Six Years Ago Today My Father Died

In 2016, Death had been the theme from almost Day One on the calendar, starting with David Bowie. Even if all the other deaths that year were not of equal importance to me, it was established very early in the year that there were a lot of them, many unexpected.

But my father’s death was no surprise. We had received information from the hospice nurse when they had expected he was down to about the last six months. And then the day before — on that day, we were informed that my father would die in the next 24 hours.

I didn’t have any regrets. He had never met my children. It is one of the most valuable and healthy decisions I could have made for their lives.

I did not plan to go see him where he would die, in his home, where he had lived since I was ten and where he had spent more than thirty years alone. I had not seen him in about eight years. I did not consider “reconciling” or attempting any “closure” when he was diagnosed with dementia in 2012 or ‘13. I had not attended the competency hearing which had been held a few years later, after the dementia was well-established and the late-stage colorectal cancer was found.

I was Next of Kin, for a Registered Nurse who had left no directive, and no will. Huge oversights, to some, but I knew my father and knew this had been his intent.

I told my kids that if I cried or was angry at times, it was not because anything was wrong with dying, and certainly not with my own father dying. They knew a little about why our family had felt it was best that he never meet them.

Having been given a 24-hour window to wait out, before I had to start upholding my father’s wishes with the funeral home, and writing his obituary, I had little to do but Wait.

The day my father died was long, and a lot of it felt like Waiting with a capital W. When the Waiting started to feel stressful, I turned to the coping technique I have since recommended to hundreds of people. I watched YouTube videos of cockatoos knocking over stacks of cups.

Go ahead and search for them. I know my absolute favorite was a cockatoo named Harley. There is meta-meditation on the struggle of waiting for things to fall apart, in watching a cockatoo enjoy a good cup-trashing.

The sound of their feet approaching. The way they slow down in wonder, and then stop, surveying the Structure. Perhaps, even, imagining the imminent violence.

Cockatoos knocking over stacks of cups is the Tower card in the Major Arcana. It’s better than the Hallelujah chorus. And oh palpable silence of afterglow.

Then, maybe, a few aftershocks. Not every stack of cups comes down on the first try. But they got me through those hours.

As per the outcome of his competency hearing, decisions about my father’s life and care had, while he lived, been made by a trio of people, of whom I was one. The other two were his “girlfriend”, and a court-appointed something or other. That person had been assigned a neutral role, although it seemed she had taken some liberties with it (that we sniffed out before they slipped through into reality).

I feel no love for my father, but I followed his wishes as they had been expressed to me directly by him. I made sure there was no memorial service held for him — something he was absolutely phobic about.

Surprises, public acknowledgment, the singing of “Happy Birthday” — at the time of my father’s death, there was no one but me who had spent so many years, watching him live in horror of these things. He would order a “Belly Buster” sundae at Farrell’s, and would ask five-, six-, eight-year old me — repetitive and ready to bolt — “No one told the waitresses to sing ‘Happy Birthday’, right? No sparklers, right?”

There was no one but me who had had to hear him threaten, as though he would just reconstitute himself and beat my ass if I tried, “DON’T GIVE ME A MEMORIAL SERVICE WHEN I DIE.” I was the one who kept the little clipped-out advertisement for an econo-cremation which he insisted I take advantage of. I can hear him saying, “PINE BOX. BURN IT UP.” No coffin. No gathering.

He didn’t have specific instructions for his cremains, surprisingly, but I had a pretty good idea what they weren’t. I had already had to do some double-checking with the funeral home near my dad’s house where (Surprise!) someone had begun planning his memorial — and, someone had green-lit 150% as much money as I had approved (this being one of my specific duties) for his final expenses. Funeral homes are very much bound by law to follow the instructions of only those who are allowed to make them. It sounds like a litigious business.

Suffice it to say that, once this funeral home realized it had been making plans that had not been approved by me, they doubled down on making sure they had my approval on everything.

While there were some decisions that others in our Death Throuple could make, and had been making, there were others they could not. Also, and most important, the covenant of the Death Throuple ended, legally, with my father’s last heartbeat. When that happened, the remaining decisions were mine.

I’d gotten pretty close to running out of cockatoo videos that day when I began to sense that my dad was already dead, and we just weren’t getting the call. It seemed that for some parties it would be a call of defeat. My father’s “girlfriend” had been, through various mediating parties, been asking for “just a spoonful” of my father’s future ashes, so she could put them in a windchime specially created for this purpose.

There were not a lot of people in the world who knew my father well, but anyone that could be so off the mark as to want to put part of his earthly, autistic remains in a fucking windchime was someone who needed some help with decision-making. (This would be verified less than two years later when this person started a Facebook account in my dad’s name on Father’s Day, and tried to troll me with it. (Caretakers of loved ones with dementia or other incurable conditions: make sure you are taking precautions with your own mental health.)

But, here we were, and it was still The Day My Dad Died — but there was just no indication he had, yet.

I had a buddy in the horror prosthetics business. I called her and asked her if she made custom, and unusual, dildos, and could human cremains be mixed in with them — even just a spoonful.

She didn’t even bother to pause with faux surprise or condolences. She’d done all kinds of work that was too hardcore for her commercial website. While I never gave her this job — although I know my dad would have loved it — I at least felt safe that if I continued to be hounded about my dad’s cremains, if I felt I had been worn down past the point where I could protect my father’s wishes, I’d be able to relinquish them while providing the requesting party with a way to fuck themselves.

I was sure my father was dead and They were just refusing to tell us. I expressed this worry to one of my primary figures of support, who suggested that anybody who considered barricading themselves in a house with my father’s corpse to be a win, should just be left to it.

It was that same figure of support — since relieved of his duties — who broke the news to me. Via text.

Happily, Tucker and the kids were here as sources of warmth and healing. When asked if I needed anything, I already knew — a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I did what my dad would’ve sooner died than let me get away with; I pulled the skin off the two biggest pieces and ate only that.

There’s much to be read these days about late-diagnoses of autism, or other neurodivergent conditions, in people who had lived most of their lives in a world where autism hadn’t “existed”. Just like my dad’s insistent and dogged finger-stabbing at his cremation advertisement, I remember the mid-90’s when he came to my apartment with an article about Asperger’s Syndrome, carefully marked in his Newsweek. “This. Is. Me,” he had said, sounding both angry and relieved.

At that time, underdiagnosed autistic Baby Boomers were not on anyone’s radar — how would anybody help them now, anyway, now that they were no longer children? What comfort or strategies were there to offer?

My father was, technically, a year too old to be considered part of the Baby Boom. I presume he was, technically, of the generation of actor Anthony Hopkins — the oldest diagnosed autistic I can think of — and what similarities they have to each other, I know few. I do know Anthony Hopkins has a daughter with whom he has no contact, and that even his pragmatic, arguably “autistic” and unfeeling attitude towards that truth, when he has been asked about it, has proven to be insufficient flint to ignite a character assassination. He is, after all, Anthony Hopkins.

I’ve read articles where he has discussed his lack of relationship with his daughter, and his peace in it. What he is quoted as in print is an attitude of “sometimes things just don’t work out. You go on with your life.” (Or you don’t.) He has been quoted expressing disinterest over whether or not he is a grandfather. I think that alone makes it pretty clear he’s not, and I would say the same of my father, and my children agree.

I’m not writing now about the day my father died because of the day itself, but because this is the first year I remembered the date on my own. Last year Tuck had said, “How are you feeling about the anniversary?” that evening, and I had no idea — none — what he meant. Not having anything to check it against at hand, I wonder if I’ve possibly gotten it wrong this year.

My feelings about my father’s death have not changed. There were decades of my life where the thought of him dying was a paralyzing fear. Had I still loved my father when he was diagnosed with dementia, then cancer, I have no idea how I could have bourn the pain and lived from day to day. I would have been useless as a mother, living a nightmare for years. Instead, I inherited a lovely historical home in Bucks County to sell, and was able for a time to be as indulgent with my children as I wish I could every day; $350 purple holographic five-inch heeled combat boots for my daughter. Tickets for the whole family, but especially for my son, to see the fourth live performance of what would become David Byrne’s legendary American Utopia tour.

I remember my father saying once, “We aren’t made to outlive our children.” When a friend’s son died, he asked me if I thought that was an okay thing to write in the sympathy card he was sending. I told him it was fine, and that I was sure his message would be understood.

I think my dad would be surprised, and saddened in some cases, at the number of my own friends whom I have outlived since his death. I know that I am already baffled by the list, and the names it contains. I know it will just get longer and longer. I know the only way to avoid that is to die. And I know there is no way to avoid dying.

(Begun writing on September 22, 2022 — presumably the sixth anniversary of my father’s death. Finished, for the first time anyway, on September 30th. Special love and thanks to Bill Ricks.)