No Living Will? Coming to a Understanding with All Family Members

The relationship I had with my father was great, he was a man of few words but when he spoke his words were filled with wisdom and often wit. Some called it sarcasm, but that was not the way I heard them. Some say I was a daddy’s girl, when I was a toddler; he was the only one who could get me to sleep, or stop my tears when I was hurt or sick. I had to be everywhere he was, he had to throw his coat on the porch if there was someplace he needed to go alone. He even would leave his card game at a local bar to come home to kiss me goodnight and straighten out my sheets and blankets. Six years have passed since by dad lost his battle to lung cancer, and not a day goes by that I don’t stop and think about him I try to remember him as the strong man I knew growing up, but I can’t stop the thoughts that flood my mind, of his last days in the hospital. It’s often said time will heal the pain but for me the pain still continues.

I was raised in an average family, my mom was a homemaker, my dad was a police officer for twenty-five years and I have a brother five years younger than myself. My dad retired from the police force in 1996 soon after he suffered a heart attack, it ended up he needed a triple by-pass. He recovered one hundred percent and we were all happy to have him back. As if that was not enough for one man to go through, in the year 2000 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He went through chemotherapy, radiation and blood transfusions, he was doing as well as could be expected occasional bouts with breathing problems and fluid build up in his lungs.

A year had passed since his diagnosis, when he encountered a serious breathing problem he was taken to the hospital by ambulance. While in the emergency room he stopped breathing, the doctors were able to revive him. He needed a breathing tube in order to breathe and he was placed in intensive care. That was the last time I got to hear my father speak, he was unable to talk so he communicated the first day by writing on a notepad. I remember him writing that he was thirsty and wanted a drink of water, he was unable to drink, and he only could have his lips wiped with ice chips or a wet cloth. It hurt me so much to see him like this all I wanted to do was give him that glass of water, but I knew I couldn’t.

Deep in my heart I somehow knew my dad wasn’t going to be coming home, my mom and brother didn’t feel the same way I did. The truly believed he would recover and come back home. By the next day my dad was in a coma like state from the drugs that were administered, not only would he never speak again, but his eyes would just stare blankly they seemed to be filled with tears and I knew inside he was crying he didn’t want us to see him like this. My dad didn’t have a living will, which was a huge mistake because he always would say if he ever got really sick not to leave him in bed with tubes going in out of him. Now here he was lying in a hospital room with tubes to breathe, tubes to eat and tubes to relieve him of his waste. I pleaded with my mom and brother to let him go peacefully, but they wouldn’t hear of it. I was told I was cruel and didn’t have a heart, that was the farthest thing from the truth, I loved my dad and it hurt so much to see him like that.

I visited my dad everyday; I would sit by his bed and hold his hand. I told him how I recently got engaged and was planning to get married on a beach in Florida. I told him I loved him, and it wasn’t my decision to have lay here with all these tubes. I’ll never know if he heard my words, I hope he did. I hope he knew how much I loved him and how much it hurt to see him like this. When I would leave to go home a part of me felt badly, I felt like I was betraying my mom’s and brother’s feelings, that I should be more sympathetic to how they felt. But at the time, no matter how hard I tried I could feel no sympathy for them. To me they were the bad guys; they had no consideration for my father’s feelings. They were going against his feelings it was as if he didn’t matter, all that mattered was them.

It was a very difficult two weeks, when our family should have been comforting each other we were at each other’s throats. We all loved my dad, but we all had different views. None of us were right or wrong, we were just doing what we felt was best. But at the time I guess we didn’t’ see it that way. I understood in my heart that my mom and brother didn’t want to lose him they wanted to hang on to every last ounce of hope. I wanted that too, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen no matter how much I prayed and hoped it would.

Somewhere there is a lesson in this for all of us. When a loved one’s death is imminent and a living will is not left, we shouldn’t be fighting and arguing with each other, our loved one wouldn’t want that. Instead we should be holding on to each other, listening to each other and trying to see the reasoning behind their views. I’ve been through this scenario and I know from experience that it is the most difficult thing you will ever encounter in your life. I know it was for all of us. It took almost three months after my dad’s death that we all were able to sit down and revisit those two weeks; it wasn’t until then that we came to understand each other. Maybe, if we took the time to listen to each other when by dad was dying instead of yelling at each other his passing might have been easier on all of us.

I mentioned before about not being able to give my father a cold drink, for almost two years I would cry every time it crossed my mind. I couldn’t cope with the fact that my dad died without having a simple thing like a glass of water. I felt like I let him down, I kept hoping he knew why I couldn’t give it to him. Then one night I had a dream about my father, it was the first dream I had of him since he passed away. He was sitting on his front porch and I offered him a drink of water he looked at me and said “Oh I’m not thirsty, there’s plenty of water where I’m at.” I don’t know if this dream was the result of my constant thoughts of the water or if it was a way for my dad to come back to ease my pain, just like he did when I was a little girl. All I know is since the dream I feel in my heart that my dad did understand and it has helped me come to peace with it.