Vigil

 

My Father, Dying

by Joyce Sutphen

It was hard work, dying, harder

than anything he'd ever done.

Whatever brutal, bruising, back-

Breaking chore he'd forced himself

to endure—it was nothing

compared to this. And it took

so long. When would the job

be over? Who would call him

home for supper? And it was

hard for us (his children)—

all of our lives we'd heard

my mother telling us to go out,

help your father, but this

was work we could not do.

He was way out beyond us,

in a field we could not reach.

We tried. We asked the nurse when she thought Dad might succumb. She told us what we heard later from other nurses for other parents approaching death. "You just can't tell," she said, hunching her shoulders. "Honestly, I've seen people closer than your dad rally to spend another couple of weeks hanging around." She sort of half-smiled. "Then again. . ."

We were 500 miles east. We'd come because my sister claimed--rightly so--that Dad wasn't doing well and, well, you know. We'd come because there was that kind of tension in her voice that explained clearly where words feared to go.

How long, O, Lord," says Psalm 13, one of the most enigmatic psalms in the canon. David screams, howls (people call it "the howling psalm) at "how long" will we all have to put up with the sadness, the grief that accompanies all of life? 

She said she honestly couldn't know.

We couldn't stay. 

But before we left, I sat with dad for two days. There was no moment of clarity, no final deathbed summation of all the wisdom he wanted to give. There were no epiphanies for either of us. But I sat beside him in a vigil unlike any other before or after. I sat there beside him, just to be there. 

Mom didn't want to come--couldn't, she said; my sisters took care of her needs. That left me. I spent two full days at my father's bedside, alone, watching him pitch in his sleep and moan. I didn't know what dying looked like, but if it was any worse than what he was doing, I'd much prefer not to know. 

Still, consider yourself blessed if you're not surprised when I say I count those days as among the most radiant of my life. It's possible he knew I was there, but less likely that he did. The thing is, I knew I was there watching out for him, my father.

"It was hard work, dying," Sutphen says in that warm poem above. For Dad, it was. I was with him. I know.

We went home to Iowa. We had to. A week later or so, he died. Some odd kind of heartburn woke me that night. I sat at the side of the bed and looked at the clock.

He was 500 miles east, but somehow I know I was with him at the end.