Healing in Dying

We brought my father back from the Hospital the other day. He’d arrived by ambulance 10 days earlier, and doctors didn’t expect him to make it through the first night, but he did. We now watch the inevitable slowing down and breaking down of his body and mind.

It’s a strange experience to watch a loved one die. Emotions come thick and fast; there is sadness, there is guilt, there is regret, and there is love. What could I have done differently? I should’ve been more present. The stories I have chosen to believe and told about him over the years are simply not true. It is with reflection I humbly acknowledge they never were.

A Reconnection with the Dying

We have reconnected over the last few years, as he has needed more care, conversations and time. I have been so fortunate to listen to stories, hear memories and spend time with him. Tell of his love for my mother for us as kids growing up and obviously as adults.

There is a poetic full circle in being able to offer and provide loving care and attention for your ageing parent in the same way the young parent did for their newborn child. There is a sadness. Oh yes, to watch their body and mind steadily, failing. It does not seem so many years ago. I was aloft his shoulders as we ran m around the garden. There is also so much love, respect and memories.

There is also an acknowledgement and understanding of beginning to see this person, who for much of my life was my parent first and a person second. I regret not knowing that person until so recently. I regret not knowing the person beyond the mask of a parent.

Today, however, I am fortunate to have this time to do so. On sunny days, we sit outside watching the birds picking at feeders as he tells me of his earliest memories. We have looked at photographs and talked about my mother.

I’ve had the chance to overcome my differences with him. We always have a choice in how to respond to others. These last few years have allowed me the grace to reassess how I saw him, how I told stories about him, and most importantly, the untruths I told myself about him.

He was not the monster who was never present. He was not the monster who told me never to tell lies or break promises and then did both. He was not the monster who was never present emotionally.

But those stories, where do they come from? What happened to the child that was? Young Hamish could not understand the contradiction of a parent doing the best they could and making promises they desperately wanted to keep, but work and circumstance mean those best-laid plans went awry.

The young boy back then could not understand the world of adults.

The young boy back then could not understand these nuances and subtleties that adults have to deal with. He chose to believe that it was his fault and that he was not loveable.

How many of us have manufactured unhealthy beliefs and taken responsibility for situations, events and destructive thoughts because we were unable to understand those complexities of life?

It is only when we have the mental capacity to understand adulting and the luxury of time, maybe only when we are watching someone die, that we can get curious about our truths, about our stories, and really wonder whether our parents or loved ones were the monsters we believed them to be.

I support my father as he hunches over his walker to get to the kitchen table, where we sit and have Friday fish together. I’ll listen to him repeat himself four times in the space of half an hour, telling me stories I’ve heard so many times.

But his eyes are dim, and the life force is leaving. Last weekend, we said our goodbyes. We said, “Dad, we love you, and he made it through that night.

There is a beauty in dying that society in the West is so mortally afraid of. And all too often, the children of dying parents are too scared to have to take the responsibility of being the adult of the family. Far beyond the wishes or dignity of that parent, they beg the exhausted doctors to keep their parent alive, preferring to watch the broken shell of a once parent, tied to a beeping machine ingesting piped food and oxygen, all because of the fear of dying.

There is a beauty in dying. When we make the time to slow down and be with our parents, we get to hear a gentle beauty, a peacefulness underlying that pain.

To have this time with my father is magical. I do not know when he will die, whether it is hours, days, or weeks. But What is important is that I can say I love you and thank you for being my father and doing the best you could.

Happy to be Proud

A little bit of me is proud of you, proud you were able to help me choose to be unique rather than believe what you told me is true. A little bit more of me is proud of you for loving me for doing my best, which has sometimes been pretty mediocre.

But, Most of me is proud that I knew you as a caring, strong, wise human being, with flaws, with feelings, and with strength and wisdom. You created a home for me and my siblings, and you taught me how to think about being a man and respectful.

These are the stories I happily rewrite about you. I’m proud of you, I’m proud to be your son, and I know and I’m so grateful that I am one of a few who has had the opportunity to appreciate being with a loved one as they begin to die.

It is magical to begin to see the healing power in dying, the power that an old wise man departing can impart to his children and those close by him.

I wouldn’t change this for the world, and I pity, I really pity, those who lose loved ones without the chance to receive the healing in dying.