In his time of dying

Years ago when my mother passed, I was not mature enough to process the event. It was the worst day of my life. I cried my eyes out. I was not mentally prepared for it even though I should have been considering she had metastatic cancer.

Later when my father became terminal, I was wiser and more realistic than I was back then. My job requires me to deal with death and breaking bad news to people. I know enough to know what sick looks like, what the prognosis is. So I knew what was coming even before his doctor spoke to me.

Being more aware certainly does help. It helps making the right decisions, like choosing not to intubate if things came to that. I knew that would not be what my father would want. But despite those advantages, the pain is still as bad as before. If not worse.

Reflection

Knowing that his time is coming to an end meant a lot of time sitting quietly reflecting on old memories. My father was not a perfect man. Far from it. I had often resented him because he was absent for several years during my childhood. He was still finding his way in life.

My parents didn't have a happy marriage. Not in a traditional sense anyway. They didn't love each other. There was no romance. But they made it work because they had a son that they did love dearly.

I felt more attached to my mother because she was around more and was better at showing how much she cared. My father did care of course but he wasn't great at showing it (something I would inherit in due time). We didn't have a traditional father-son relationship except that he got me to like cricket, something he would regret deeply in the coming years as I would skip classes to see matches all day.

Years later, I'm much more sympathetic. I know too well how unforgiving life can be. Making enough money to get by and caring for loved ones at home can be a thankless task. Some days we succeed, some days we fail. I know he tried his best. He eventually managed to get a stable job which he was good at. He did a good job of caring for my mother after she got cancer. In the end, our mind always prefers to recall the good things. And God knows, I'm not one to judge. I was never the perfect son either.

Fighting against Fate

My mother was very different from my father. She fought her disease until the very end, always wanting things to get back to normal. To get back to work. To get back to being a mother. She survived 6 years with cancer. I'd like to think a lot of that was down to her will to live. A will that even had me hoping against hope.

My father was very different. I can only remember one instance when he actively fought his condition. It was a few days after his stroke when he finally started to regain consciousness. He wanted to walk. He tried. He failed. My father had lived through 2 heart attacks quite well but this was something he was never going to overcome.

You see, exercise was never his thing. He liked a sedentary lifestyle. The rehab needed to become functional after having the entire left side of his body paralyzed was something he never enjoyed. He became depressed. He used to be a respected man who had many people work under him. Now he couldn't even make it to the bathroom by himself. He never truly got over it.

Roles Reversed

In the years after his stroke, my father and I basically exchanged roles from previous years. I was now the one working to make ends meet almost every day of the week. He was now the one at home watching television most hours of the day.

I tried to make things work. As best I could anyway. The doctor in me got his sugars controlled, his blood pressure controlled. He became ambulatory eventually with physio. I got people to look after him round the clock. I thought I was doing something. But I could never accomplish one thing. I never made him happy again.

My father hated physio even when it made him more mobile. He wanted to enjoy sweets and other junk food. With the help of hindsight, perhaps I should have given less of a shit what his sugars were and just tried to make him feel better. Perhaps there was nothing I could do. I hardly ever saw him smile after his stroke. It breaks my heart just thinking about that.

I tried to do for my father what he did for me when I was young. Some days I thought I was doing something. Other days I felt like a failure. I wonder if this was how he used to feel while raising me.

Every story needs an ending

For a few years he was healthy. Or at least I thought he was. Then over the course of a few weeks, he developed swelling all over his body. He developed anemia. I don't know how or why. With all my medical knowledge, I still couldn't do anything about it.

The extra weight made him much more difficult to take care of. Two people were needed to help him walk. He became less mobile. He developed ulcers. I still tried. I gave injections at home. It didn't work. He kept getting worse.

Maybe I didn't try hard enough. I hadn't been paid for 9 months this year. I was borrowing most of the money needed to take care of him. Maybe I should have borrowed more. I don't know.

When he was admitted for the last time, I knew it was bad. He had become disoriented. I had seen this before when my mother passed. This time I knew what to expect. There was a part of me that didn't want to see him suffer anymore. But there was also a little boy in me that just wanted his father back.

My father was not a perfect man. And I was not a perfect son. I realize now that life isn't meant to be perfect. It is meant to be lived, to be shared. In life, you will have very few people that actually give a shit about you. And no one will ever care as much as your parents. And now I have lost them both.