human I call Dad, and this thing we call Life, and loving my dad more than I thought was possible. (It helps that he is extremely sweet.)

Here’s a short audio of my dad and me chatting it up last year. He has dementia so his use of language is creative, just as I take creative liberties with the truth.

This time of life with my dad has opened my mind in new and unusual ways. The bouts of sadness and resistance have quickly yielded to curiosity. What’s going on here? What could all this hanging out be for?

I love being a daughter to this jolly-good fellow.

What about the loneliness?

When my dad first entered the adult family home, and was asking my mom to come get him (devastating, and imagine my mom who is the strongest of the strong), I spent a few days paralyzed by sadness. Questions about loneliness circled:

How could this beautiful, loving man be left in a house with strangers when all he ever wanted was to be at home with the wife he loved?

Why so much loneliness at the end of a life????

One day I tossed these questions of loneliness around while sitting in a favorite swivel chair that faced a grand, attention-seeking Douglas Fir. Here’s what I saw:

The end of life, the very end that’s right up against death, is like the end of a long race. I thought of an Ironman I’d done, the half Ironmans, long running races. By the end of the multi-hour event, you’re often out there on your own. And in that very last stretch, your body is in a rightful state of struggling, of Fuck Me This Hurts. There are people on the sidelines. Strangers, most of them. But they’re cheering for you. And in that moment, running toward the finish line, feeling spent, maybe a tad anguished, you LOVE the people cheering you on the sidelines. They really help! And they are enough, having the attention of strangers encouraging you on toward the end.

And for some reason, that race analogy did it for me. The suffering over my dad’s aloneness—everyone’s late-in-life loneliness—evaporated; now, I was able to move on, be right in there with him, and savor every moment of my dad’s long lingering end of life, for as long as it goes.

Last week I Facetimed Dad through the caretaker. He’s been sleeping more, oh yes he has. Not saying a lot. Not feeding himself. He’s getting closer. Yes, there’s a prick of sadness and also excitement. I’m excited for his next adventure. My mom needs to move on. So really, I feel like I’m on both the finish line and a starting line. Cheering him on and sending him off.

When I last asked him how he was doing, there were two answers:

“ochen xorosho”—which means very good in Russian (his first language up until five).

Then, he said, almost dreamily (see photo above):

“I’m having a very good time.”

Ochen xorosho, Dad, you keep having a very good time.

Renaissance man: artist, engineer, athlete, devoted family man. He did make me take piano :).

Beauty Hunter is a space where we examine the whole bag of life through the lens of beauty—going so far as to imagine Beauty as the Purpose of Life.

Beauty Hunter includes the Salon for Beauty Hunters, a gathering of curious-minded people who want to talk about the larger issues of life from an exploratory POV.