I love you, Dad. I miss you. Happy Father’s Day.

A story about my Father and our last days...

My bare feet slapped on the concrete as I paced alone beside my boyfriend’s parents’ pool. The phone rang and rang.

The late morning sun was beginning to rise above the Wasatch mountain range, which usually kept the property mostly hidden in the shade.

It felt late; it felt too late. I had slept in. I had awoken to many nerve-wracking messages from my family’s home in Hawaii, four hours ahead of me in time.

I turned on my heel, my loose, cotton, black dress spinning out and returning to kiss my thighs as I resumed another round of back-and-forth.

“Hey…” my brother answered.

“Hey. How is he?” My heart clenched. My chest became something between wood and stone, suspended in concern. My Dad was in the ICU. He had been recovering from the aftermath of a stroke for a few months. After a stint at a recovery center, he recently relocated back home with the advice to absolutely not bend over. Yesterday he dropped a pencil, and instead of asking for help, he went to pick it up. Against the advice to absolutely not bend over. A nosebleed started, and it wouldn’t stop. We’d later discover this had to do with the blood-thinning medication the doctors had meant to take him off of years ago after a blood clot in his leg had dissipated. They neglected to.

Years ago…

“It’s… pretty bad. You should maybe start looking for a way back home as soon as you can.”

“Can I talk to him?” I could hear the space between my brother’s thoughts. Everything was starting to crystalize, to move in slow motion, and it would stay that way for some time.

“Yea, hold on… I can hold the phone up to his ear,”

“Hey!” his voice was strained and soft but packed with effort and charisma.

“Happy Father’s Day!” I could feel his cheeks grin. “This sounds really… serious, Daddy. Should I come home?”

“No, no. I just gotta grin and bare it. I’ll get through this.”

“Dad, it seems like maybe I should really come home.” He persisted in his effort to confirm that everything was gonna be okay. But, I could feel it in my soul. In my gut. In the bottom of my being–it was not going to be okay.

The next thing I knew, I was packing up to leave.

The next thing I knew, I was saying goodbye to finally living my dream.

Just a month ago, I had set out with my lover for #vanlife. I had quit my high-profile Head of Marketing job at a tech company on the rise and decided to bump around the states in an old Econoline (think: dark blue Scooby Doo), scoping out places to create land art and applying to grants to do so, accumulating inspiration for my acting career and exploring the world with a new man I was wildly in love with and committed to.

A few days back, our van broke, and we were now parked at his folks’ working to fix it. Everything I owned fit in the backseat and a few boxes now stored in his closet.

I told him I had to go and we’d figure the rest out later. He understood. I called my high school sweetheart’s Mom, who still adored me and worked for Delta. She helped me out with a loan for my ticket home. I called my college sweetheart to say goodbye for probably ever, because I was leaving Utah and my Dad was dying, and I could sense that I’d never see him again. I drove by my ex-best friend’s to hug him because I couldn’t forgive him for what he did to me, but I was leaving, and I could tell it wasn’t just leaving the state. It was leaving everything, all at once. Forever. A parent’s death will do that… it will have you leave who you were forever.

He said he would grin and bare it.

He was absurdly optimistic like that. As if he could rise above absolutely anything, he’d never fold to something that maybe he could work to overcome. A man born into a lower-class, working American family in 1942, who pulled up his bootstraps and worked his way into the upper-middle class during the post-WWII era was primed to cultivate an admirably, unabashedly hardcore level of true grit. He was my rock. I already had three tattoos dedicated to him. And an entire collection of elephants from everywhere I ever visited to commend my faith in him as the most stable figure in my life.

He said he would grin and bare it.

The end was ever-so-near.

By the time I got there, not 36 hours later, his nostrils were stuffed to oblivion, and a ventilator filled his throat. He had been working to overcome cancer for a few years, and this nosebleed was demanding all of his now very limited white blood cells. In response, the cancer was rapidly taking over.

They said there wasn’t much time. We got him out of the hospital, so he could find an ending to his life while at home, next to our Mom, who was bedridden herself, sick with her own illness of Alzheimer’s. It was clear that there was nothing that could be done. I could see in his eyes his fight, his effort. He still believed he could overcome this. It was painful to see. It hurt to hear my brother try and feed him faith and strength to overcome this impossible task, “Don’t you want to see me and Jenna get married?”

It wouldn’t happen. And what life would it be if he could overcome this bought of near-end? He would hate any and every moment of such a state of weakness. The spoils of such a battle weren’t worth it. The cancer had reached an unbeatable tipping point, the stroke debilitating him, and the nosebleed wouldn’t stop. He deserved to be let go and to let go in peace. He deserved to be given permission to do so, by all of us, and especially by himself. His spirit deserved that of his willpower. To be permitted to say goodbye to all of his physical responsibilities as Dad.

We took turns watching him and sleeping. My shift was in the middle of the night. I could see him struggling to hold on to the material realm. Afraid even to sleep. There was so much fear and so much determination in his eyes. Eyes set to father us forever.

There was nothing that could be done.

“Dad, it’s okay. We’ll be okay. You’ll get to be with your Mom, Grandma Fae!” I could see him grab onto this. They were very close. I never once saw my Dad cry, but when I was in 6th grade, she passed away, and after he went to bury her and came back, while we grieved at home in Hawaii, I let him know that he could too. He affirmed to me then that he was there to be there for us and that he had done his grieving and crying back in Arizona, where she lay. I never once saw my Dad cry, but I do know he did for losing her.

“You’ll get to be with your Mom, Grandma Fae!” His body relaxed. I sang him a song. One he had always sung me. We cried.

He passed on the following day. He let go. And now I had to, too.

Grief comes in strange phases. In the following years, sometimes, it felt like my whole existence was an embodiment of grief. Now, sometimes… the grief feels so far off I wonder if I’m okay or just stifling essential feelings. And sometimes, like today, the grief feels comforting. Like special Daddy-daughter time. Time just for us. Like we had when I’d stay home sick from school, and he’d watch me and make me disgusting sandwiches of shredded cheese and mayo and olives, and I’d take the heat for not finishing it instead of risking hurting his feelings by informing him that it was gross.

I love you, Dad. I miss you. Happy Father’s Day.