I avoided saying goodbye to my dying father

When we brought my dad home for hospice care, the doctors said he had a few days, maybe weeks to live. I braced myself when he experienced a serious decline a few weeks later. This is it. I consulted the hospice binder for what to expect. Gurgling sounds when breathing-check; mottled colored limbs-check; cold hands and feet-check. All the signs of imminent death.

Death didn’t come until nearly four months later. My dad rebounded. He even started gaining weight. That’s when I realized I had been waiting around for him to die. And that I couldn’t enjoy my dad living if I was preoccupied with the idea of him dying.

My dad did not want to say goodbye. He avoided talking about the future. Instead, we discussed what we were going to eat that day and what story he would put on the front page that week. He had been running our family’s Vietnamese newspaper from home since the onset of the pandemic. Neither his prognosis nor COVID-19 disrupted his 36-year streak of reporting on news important to our local immigrant community.

So, I followed his cue. This was new for someone whose life was scheduled down to the minute. I liked being busy, and was constantly juggling the present and the future. Even during the pandemic, I packed my schedule with calls, partly from a desire to connect, partly from a want to feel wanted. My dad, as a newspaper publisher, was the same way. He liked being busy.

Even though I had always been close to my dad, it wasn’t until we chose hospice care at home did I consider moving in with him. The ability to work remotely during the pandemic made it easy for my two brothers and I to move home.

As a family, we were each learning how to be present with one another for the first time in our lives. Even when we were growing up, my parents were busy with work and we rarely saw them. Being present looked like my dad and his adult children turning the dining room table into a makeshift office as we silently did our own work together. It tasted like the labor-intensive baguettes my brother baked because my dad loved the crunchy crust and delicious soft, cottony inside. It felt like wrapping my dad’s head and feet in heated towels when I tucked him in at night. It sounded like him telling us frequently, “I have never been happier in my life.”

I decided to say yes to my dad’s every request rather than come up with reasons to say no. I built my patience by helping him with whatever he couldn’t do on his own. I stopped resenting having to do the same things over and over again. Having worked in the tech industry for years, I would normally find ways to automate or outsource these manual tasks. Striving for efficiency, in this case, would have made no sense.

I believe my dad decided to leave once he realized he would no longer be able to get out of bed by himself. When his hospice nurse told him he should only eat if he was hungry because food would no longer give him back his energy, he nodded as he took in her words. He said, “I have to think about that.” The next evening, he was having some trouble breathing. I gave him his scheduled pain killer. He fell asleep. I went back upstairs to work. An hour and a half later, my mom asked me to check in on him. He looked like he was napping. Except he didn’t respond when I tried to wake him.

My dad told no one he was in hospice care. The quarantine made hiding easy. He didn’t want anyone to pity him. After he passed, his friends expressed their surprise, “I had no idea he was sick!” “Whenever I asked about his health, he said he was fine,” and “He tricked me!”

As I consoled his friends, my first reaction was out of regret that he hadn’t given them an opportunity to say goodbye. Now I realize, this was his way of being present. From his hospital-style bed at home, hooked to an oxygen tank, my dad often had long telephone calls with his friends. When he became too tired to talk, he sent them text messages.

He asked them, “What do you think about …?”. He told them, “I appreciate you” and “I am enjoying this conversation.”

What he didn’t want to say, or hear, was, “I will miss you.”

After we lowered my dad’s coffin into the ground, his friends told me, “don’t cry. Don’t be sad. You need to move on.” What I know from past heartbreak is that the pain that accompanies grief eventually fades. I am not ready to let the pain become only a memory just yet.

Having to quarantine has allowed me to slow down and gave me reasons to say no so that I could have the time to say yes when it mattered the most. This includes giving myself time to think.

As more and more people get vaccinated and we feel more free to meet in-person again, I am trying not to get too distracted with preparing for “normal” life. I still need to address questions that emerged for me over these past few months:

What do I miss out on when I am thinking ahead about something else? Do I still crave the high of running from one activity to the next, from one group to the next? Or is it enough for me to enjoy being with whoever I am with, doing whatever we’re doing, with no agenda required?

I don’t know what my post-dad and post-pandemic life will look like yet.

I do know this: It’s okay that I wasn’t by my dad’s side when he took his last breath. And my dad didn’t want to deceive his friends.

Being present meant not having to say “goodbye.”