So Begins

The nurse came in and slipped a Zofran into my hand, instructing me to let it dissolve on my tongue. Then came the commode which I was to use to produce a sample to check my kidney function and electrolytes. “But what if I really have to go to the bathroom?” I asked her, thinking about just how many times I had gone in the past two hours alone. “You’ll need to use the commode.” she said plainly “But we’ll give you privacy.” Covid protocols are not dead, my friends.

The day after Dad’s funeral, I felt off. In fact, I had been feeling off since the day he died but chalked it all up to stress, fatigue, nerves, emotions, and whatever else I could blame for not feeling well. As anyone will tell you, throwing together a traditional wake, funeral, and reception is a lot. For those of us of Irish descent, we take it seriously and attend to every and all details. My only refusal was to wear shapewear under my dress, a wise decision on my part. I pulled out a Covid test from the closet, swabbed, and marvelled at the immediate appearance of a pink line beside the blue. “Well, shit.” I said. Apparently all of my symptoms were not just due to emotional distress.

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Ten days later, I am still recovering. I got completely slammed by Covid with headaches that wouldn’t quit, diarrhea, congestion, cough, fever, night sweats, loss of smell, taste, dizziness, breathlessness and nausea. I called my doctor at least 3 times before they finally agreed to see me when I cried on the phone. “I don’t usually cry but my kidneys are aching.” I told the nurse. That’s the line that ultimately made them say come on in. With the current surge going on, I think they are trying to run triage remotely. I, of course, was convinced I was dying and simply wouldn’t stand for that. I have not felt this sick in a very long time. In fact, the last time I felt like this I was living in Venezuela and had contracted some form of mosquito-borne illness that I was never officially treated for. God knows it was probably malaria or something. I’m still here so, whatever it was, I fought it. So, yes, Covid is still awful and you should get a booster. Seriously.

Having missed the all-staff first day of work, I am feeling anxious about this upcoming year. I don’t really feel like I had a summer and want desperately to rewind. Dad’s decline and eventual demise has been what they call a very long goodbye. Every month over the past four years stole something new from him requiring constant recalibration of our routine. It wasn’t until just a few months ago that he stopped having meals at the dining table with all of us and moved to a mostly liquid diet. Though many of the changes needed seemed obvious to me, Mom struggled with each of them and tried, in vain, to keep things status quo. Being the force of nature that she is, this required a lot of patience and counseling. We confronted demons from her past and present by learning to embrace the inevitable pain of love and loss. “You’ve never had to deal with this up close since your mother died. That’s significant.” I told her. Mom’s mom died tragically when she was just 13 years old, a wound that has never fully healed. Getting Dad across this finish line of life has been a process for all of us, not just him.

Today, the wake and funeral seem like a blur. It was a beautiful service on a picture perfect day. The sound of Taps playing at Bourne National Cemetery made us weep, watching the ceremonial folding and presentation of the flag to Mom made us ache. 67 years they knew each other, nearly 64 years married. Dad, for us kids, was the quiet one of the pair. At times, we wished he’d speak up more, tell us more, talk more. As friends and relatives regaled us with stories of Dad/Don/Uncle Don from the past, the one thing I remember most is him sitting in the backyard looking up at the trees and me wondering whatever was going through his mind. In this day and age of knowing far too much about one another, Dad’s quietness seems to me not just his personality but a relic of a past when secrets were still a thing. There are things I will never know about Dad. Before, that used to bother me. Now, not so much. His was a whispered strength all with a healthy dose of a twisted sense of humor. “You will die in five seconds.” he once read from a slip of paper found inside a fortune cookie at Ming Dynasty. He then slumped over at the table, pretending to croak on the spot. This was when I was about 8. This sense of humor is in my Isaac, I see him laughing at his own jokes in his head all the time. “If you woke up with balls, what would be the first thing you’d do?” he asked me in Macy’s. I didn’t have an answer to that. I still don’t.

Life here in Hanson is strange now. We had spaghetti the other night, one of Dad’s favorite meals until the end. “CAN I HAVE SOME MORE SPAGHETTI PLEASE?” he would ask me at the table, probably on plate number 3. At some point we had to cut him off he ate so much. All of my kids can imitate him saying this. The best was when I took his fork away so that he wouldn’t eat so quickly and fill his cheeks. “CAN I HAVE MY FORK BACK PLEEEEEASE?” he asked and we all laughed. I reminded everyone of this at the table, that lump in my throat turning into tears. Grief, they say, is evidence of love. As we move forward here without our man of the house, my hope is that we do so with the comfort of knowing that our grief is proof that we loved hard and well and that Dad passed from this Earth feeling that. He is gone, we are here. So ends, and so begins

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