Goodbye Again

My father died yesterday. 

That's us in 1974 perhaps. My father is holding my younger brother Scotty. (Scotty died in February of 2006.) My older brother Rudy is behind him and I am there on the right. We are sitting on my parent's old car in the backyard of he house I grew up in. 

My god, that was so long ago.

I hadn't had contact with my father in a long time. The last time I saw him was almost twenty years ago at my younger brother's funeral. Even at that time, I hadn't seen or spoken to him in the fifteen years prior. He didn't recognize me then. He shook my hand as though I were a stranger.

A couple of weeks ago, one of his nieces had reached out to my mother to tell us--my brother and me--that he was on hospice care and to see if we wanted to go visit him before he died. Years of smoking and drinking had caught up to him and he had throat cancer. According to my mother, he had had it for years. I don't think there was anything more to do for him or anything more that he wanted done. My mother said he had been bed bound for a long time and was using a feeding tube. This was all news to me.

I spoke to my brother about it and we both declined to go see him. Now, I'm sorry I didn't go--but also I'm glad I didn't go.

After he died, it began. By his own choice, he has been surrounded for many years with people who enabled a lot of his bad behavior. These people told my niece (who I also have not spoken to in many years) to tell us that he wanted us to know that he had died--then they said that we, my brother and I, needed to sign some papers. (All this information was conveyed through my mother.) My brother and I both declined to do so. 

We would be his next of kin if he was not married to the woman he's been living with for the last thirty five-plus years, but if he didn't marry her in all that time, it nothing to do with me and I'm not getting involved now. My mother seems to think that there is some life insurance money involved that we would be asked to sign over to the possible second wife and her family, but I don't have any idea about that either and I'm not going to seek it out.

It hit me hard, his death. I cried on and off all day long, was having chest pain from anxiety and sadness. Finally, in the afternoon, I took a mild sedative. It helped a little. I went to bed and slept for awhile and when I woke up, my ears were so blocked and congested that I was having trouble hearing out of my right ear. (It's the same now, but I've been using saline rinses and nasal steroids and warm compresses to try to alleviate some of the congestion and from what I've read, it can take up to two weeks to resolve.)

About my father, I said goodbye to him decades ago and repeated and repeated it over the years until there was no more left of our relationship to say goodby to. I recognize that he was troubled and that manifested itself in ways that hurt me and others. I'm still dealing with the fallout of his actions. But even with all that, I hope that he is in a place now where he is safe and happy and loved. I don't think he had very much of that in his life, but I hope he somewhere now where that is possible.