Friends of Dave #429: 💙 the long goodbye 💛💜
The Life Changing Call -- The End
NOTE: this is the last installment of this story. If you need to catch up, here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. The final chapter is below — there are no links following the preamble this week. Thanks again for reading along and letting me tell you this deeply personal, life changing story.
Final Chapter
My entire family got together for Christmas Eve dinner this year — my parents, my wife and I, my two sisters and their spouses and all of our collective kids (making eight grandkids in total, ranging in age from 13 to 26).
It was a festive affair, complete with a partly NSFW “Yankee Swap” organized by my oldest daughter (who is also the oldest grandchild). This year was actually a tame and somber version of this Christmas Eve tradition we started a few years ago — but to many outside of our family, it would seem pretty over the top, especially given the seriousness of my Dad’s condition.
But what can I say? That’s just how we roll, Friends. 🤷♂️
It had been over a year since my father had been first diagnosed with Stage 4 bladder cancer. Since the beginning we tried to keep things as normal as possible for everyone, as my Dad is not one who can stand for emotional pity parties.
But, given the seriousness of his diagnosis, the past year felt very much like a Long Goodbye.
Loyal readers of the FoD might remember six years ago, the preamble where I mentioned my father in-law passing away. Looking back, that was a Short Goodbye — while my father in-law had been sick, his downward decline was relatively steep and the end came suddenly. There wasn’t a lot of time to tie up loose ends, finish the unfinished business, say what needed to be said and give our final hugs and kisses (in fact, my wife had just gotten to work when she got a call from her brother that her Dad had passed away at home early that morning).
With my Dad’s case, it felt the opposite — it was definitely a long, drawn out farewell.
Friends, think about it — what is worse: the Short Goodbye or the Long Goodbye?
The Short Goodbye is devastating in that it happens so fast. You get caught off guard with a flood of emotions in a compressed time frame. There is most likely going to be words unsaid and unfinished business that needs to be rationalized. But the upside is that you are not on a roller coaster ride leading up to the end — it’s more like a quick elevator drop.
The Long Goodbye is devastating because it is a painful, emotional journey that spans months (and in some cases years). You have to process feelings like hope, fear, anger, sadness, nostalgia, maybe even denial — sometimes all in the course of a few hours over many days. It’s like when you were a kid and you knew you were going to the doctor to get a shot.
The waiting is the hardest part.
But with the Long Goodbye, at least you are given time to tie up loose ends, say what needs to be said and hopefully get some measure of closure.
I don’t know how you feel about it — I suppose everyone is different in how they process emotions. Me? I am so grateful to have been given time to have a Long Goodbye with my Dad. I think he, as someone who lived life on his own terms and felt comfort in having some measure of control over all details of his existence, may have been too.
That said, I wish I could report that Santa brought good news for my father this past Christmas. He didn’t.
On December 26, despite looking healthy and feeling pretty good, he received news that his scans showed no meaningfully positive progress. My Dad knew this meant he was likely going to get dropped from the Dana-Farber study. He was given the official news a day later.
If you like to mix metaphors — the Hail Mary pass fell incomplete and for the first time ever, he was unable to close the biggest, most impossible deal of his life.
His options were simple:
Go back on chemotherapy, lose his hair again, feel like 💩and wage a battle he knew he was ultimately going to lose in return for maybe 1 or 2 extra months of life
Live out the remainder of his days (which he was told could be anywhere from weeks to months) without treatment, paying close attention to his nutrition and his rest until his liver ultimately failed.
Staying on brand, my father, who never negotiated a deal on someone else’s terms, took what was behind Door #2.
He processed all of the information from his charts, his doctors and what he learned from his own research. He quickly rationalized a plan: he’d rather try to live his life and extend his own runway than deal with the BS from chemo with a unlikely return on the investment.
Thoughtful, organized and driven. He also still had things to do — and he was bound and determined to do it with same calm focus, discipline and precise planning he always did.
My parents are fortunate to have a place in Arizona where they spend their winters (some of you might recall I wrote in a past preamble here about them spending COVID there). Once they got the news that he was no longer required to go to Dana-Farber in Boston, my Dad booked flights for them to go — and because he was not sure if the doctor’s were going to recommend he come back or when, he booked one way tickets….
We all thought the idea was for him to go on some walks with my Mom, enjoy the sun and warmth away from the damp, bitter cold winter we were experiencing in the Northeast. I told him, for old times sake, I thought he should drive his car really fast at least one more time…so fast he got a speeding ticket (for such a mild mannered guy, the man was probably issued no less than 20 speeding tickets in his lifetime….at this point, what would be a big deal about another?).
I guess my Dad had a few other ideas — he had been putting together a to-do list of all of the things he needed to get done before time ran out.
About three days after he got to Arizona, my Dad called me again out of the blue…..again, when this happens, it is usually serious.
“Dave, I need you to come down to Arizona if you can spare a few days. I have a bunch of things here on my List I need to walk through with you.”
Ah, it was about The List…..not “You’re never going to believe it, I got caught going 134 in a 40.” or “Your mother and I saw the most beautiful sunset last night.” or “Hey, Dave, I need you to get my baseball glove so we can have a catch.”
Always intentional, with a purpose, precise with his words. That is just how he is wired.
So on MLK Day I flew to Arizona (my sister who also lives in the Boston area, also flew down with me). My Dad looked good — a little weaker and slower than he was when I saw him two weeks before, but he looked good.
We replaced light switches. We discussed apps on his phone. We went over spreadsheets and log-in passwords (Friends, my father the engineer, built an actual COMPLEX SYSTEM for password generation that I swear could be patented). We talked about car maintenance schedules.
I’m not going to lie — it felt kinda like I was being groomed to be a combination of Schneider from “One Day at a Time” and an in-house Geek Squad agent. But I suppose this was one of the benefits of the Long Goodbye — not to mention we were spending time together the way he wanted.
On the day before I had to leave, two big things happened — first, we took a family trip to the mortuary and cemetery to make my Dad’s final arrangements. While it was a little strange to be doing this with him there, talking about cremation options and interment processes was actually cathartic. It made my Dad happy to have some control and it helped demystify what was going to happen when we got to The End. We were actually cracking jokes in the car before and after each of our appointments.
Then, later in the day, my father’s oncologist called him to check in to see how he was doing. She also suggested that, given the severity of the weather in the Northeast (particularly the cold temperatures), he should just stay put in Arizona. There was no medical reason for him to return home given that he wasn’t doing treatment.
My father decided he would ride it out to The End there — it was the happiest I had seen him in months. My parents 55th wedding anniversary was coming up a week later — they would be able to celebrate it together in a place they both loved.
They put a call into the local hospice to make initial contact and get a consultation for whenever he needed regular care. He intended to live out his last days at home — sleeping in his own bed, eating his own food and doing the things he wanted to do. On his own terms.
Things went downhill fast from there. We got daily updates from my mother, mostly via text, and we could tell from the tone that it was not great.
Just two weeks from when that picture above was taken, on the Friday before the Super Bowl, I got a mid afternoon call from my Mom out of the blue. I knew it was serious.
“Dave, your Dad has declined significantly over the past few days. The hospice nurse came today and suggested you and your sisters get out here right away. It’s not much longer.”
That’s all we needed to hear. By mid-morning the next day, we were all there at his bedside. He looked 20 years older than he was. Ever the perfectionist, he had spent most of the last week frantically trying to get as much stuff done on his List as he could……my Dad couldn’t do any more. He was tired.
It was good to talk with him that Saturday afternoon. He recounted a story about a problem he had getting his Windows based laptop to work the previous morning. He got so annoyed he slammed the laptop shut and my Mom came into the room and asked him what was wrong.
Now moving and talking slower and frustrated with how hard things were getting to do, my father, the professionally trained computer programmer carefully chose his response:
“F^CK BILL GATES!” he croaked.
Always intentional, speaking with a purpose, precise with his words. On brand to The End. My Mom, Dad, sisters and I all had a good laugh together — it was the last one we had as a family.
It’s a bit ironic that my father was able to make it to Super Bowl Sunday. Both of my parents love football and the Super Bowl was always an annual event in our house growing up. A story my Dad told me as a kid about his college days was about watching the very first Super Bowl on a make-shift set of “bleachers” in his freshman dorm. One of my earliest and fondest childhood memories was sitting in our family room, eating dinner as a young family in front of the TV while watching the Steelers play the Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII.
Many of you long long time FoDs likely came to a few Super Bowl parties my parents hosted years ago — if you did you will agree that there was always awesome food, good company, fun times and great memories.
This year, there was no party. My Mom tried to make it festive, but understandably no one’s heart was into the game. We kinda half watched the game as my Dad struggled to maintain consciousness — his body was failing him but his mind was still there. He still had things he wanted to do and did not want to leave.
We were all getting ready for bed about an hour or so after the game ended when my Mom calmly and bravely delivered the news to my sisters and me: our father, my mother’s best friend, had passed away.
My Mom, my sisters and I then walked into his room. It was the first time I had ever seen someone right after they died. I gave him a hug, a kiss on the forehead, thanked him for all that he had done for me and told him I loved him one last time.
We sat there quietly waiting for a hospice nurse and undertaker to come take my father from his house one last time…each of us processing the moment and our feelings….the waiting is the hardest part.
A year and half ago I sat in a hospital worried I was the one who was going to need to finish business and tie up loose ends. The universe, however, had other plans.
And just like that, the Long Goodbye was over.
My Dad was gone and, while I am at peace with it, my life will never be the same.
XOXO
Dave
