re: re: things to do after your dad dies
I'm not fully sure if that's how the title should be since I've never done a post like this before, but fuck it. We'll do it live.
I first saw Absurd Pirate's post a few days back, which then led me to Chloe's post. Similar to AP it made me want to share my own experience about losing my dad, because I haven't really talked about it properly in the five years since it happened.
Maybe this would help - be it me or someone else - somehow.
Of course, before I continue, I'm going to first offer my condolences towards Chloe. The first few months are some of the hardest, and while I unfortunately don't have an email set up yet to attach to this blog for someone to reach out to, I do hope you're doing as well as you can be during this incredibly tough time.
Big ol' trigger warning for talk about death as we go on.
First, some background context. Da had a major brain hemorrhage when I was ten. He survived the experience but was fundamentally changed. Short-term memory wasn't the best, and every handful of years he'd have a seizure that would require a hospital stay for a while.
He had a medication change in early 2021 and it made him a little... dazed. More so than usual. It all came to a head when he had one of the previously mentioned seizures and ended up in the hospital while they tried to pin down what the issue was.
The day before he died, Ma and I went to visit him. Covid restrictions were still in place then, so he could only have one visitor at a time. I walked Ma up to his little room, said hello, and he asked where I was going as I moved to go back down to the car and wait until visiting time was over. "Rules say it's only one at a time," I'd said. "I'll see you tomorrow. Love you."
Those ended up being the last words I said to him.
When Ma left that day, he was in a good mood. He'd been improving and was even eating dinner when visiting time ended. We went home, did our usual daily routine, and went to bed. I was woken up the next morning by Ma shouting that we needed to get to the hospital ASAP, that she got a call, and that something had happened.
We get there, and the doctor takes us into a quiet little room. The kind where every outside noise is muffled, like you're underwater. I think something deep in me knew then, at that point, what had happened before he told us. During the night Da had a second seizure, but this one was bad enough to cause such a massive brain bleed that he couldn't recover in any way. It was just a matter of time until he stopped breathing, and we needed to call the family.
Ma broke down right there, in that little room. I... went into some sort of dissociative state? I don't quite know how else to describe it. I just knew that Ma couldn't handle any of the things that needed doing at that moment, so I did them on autopilot. I called her sister first, who told me my cousin would come up for me so we could go find family that didn't pick up the phone. Then I call Da's side. The script is the same: "This is it. It's a matter of time. You need to be here."
Family starts pouring in slowly over the next hour or two. Da had eight siblings, and Ma had twelve, so there's a lot. Covid restrictions suddenly don't matter anymore as everyone hovers around my clearly distraught mother, taking turns to go in and see Da and say whatever they want to him. I leave with my cousin to briefly return home and inform our neighbors who'd want to know.
Then we go back to the hospital and play the horrible waiting game. Waiting has always been something I've hated, be it for a phone call, in some sort of line, or in a doctor's office waiting for my name to pop up to be seen. But here, in that moment, time seems to slow to an absolute crawl.
Eventually, somehow, I dozed off sitting next to one of my relatives. Again, I was woken up by my mother screaming. He'd finally stopped breathing, and was gone. Strangely, I felt a sense of... relief. In the way that I was glad he wasn't suffering anymore, at least.
After that things get... fuzzy.
The following days involving the wake and funeral are a bit of a blur, my memory retaining bits and pieces. I remember helping relatives move furniture around the house to prepare for his body returning home. The first thing I did was take down every mirror, covering the ones I couldn't.
I remember talking to the priest, organizing the readings and hymns to be used during mass. I remember one of my aunts - one of Da's sisters that lives in England - boast (for some fucking reason) that she brought all the family together again in that moment. I didn't confront her about it at the time, even though I wanted to. It wouldn't have helped.
I remember our next-door neighbor, one of Da's best friends, bent over the coffin sobbing about how he'll miss him. I remember another aunt drunkenly divulging the secret that she almost eloped with another man a few days before she got married.
I only remember three things about the day of the funeral itself. How seeing Ma collapse at our front door as Da was carried out broke my heart. How I couldn't help carry the coffin myself because I'm too short. How people kept asking if I was sick because I sounded different. My voice had changed because I'd started taking testosterone two months before all this, and I wasn't publicly out as trans yet.
After that is just white noise. That's not even a metaphor. I don't remember the latter half of 2021, which is... not great, but I've since learned that it's a more common reaction than I initially thought. Even now I'm still not sure how to handle grief. For me, it embraces me in its overwhelming grasp in the quiet moments when no one can see me. And that's fully a me problem I need to work on.
On one hand I'm glad we got the 25 years with him after the initial haemorrhage that could have taken him from us much earlier. But sometimes when I make something spicy, I think that he'd love it if he were still here. I have a playlist with all his favourite songs I listen to now and then. Sometimes I consider adding newer songs to it I think he'd like if he were still around. I felt the loss the most after top surgery, thinking that he should be here and how proud he'd be of me for going through with it. He was my biggest ally since I changed my name sixteen years ago.
... I realise now I'm not really sure how to wrap this up. Thank you if you stuck around until the end. It couldn't have been easy to read. It certainly wasn't easy to write. Hug your loved ones, and if you can't, send a message or something. I'll be back eventually with something less heavy.