“Well, now, you’re an orphan, too,” a close friend said to me while I stood amidst those who had gathered at the house after my dad’s private funeral. This friend is a kind-hearted man, and I know he meant no harm, but his words struck me as hard as a slap across the face. Me? An orphan? Overnight I’ve turned into Oliver Twist, a child without parents? Can this be?
An only child who for the last twenty-some years lived within a mile and one-half of her parents, I saw or talked to them each day. I took them to doctor appointments, accompanied them on errands, drove them to visit relatives, re-landscaped their yard, became even more the center of their lives. My dad’s memory started circling the drain. My mother had trouble accepting it. I nursed my mother through surgeries and broken bones until she died unexpectedly in the middle of the night in early October 2007. My dad was lost without his partner of over 60 years.
My husband and I brought him home with us. He enjoyed sharing meals with us and rarely left my side. He seemed to stare into the distance most of the time or cry and say he just didn‘t know what he‘d do. We told him not to worry that we had a plan and began talking to him about a nice room in a place where he’d have three meals a day and company. He insisted it be a private room. Neighbors mentioned that they’d seen him outside fumbling with the handle of the car. He hadn’t driven for years. He wondered around in the night awakening us with reports of stolen cars and other imaginary things. Late one night as I was just about to turn off my light, my dad entered our bedroom and shouted, “Just who are you sleeping with?” Bob considered jumping our the window. Within two weeks, he was placed into an Alzheimer’s Unit in a nursing home within walking distance of our house. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.
There was no time to grieve. I had to be there for my dad, love him, care for him, be the adult. Blessedly he always knew who I was, his face lighting up when he saw me. He’d give me a kiss and a big hug. My husband and I were out of the country when we got a message that my dad was in the hospital. On Christmas Eve, 2008, we fought our way through snowstorms and people traveling for the holidays and made it to his bedside. Christmas evening as we were leaving, he told my husband and I that he loved us. Those were his last words. An incredible Christmas present. The next morning he was moved to a private room under hospice care, unresponsive, resting comfortably. I sat at his side and could do nothing but talk to him and watch mindless TV. At 3:00 p.m. his spirit departed, the lines in his face disappeared, and he was gone.
It was the end of how things had always been. My heart was broken. My husband was my rock. God was near through it all. I saw her hand as it all unfolded. But now I stood at a threshold. It was the end of my being a child, and the beginning of a new freedom. I began a rugged journey into the unknown with grief as my companion.
I felt like I was a balloon whose string was no longer being held in sturdy hands but had slipped away into the currents of the sky. The only people were there for all of my life, who shared the same memories and provided me with roots, are now gone. In response, I have tried to make a new family for myself, a chosen family, consisting of close cousins and friends. My life is so different.
Now, I am free from hurtful comments about my weight, my clothes, my hair, my way of doing things. My time is not consumed with care-giving activities, my mind not filled with guilt and worry. No one is trying to restrict where I go or what I do. These are some of the freedoms I have gained.
I have made it through that “valley of the shadow of death” and am climbing up the other side, living in the autumn of my life. In ways I feel like an alien in a strange world, and sometimes I don’t want to be here. It is a rude awakening to find myself rapidly becoming part of the oldest generation of my extended family, as my aunts and uncles also pass away. I am no longer anyone’s child, I am the senior citizen. I have become the one filling my weekly pill container and having to go to the doctor more frequently. I have also come to realize that I will never completely get over the loss of my parents. The passage of time has taken away the sting, the unexpected tears, and the inaction of grief, yet there are times I continue to yearn for them, and I know I always will.
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On the other hand, having been refined by the fire of orphanhood, I am gaining the resultant courage and wisdom. I am no longer afraid to sit peacefully by the side of a dear relative who is dying, read scripture to her, and sing her to eternal life. I am learning to live in the moment, to memorize the colors of sunsets, to hear the bird‘s song, to appreciate kindnesses shown me. And I am learning that I have the strength to make choices about my emotional outlook each day. I choose joy.
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