Will Love Give Us the Courage to Let Our Dad Go?

I believe the cruelest thing a human can experience is burying their child. While the only thing guaranteed in life, from the moment we take our first breath to our last, is death, for a parent to bury a child is not the natural progression of life.

For more than six years, I have watched my Dad go through rounds of chemotherapy, years of dialysis, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations where doctors advised against further medical treatment—until my brother vehemently fought for it. If you ever need a medical advocate, you should hire him. Perhaps it is the lawyer in him that convinces doctors to shift their medical opinions.

My Dad asked, and my brother passionately advocated for him for days so he could receive his first round of chemotherapy more than six years ago, which the doctor at first refused to administer since it was an unusual treatment for his autoimmune disease. He would have passed away within a matter of months without it. He did squats after his first chemotherapy. Now, he is in a diaper, on a hospital bed, and has asked that he be cremated.

Another doctor, who shall remain nameless, wanted to transfer my Dad, who was unconscious and in critical condition, to hospice when he was admitted earlier this week. That doctor’s name is like Voldemort in our family, never to be said out loud, especially in front of my brother. When I asked what his name was, I was told to look at the board. The doctor saw no hope. My brother, who is our Dad’s medical proxy, spent days at the hospital beside our dying father, advocating for treatment even if there was less than a 1% chance.

With fought-for treatment, a miracle happened. With the aid of a physical therapist, he got out of bed and took about 20 steps with the support of the therapist and a walker less than an hour ago. And as I sit by him, seeing the man who has shrunk to half his size, I wonder if the recent heroic efforts and sacrifices my Mom and brother have made are in the best interest of my Dad. It isn’t a criticism. I don’t think either of them is ready for a world without him. I think they fear grief, perhaps their regret over the life that could have been with him. My brother may be experiencing a form of PTSD from when his oldest child survived advanced leukemia. I am not questioning their love, but I see love and death very differently from them. Perhaps differently from most of the world.

My Dad has been married to my Mom for more than fifty years, and he has two adult children in their fifties and three grandsons in their twenties. I wouldn’t dare to score his life; that solely belongs to him. Even giving him ice water at this point requires a check-in with a nurse.

I am a believer that death ends all. I am not scared of death. I am afraid of dying, the process that drags out rather than arriving in an instant. I wouldn’t regret death as long as I don’t have to endure prolonged immobility and pain. After all, the only thing guaranteed in life is death, so fighting to keep living without hope of recovery, or even a better quality of life as death is postponed, isn’t something I would opt for myself. Just because modern medicine can keep me breathing, it doesn’t mean I am living. Living should be defined by quality and not by quantity.

I don’t know what my Dad wishes for. It isn’t like I can ask him if he wishes to die, an unusual discomfort for me as someone who is generally comfortable asking direct questions and sitting with difficult answers. I do know that he passed on a kidney transplant a couple of months ago, which would have prolonged his life if successful, and agreed to hospice care while drifting in and out of consciousness a few days ago.

I admit that our relationship is complex. I love him, but I have bouts of resentment that are rooted in a traumatic childhood. I know he has loved and still loves me, and that he will love me until his last breath. I’ve learned through my parents that people show up with love differently, and it isn’t our role to judge how they love, but to see it enough from their perspective to acknowledge it. I have carefully examined my feelings as his health slowly deteriorated. If my feelings were leading with resentment rather than love, I wouldn’t care about his suffering.

I went to most of his chemotherapies before the Covid pandemic prevented it. I cheered him on, but I saw regret reflected in my Dad’s expression on the other side of the glass sliding door while we spent one Christmas during the pandemic in my parents’ front yard, along with other family members, as he watched.

And since then, that quiet regret has remained on his face and spread to his voice. Once a loud man, I now have to strain to hear what he says and ask him to repeat himself.

I don’t believe holding on is the only form of love. Sometimes, letting go takes as much love. It isn’t that I wish my Dad would pass away. The thought itself makes me emotional, but I don’t want him to suffer anymore. I don’t want him to just breathe. That isn’t living. If there is nothing left for him in breathing except pain and immobility after over eighty years of life, then isn’t it kinder, perhaps, to let him go rather than intervene with every medical treatment available? Perhaps our love for him should give us enough courage to lose him while ensuring he is as comfortable as possible, until his life naturally proceeds to the moment he leaves us in peace rather than agony.

_____

More essays:
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Confessions of a Former Poll Worker

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