After I read The Grieving Room by exmearden here I wanted to reply with a comment about my father's sudden death in 2001. But it got so freaking long, and became so involved, I decided to turn it into my first ever diary on DK. It looked fine to me in draft form, but feel free to tell me it's come out just half-baked. And much thanks for exmearden for the unconscious inspiration.
My father died very suddenly on December 22, 2001, exactly a week after his 78th birthday. Company was due later that afternoon, so my mom and I were up about 6 am. Me to deliver two routes of the morning newspapers. My mom to work on her final (technically), and last minute shopping list (she is one of those moms who feel guilty if her company is for one minute left unfed, unhydrated, and unentertained).
Dad was still asleep (as we thought), so I picked up the bag containing the first route of papers and headed out into the frosty morning. Half an hour later,all the papers delivered, I called home on the walkie-talkie for Dad to come with the rest of the papers (the second route was on the other side of town). I assumed he had to be up, dressed and breakfasted by now.
My mom answered and she just said, "I think you should come home."
So I came home and loaded up the rest of my papers. But just as I was leaving, my cat ran ahead of me to the front door. I told Mom, "Somebody needs to be held", because I knew Miss Chievous was planning to sneak out. Then my mom did something totally out of character. SHE trotted ahead and blocked my path to the door, then said, "You can't go on your route. Your father is dead."
I suppose my face turned white. She took me into their bedroom and invited me to touch him, but I didn't want to. This was my DAD, he was so full of life (after hernia surgery in August, he was getting back to a healthy weight and he said he felt great), he couldn't be gone! But he was.
Just like that.
Mom had gotten suspicious because of the way Dad was lying in bed. About 7 am she went up and touched his face, and it was cold. He had "woken up dead" as it were, and maybe it was best death had come to him in his sleep. Otherwise there would have been a fight. (to paraphrase an old eulogy I heard about Teddy Roosevelt) She didn't know who to call and she phoned her sister who lives next door. Auntie Myrt came running over in robe and slippers while her husband called Nine-One-One.
First came a cop, then the EMTs, then a friend of Dad's who had a scanner. Followed by a man from Koepsell's Funeral Home, but we had to wait nearly an hour for the coroner.
In the days after his death, I would stop on the way past my parent's bedroom and look in at his bed, and I guess I expected to see him sitting on the end of it and putting on his socks. Missy would walk around the house as if looking for him (he was her pal because he let her play rough and bite him), friends dropped in to bring food and reminicences (sp?).
His funeral was held on a freezing cold night, the 26th of December. Despite the weather, despite the fact many of his friends were gone for the holidays, over 300 people signed the guest book at St. Mary's Catholic church. The burial the next day was private, except for an honor guard from the local legion post (he saw action as a Marine in the Pacific, just one of the 1,000 WW2 vets who died that day), who fired a salute and played "Taps" (on a boombox, but it was so cold, a trumpetor's lips would have frozen to his instrument!)
In the days that folllowed, the hardest part was setting my father's affairs in order. He'd never left clear instructions as to his wishes. So we, his children and his widow had to feel our way in our grief. Coping has gotten better with time because it eventually salves (if not heals) all wounds.
It's gotten easier to touch his things in the past few years: the crossword puzzle books, the books about Marines in WWII, legal notepads with his distinctive handwriting on them, his bottle of Iron cologne which smelled quite despicably. I found a box of those Marine books, and "Leatherneck" magazines in a box shoved into the attic and have been parceling them out to my siblings. A few months after his death, my brothers divvied up his hunting rifles between themselves. I think my oldest brother got dad's beloved M-1 Garand.
Still in the attic is a big box of family photos, lots of them are of dad, thinner and with more hair: in fatigues on some Pacific island, in his white tux on his wedding day to Mom, in his Marine uniform, marching in Memorial Day parades with the rest of VFW Post 69, in a suit and tie at the weddings of my siblings, holding his grandchildren, etc,etc.
Now I can look at them without my throat tightening up, or my eyes misting up. The death of a loved one still hurts in a secret, deep place in the soul, but death is always inevitable. On the day he died, I tried to imagine him reborn into a new life. He would be lying in a crib somewhere and thinking, "Where am I? Where the hell are my pants? And why I am I wrapped in a pink blanket?"
Dad and Miss Chievous