That's a question no one ever wants to answer. I stood in my kitchen, dinner sizzling forgotten on the stove. 400 miles away, a team of doctors and nurses fought to restart my father's heart.
"Carla?" The social worker's voice broke across my ear. "I'm sorry, hon, but we need an answer right now."
"Stop resuscitation." The words came out so easily, so clinically. Within minutes my dad was dead.
It was a strange and unexpected end. Some part of me thinks that the decision should have been harder. Sadder. Instead I sound detached, even callous, organizing for the body to be picked up and calling my aunts to let them know their last brother had passed as if I hadn’t just given the order to let him die.
I've waited for the tears, the wave of grief, left room for it--but it has yet to come. I honestly don't know if it will. A decade of silence lay between us. He was a vague footnote to his grandchildren, not Grandpa. The younger ones didn't know him at all. Even for me, he's more of an emotional memory than a tangible one.
He was the great and terrible god of my childhood. So much of myself was shaped around his approval. I wanted to be as clever and funny and strong as he was. I didn't mind his darkness because it wasn't usually directed at me. I made excuses for his drinking, ignored his slights, avoided his wrath, stood aside as he crushed my brother. And then he divorced my mom and walked away completely. I saw him only intermittently after my sophomore year. The calls were even fewer. The handful of occasions I saw him as an adult were successively more unpleasant, more casually cruel or dismissive. Finally I stopped seeking him out altogether.
So no, I'm not surprised that I'm not sad. I grieved my father years ago. What bothers me is that now any chance of reconciliation is past. I won't have a chance to see my dad again. His grandchildren won't know him. There are memories already fading, and stories that will never be told. It's the loss of what might have been that stirs the most grief. Everything else has long since passed.
Everything except the guilt. And perhaps I deserve it. What kind of unnatural daughter has such an easy time making the call to let her father die? I know that's not fair. Life isn't simple, and neither are people. All sorts of things can be true. The man who called me fat two weeks after having a baby is the same man who brought me home from the hospital and crawled on hands and knees to keep from dropping his newborn baby girl on the icy steps. He had a conflicted relationship with his own parents but still wanted more than anything to be a father, then alienated both of his children. I could spend thousands of words defending him and crucifying him and be justified in every syllable. I know everything's complicated. However, death has an odd way of simplifying things. After all, when the game is done, there's no point continuing to keep score.
Until we meet again, Dad. Hopefully we'll both do better next time.
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