A Father's Day Special

Introduction:

While I was rooting through my writings searching for inspiration, I came upon this piece I wrote sometime in 2021 while the Pandemic still raged and before my mother passed on June 21, 2021. I’d forgotten all about it, and on this upcoming Father’s Day, it feels right to publish on my blog. So here it goes.

Revisiting the Pandemic Years:

My mother believes she has earned the right to die before my dad does. In 2010 when Mom was in her early seventies, she went through several back-to-back surgeries and stayed in the hospital for over five months. She wasn’t expected to recover, but she did, so now her health issues keep my dad, my four siblings and me on our toes. That is, until Dad was diagnosed with a malignant mass in one of his lungs in November 2019.

Dad doesn’t want Mom to find out about his diagnosis because she is terrified he will pass before she does. So, when she asks, “Why are you going to the hospital so often?” He replies, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing major. It’s just a tiny spot in my lungs, probably from all the coughing these last fifty years.” Dad has a persistent and awful-sounding cough that comes and goes with the seasons. Mom seems to believe his explanation, and so the charade continues to keep her in the dark.

You see, since Mom has had more surgeries than body parts to sustain them, the family treats her like fragile porcelain. She hunches over from osteoporosis and her gait is uncertain from having shrivelled toes, an unintended consequence of those surgeries. As ailments plague her non-stop, Dad spends a good amount of his time chauffeuring her to and from the doctors’ offices, and he also ensures she eats her meals.

When Dad is diagnosed with lung cancer, I rail at the injustice, especially because he has never smoked a cigarette in his eighty-seven years of existence. Until 2020, anaesthesia was just a word he couldn’t pronounce. He even escaped the surgeon’s knife when, at the age of forty-five, an armed robber’s bullets intending to kill managed to lodge harmlessly in his belly fat. The only physical effect—he’s proud to point out—is that he still carries a doctor’s note to explain away the beeping at airport security checkpoints.

Now his doctor wants to operate on his right lung.

Mom is getting suspicious about Dad’s hospital and doctor visits. My siblings and I take turns driving him to his appointments, and we aid and abet Dad in lying to Mom about the reasons. She has a short memory these days, so she rarely follows up. In any case, would her confused brain recognize our whitewashing of the truth? Perhaps she wants to believe these stories as much as we do too.

And then on March 11, 2020, the surgery occurs. 

I sit in a waiting lounge at Michael Garron Hospital with my phone, scrolling down an article that’s not even a speck in my memory today. When I glance up at the television screen, a headline flashes, “The World Health Organization has declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.” My consciousness doesn’t register the implication. Mere words, and yet the announcer sounds like she’s insisting I pay attention. 

As if compelled by an unknown force, I watch and I listen. Concern creeps in. How will this impact Dad’s hospitalization and whether we will be allowed to visit him over the next few days? The surgeon has already delivered the news that Dad’s surgery went “as expected” as if calling it a success might hold him to a higher standard. Still “as expected” is good news because it means that the cancer appears to have been completely removed.

Dad stays in the intensive care unit (ICU) for two nights even though he was initially scheduled for one. He is experiencing significant discomfort with his bladder and needs a catheter to relieve himself. Despite that, the attending doctor is eager to discharge him after four nights, after all, a pandemic is raging and even Dad’s surgeon has lost visiting rights.

Two days after Dad leaves the hospital, the Premier of Ontario shuts down the entire province except for essential services, and over the next few years, “social distancing” becomes the most used and misused term.

For my family, the lock-down comes at the most inopportune time. Being released from the hospital doesn’t mean Dad has recovered. One of us still needs to fill his prescriptions at the local pharmacy. Although he’s received the optimistic prognosis that the catheter is no longer required, that’s far from the truth. By nightfall that same day, my brother has to shuttle him back to the closest hospital where a fresh catheter is re-inserted. More visits to the hospital and other healthcare facilities ensue. The lock-down is an inconvenience my siblings and I don’t have the luxury to observe.

And then Mom suddenly develops cankers in her mouth. She experiences severe back pains. She demands to see her physician, lockdown or no. She insists that we attend to her needs immediately. Although x-rays confirm a fracture, I suspect she is feeling neglected or vulnerable as Dad is no longer her rock in his current state. Also, he is getting all the attention.

More than ten months after the surgery, my parents have resumed their normal lives, whatever normal means during a pandemic and a second lockdown. Dad doesn’t need to see an oncologist and appears to be healthy. He exercises outdoors but he misses his lap-swims at the community pool. He manages to socially connect with his friends while keeping a physical distance of at least two metres. Weather permitting, he drives Mom to the park too.

Meanwhile, Mom grumbles about her TV shows more than she does her aches and pains. She believes Dad is conspiring to turn her remote control into a complicated toy. Going out is a chore. When my sisters and I video-chat with my parents, more often than not, she asks, “Are you coming over to visit?” She’s been told many times we’re not allowed to visit in person.

It’s hard to see Mom as she is today. I remember moments in my childhood when the longing to see my mother felt so visceral it ached, and nothing could assuage that yearning except her presence. The first time I left home at the age of eight to study at a boarding school, I sat in a classroom not understanding a word of English. My teacher pointed to a picture of a mother in my textbook, and I nodded, swallowing a lump in my throat and fighting tears. All I wanted then, was for my mother to hold me, but she was far away, an overnight-train journey away.

Now Mom lives in Canada, minutes away from me, but the roles have reversed. My siblings and I speak English most of the time even though she has limited comprehension. She feels neglected when the family’s attention shifts away from her health. She feels all her aches and pains more when we’re focusing on Dad. She wants to be reassured we’re not dismissing her. One day, probably in the not-too-distant future, she will leave us for good, and nothing will bring her back, not all the rivers I cried as a child. I don’t want to live with the regret of knowing I didn’t make her as comfortable as possible. Her needs are little. She just wants to see or hear from us once a week. She doesn’t care to go out. She doesn’t want gifts, nothing but a few hellos from her children. Is that too much to ask?

Mom recognizes her mortality and reminds us whenever she can that she would have been better off without those life-saving surgeries over ten years ago. “Don’t say that, Mom. You can’t seriously believe it,” one of us chirps. Dad too recognizes his mortality and is grateful his surgery has removed a cancerous growth. These days Mom is barely mobile, but Dad is. Mom lives the same day over and over. Dad can’t swim or hang out in coffee shops like he did before the pandemic, but he connects with his friends and family on social media chats, by phone or in person when possible. 

Present Day:

As I update this, I see the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, and it feels like life is slipping through my fingers. Over four years have passed since the WHO declared the global Pandemic. Our family has endured insurmountable losses like the passing of my mother. She took her last breath with a full entourage of ambulance, police cruisers and fire truck present. My mother couldn’t have commanded more attention than on that fateful Father’s Day 2021.

We’re grateful that at ninety going on ninety-one later this year, Dad is still fiercely independent. He’s annoyingly repetitive with the same stories he loves to regale, and that’s precisely why this family wouldn’t trade him for any other dad.