Stacey's Blog

I knew my dad had cancer six months before he actually died on April 29, 1993. One would think that six months was plenty of time to say good-bye to him and say the things to him I’ve always wanted to say. But the fact of the matter was, I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to my father. He had cancer long before he told me. He kept it to himself for as long as he could then when it became obvious to all of us that he had crossed that invisible line of no return, he let me in on his secret.

In retrospect, part of the reason he waited so long to tell me was that he wasn’t ready to let go. He wasn’t ready to say good-bye to his family, his friends, his pharmacy, and his faithful dog that kept him company on the couch in our den when he came home after a long day of pushing pills to the rich and famous of Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, he was in denial about his imminent death right to the end. I know because I was there when he drew his last breath.

My mother had spent a grueling night with dad and at about five in the morning she came into the room where I was staying and asked me to be with him while she tried to get some sleep. Dad was lying on his right side, talking incoherently and moaning from the pain racking his body. He would sit up. Lie down. Sit up. Lie down. He asked for some more of the pain medication that could only be administered to him through an eye dropper. I gave him a little bit of the Roxinol then got him to lie down again. I was sitting behind him, rubbing his back and then I said the words that I didn’t want to say, but words I knew someone had to say and that someone was me. I told him it was time for him to let go. I told him good-bye but even as I said the words, they felt like they were coming out of the mouth of a stranger. I wasn’t ready to let him go and say good-bye. Not really. Even now I have days when I look back to the morning of April 29, 1993 and feel like I was watching a movie on Lifetime about someone else’s experience.

He was gone ten minutes later and as the process took place, the last word out of his mouth was “No!” He wasn’t ready to say good-bye either.

I’ve said good-bye to my dad and good-bye to both grandmothers and there are days when I wake up I wonder if this will be a day I have to say good-bye to someone else I love. When we spend time with people in our lives and say good-bye to them after dinner, after meeting a best friend for tea or after going on a long hike sometimes we wonder if the good-bye we say to them will be the last. And what if it is? What if?

We all have our way of dealing with the loss of someone close. Sometimes we get through the grieving quickly and sometimes we never get over the loss. Closure is an important aspect of letting go and the methods of closure run the gamut. Mine was simple. I took part of my dads’ ashes and backpacked far into the Sierra wilderness. I honored him by scattering his ashes amongst the terrain he loved. He introduced me to the mountains. He is the reason I reside in high altitude today.

I have a friend who has the ashes of her husband on the shelf in her bedroom while another friend took part of his wife’s ashes and had them mixed with oil paint. He had a local artist paint a portrait of his late wife with the oil and ash mixture and the portrait is now hanging up in the stairwell of his house. Eternal art.

Death isn’t the only reason we say good-bye to people. We fall in love. We fall out of love. We say good-bye. Sometimes we are still in love when we say good-bye. We say good-bye to our children when they go off into the world and we say good-by to the towns we grew up in so we can explore new places to live on the planet. What about the families and friends who said good-bye and bon voyage to the folks who didn’t survive the tragedy of the Titanic when it sank on April 15, 1912? They said temporary good-bye’s, not knowing that the good-byes were going to turn permanent.

I don’t particularly like saying goodbye to my kids when they have to leave after a wonderful visit. My granddaughter didn’t like saying goodbye to me when she was pulled from my arms and put into her carseat for the long ride back to Ventura but she’ll eventually learn that a small good-bye mean that a great, big “hello” is just around the corner.

Because many our good-bye’s can have sense of permanency maybe it’s time to change the words to something like, “See you later” because according to those folks who see people that have passed on to the other side, we will, without a doubt, see them later.

My earliest recollection of televised football was when I was still in single digits. We lived in a small suburban home in the heart of Reseda, California where we played in our front yards until the streetlamps reflected on the chrome of our Schwinn bicycles and the yellow Helm’s Bakery truck would make it’s final daily run, pulling out trays of freshly baked doughnuts and sweet rolls, decades before Atkins and South Beach diets were even conceived.

On those balmy Sunday mornings when my dad didn’t have to make his 40 mile trek into Beverly Hills in order to cater to the whims of the rich and famous in need of pharmaceutical accouterments and advice, he would settle himself comfortably in the old leather Lazy Boy chair with our dog Spanky snuggled on his lap. The RCA television would be showcasing the football game for the week and because remotes were a thing of the future, during football season on those Sunday afternoons, the television stayed on one station.

My dad would be glued to the game and my mother went about her motherly business of schlepping us kids somewhere or going grocery shopping to get the ingredients for one of the five things she might make for Sunday dinner. Not once did I ever hear her complain that my dad was glued to a football game all day.

A woman of independent means, I think my mother kind of liked it when he was entertained so she could do her own things. As a matter of fact I called her up and asked her about those days and she said she didn’t mind at all when my dad would watch the Rams slam themselves against the Broncos.

“I did things that your dad didn’t want to do like take you guys to the beach or have lunch with my friends or take you to the Topanga Plaza so you could go ice skating and I could go shopping,” she explained. “Your dad was on his feet all week long at the pharmacy and if he wanted to spend his Sundays reclining in front of our RCA, I didn’t care.”

I guess this upbringing of mine has contributed to my not caring if someone I’m with (namely my husband) gets involved in football season or tennis season or any other sport thing they (he) might want to watch on the telly. Unfortunately, that same female mentality doesn’t hold up in many of the households across the country.

I received an irate phone call from an acquaintance of mine who was miffed that her husband chose to watch three football games back to back rather than paying attention to her “honey do” list. Instead of using the time her husband was glued to tube to do things for herself she found it more convenient to rag on him and when he ignored her, she called me to rag on him. I have to admit I wasn’t very understanding. In fact, I was downright impatient with her. I told her to leave him alone and to find something else to do instead of wasting it on being mad at her husband because he wants to watch football. When I started to explain to her that in the big scheme of things football season only lasts until the end of January and that she should get a grip, she hung up on me. Did I mention my lack of patience?

I suppose if wives and girlfriends across the country are upset with their significant others during the season, they can blame technology. With so many viewing choices these days, including the invention of TIVO, the guys don’t have a chance. It was simpler back during the day when there was only one or two stations to choose from and no way to ‘record’ the game for later viewing but with so many choices in 2011….

My final word is this: Ladies, if your man is watching the Denver Broncos whip some butt on the screen when you think he should be fixing the toilet, take yourselves to your local hardware store, buy a book, and learn to fix things yourself. That way when he’s all “foot-balled” out and says, “Okay honey, what is it you wanted me to do?,” you can tell him that you did the chore yourself and the only thing he has to do is take you to dinner to that nice restaurant overlooking the lake. Everybody wins.