Acts of Love

I keep feeling like I didn't do enough for and with my dad before he died and I'm heaping these ridiculous feelings of guilt on myself that I know are completely unfounded.  I thought it might make me feel better to write down some of the things I did do with and for him in the past couple of months to help me get rid of these feelings - so here goes.

Right before our trip to the beach in August my sister and I spent a day with my parents - just the two of us.  This rarely happens anymore due to the fact that she and I both have families and usually our gatherings involve some or all of us.  I brought some letters with me that my dad had written to me years ago that I'd found while digging through my crawl space one afternoon.  We sat on the porch at my parents' house and I read them out loud.  Some of them were silly - with his tell-tale drawings of big-headed cartoon figures and his typically hilarious observations, written in his large hard-pressed scrawl.  One letter reduced us all to tears as he described how proud he was of us and thanked us for the lovely collage that my sister and I had made for them for their 25th wedding anniversary.  He ended one of his letters with "P.S. - Be good to your car and it will be good to you." - so typical of his cautious and safety-conscious nature.  Then we went inside and I read out loud a series of emails between us from 2001 where we each described an incident involving a squirrel that had somehow made its way into my parents' house - each of us wrote a story from different points of view, including my sister's side-splitting version written from the point of view of a box of Quaker oatmeal in the pantry where the squirrel had taken refuge at one point.  My dad laughed so hard I was afraid he would hurt himself - but in the end we all sat back in happy exhaustion.  It was almost easy to forget for that brief moment that we were in the middle of such a terrible crisis.

The one thing I felt I could do for my Tato in recent months was to rub his neck.  I came up with a special way of doing it based on my experience as a physical therapist to help relieve some of the tightness in his muscles.  I would stand behind him and gently pull his neck and head upward to provide some traction and relieve the stress.  I would also gentle massage and scratch the top of his head which he always loved.  In the week or two before he died he stopped asking for these massages or would wave me off if I asked him if he wanted one.  I think any stimulation at that point was too much for him.  It made me sad because I felt like there was not much else I could do for him.  Two days before he passed away I asked him if he wanted me to rub his neck and he nodded "yes". So I stood behind him and did my usual tricks and he let me do this for quite some time.  I started reminiscing about various memories I'd been having for the past few weeks.  I reminded him of how my sister and I used to hold piano concerts when my grandparents would visit and charge the adults 25 cents admission.  I told him about the snow slide he built for us in the backyard one year and about the swirly designs he mowed into our yard before a graduation party and how people still to this day talk about that.  He seemed very relaxed and would occasionally nod his head as he remembered these things I was talking about.  That was the last time I rubbed his neck and I'm so glad I asked him even though he'd been waving me off for days.

I'd also been wanting to play the piano for him but any noise in the house bothered him.  We no longer watched tv or listened to music because again the stimulation was just too much in the last few weeks.  On the Monday before he passed away I called my mom and told her to put the phone on speaker so my dad could hear.  I set my phone down on my piano and played songs from "The Sound of Music" for them - starting with Edelweiss, then the Sound of Music and finally, my Tato's favorite, Climb Every Mountain.  It was a strange feeling to be playing for an audience that I couldn't see - but I just kept on going and when I was done I got back on the phone with my mom.  She said my dad enjoyed it and gave me a thumbs up - his sign of approval. 

The day before he passed away we'd gotten him comfortably situated in a hospital bed since he could no longer walk.  I hated to leave but I'd dropped my car off at the dealer to get new tires and brake pads installed and it was time for me to go pick it up.  I went to tell Tato that I was leaving but that I'd be back in a few hours after having dinner with the kids.  Remembering how he was always on us to take care of our cars (remember the P.S. in his letter!) I told him that I'd just put new tires and brake pads on my car.  He gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up and although he was too weak to actually smile, I could see the smile in his eyes.  I felt that somehow I'd given him some peace of mind, that now he was sure that I could take care of myself and that we would all be nice and safe in our well-maintained car.

There are many other things that I did for him that week that are too painful to talk about now.  Maybe someday in the future I'll write it all down, but for now these memories I've written about today are enough.