Loss

Last week my dad died.

I heard the news from a cell phone call in the night. Around 9pm. My phone buzzed, I looked down from my cigarette and noticed that the call was coming from "Dad". I answered in a cheerful manner, thinking on the other side a voice would say what he always said, "Hel-lo John Mar-tin!" but instead, my sister said something like, "Hi, what are you doing?"

She called me just a week or so earlier. Actually, she texted my wife saying that something was wrong and that she had gotten a new phone and wanted to talk to me. She had forgotten to export her contacts, so she lost all the numbers. I had rage-quit all social networking sites, so it wasn't like she could look at my Facebook profile to get my digits.

That call was to relay the horrible news that our mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer. They think it started as breast cancer, but they found a bunch that had migrated to some bones.

I was devastated. My mom was too young.

My mom had surely gotten more and more frail over the years. At one point, she was lean and mean; she was able to put up with two fighting teenage kids. But my parents moved pretty far away, and the visits became fewer and far between. Each time I noticed her skin was thinner, her hugs were not as bone-crushing, her eyes seemed less alive.

And yet, still my mom was too young to die.

The doctor assigned to her case was on a week long vacation in Europe somewhere. Being a head-surgeon must have advantages. The second in command was running some tests and had a few ideas, but there wouldn't be much real progress until the vacation was over.

All the little petty bullshit issues of my life suddenly went away. That I didn't have much food in the fridge or that I had taken a verbal beating from a particularly nasty customer that day didn't really matter any more. I got cold. I drained a two week old beer in three gulps. I relayed the message around to a few close friends--partially because they also knew my mom as "Mom", but also looking for some sort of comfort. I cried. I talked with my wife. We cried.

But there was hope, ya know? My mom was still alive, she was even pretty cheerful. Apparently she thanked all her doctors for their hard work, and was pretty sure she was gonna get through this with barely a scratch.

A few days passed before I was able to talk to my dad. I kept trying to think of ways I could call him and talk to him about everything.

Three days after my sister called he called me. We had just driven over to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner. I stayed outside and smoked a half pack while my wife and kids went shopping.

Dad said that Mom was doing well, but he was a wreck. He was going to take twelve weeks of FMLA time to stay with her. My sister was in late pregnancy and would probably be staying home full time, but then she would have two kids and wouldn't be able to stay with Mom full time, too. So, he would take a slight hit to his monthly income to essentially stay at home and take care of everybody.

His tone was pretty grave, but my dad was always positive, ever hopeful even when the shit had hit the fan and then kept coming. He talked about how much he wanted me to move out to where everyone else was, that I would love it out there. He always did this, even though he knew my eventual plan was to go south and start a farm. He asked about the kids, knowing that I would tell him they were fine. For some reason we talked at length about the school system here and how everything seems to be in a constant rebuilding phase, how the schools are so horrible and yet instead of calling them bad, they're "In Development" or some such bullshit.

My good friend had called me the day before, saying that he flew for work pretty much constantly, and that he wanted to help out and could not think of a better way to spend his frequent flyer miles than to buy tickets for me and my bunch to go visit my parents. I thought this would lift my dad's spirits so I told him and tried to schedule a time to come out.

He said that my sister's baby would be born in the beginning of October, so to make everything cool and whatnot that I should plan around the end of October. That would give time for the mother-baby bond to all happen, for sleep to become a real thing, and for my mom to have a few treatments of whatever it was they wanted to give her.

We got off the phone in decent spirits, considering the events surrounding the talk, and I went home and made dinner. I think. Maybe we just ordered delivery or something.

A few more days passed and everything was set. Four round trip tickets were secured, and all that was left was to figure out where we were to sleep. My car died, as it was, after helping a friend move. The clutch, the six month old or younger clutch, had given up, and now the car just sits idly no matter how hard the gas is pressed.

So I went back to the thing I hate most: the bus.

My dad shared this hatred with me. He had a car break down at the same time I had one break down a year or so ago. We'd share stories about the stupid drivers, the weird politics, and all the other things that go along with inside jokes.

So I'm juggling a few things a this point, trying to make sure everything is cool. I talk with my dad again just to make sure everything is still a go when he finally realizes that all of us are coming to visit, not just me.

He got really excited knowing that he would get to see his grandkids. I think he even started to cry a little.

So when my phone rang on Thursday night, September 1, 2011... I thought it was going to be my dad with more news on our visit. Maybe his friend came through with some free nights in a hotel? Maybe his other friend is willing to let us all use his beach house that week for some much needed R&R? Maybe Mom's cancer is in remission and she's gonna live another fifty years?

No, it was my sister.

She said she was sad. She started saying weird things and I didn't understand. She asked me when the doctors called me? I told her I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought something happened with Mom.

In hindsight, I don't think it could have been delivered any better or kinder. She told me that Dad was found on a golf course, that he was rushed to an emergency room and that there was nothing they could do.

She knows me. Even though we haven't really talked in years, she knows me. She knows how I may be patient and calm on the surface, but I hate how some people drag out painful or unnecessary disclosures.

She gave me the news, told me all the right things about how much Dad loved me, and how he always talked about me. How proud he was of me.

I lost it. I couldn't talk on the phone anymore. I handed the phone to my wife and just cried.

Before the shock totally set in, I called my boss and left a voicemail telling him I wasn't coming to work the next day. Then the weekend went by in a blur.

And now, here I sit at work, typing out the events of the past few weeks. I don't really know what to do. I feel very helpless. I feel like I should be doing more to help my sister and mother. That I should be clearing up all the loose ends, getting death certificates and closing down accounts and being a shoulder to cry on...

But instead I'm just sitting here at work. I'm helping people get into their email. I'm repairing backup jobs for servers. I'm teaching people new ways to do mail merge documents. I'm sitting here.

Last week my dad died, and I don't know who will give me advice, who will tell me everything will be okay, who will joke about how terrible the world is while still saying there's still hope.

My first memory of my dad is his hands. I remember holding his hands and marveling at how big they were. How large his fingers seemed. How his left ring finger was cut short by a stupid lawnmower accident when he was a stupid teenager. His hands were big, firm, weathered, and yet so soft.

My dad was ever the hopeful, ever the guy who loved the Beatles' song "Here Comes The Sun." My dad was never really the smartest guy around, but he tried to learn from his mistakes.

I miss you, Dad.