One year ago...

I made the biggest mistake I can remember making.

My father was dying. We knew this. Over the last few days he had nearly stopped eating. The lung cancer that had metastasized and taken up residence in his bones was winning. We knew it would, he knew it would - but we thought he had a few months to live. They told us at the end of July that he had two to nine months to live.

The 31st was a Friday. Wednesday of that week my mother had called and said she thought he wasn't going to be with us much longer. I called the girls in Vegas right after that phone call and told them they needed to get to Indiana if they wanted to see their grandfather before he died. Nova had been there in July. Aluna had taken a new job that summer and did not feel that she could take time off. When I told her she needed to get to Indiana now, she went to her new boss and got the time off and made plans to fly herself, Nova and Tay out the following Tuesday.

What was my mistake you ask? The mistake I made was putting my job and my normal life ahead of my father and my family. In all honesty, none of us expected him to pass that day. So I went to work in the morning with plans to leave around noon.

It's a 10-hour drive from Winona to my parent's home in Linton Indiana. If I had piled everyone in the car and left early in the day we would have made it in time.

Instead, leaving at noon meant that we were somewhere between Bloomington/Normal and Danville, Illinois when my brother called to tell us that my father had passed away. They told me that he knew - as much as one can know in the final hours of life - that we were coming, but he just could not wait for us to be there. He died at 8:45pm.

I wasn't there. Forever I will know that my decision to work those 4 or 5 hours meant that I was racing down a highway in a futile attempt to be there when my father died.

I hate it sometimes, that my family is so spread out over the country. I know something like this will happen again.

Strangely intimate...

Today I performed a strangely intimate task for my father - I brushed and cleaned his dentures. At first it made me a bit queasy. I do not know why - it was not gross (although he thought it might seem so to me so that when he asked me he said it was a nasty job and that I did not have to if I did not want to...) but it felt way too personal. I did not even know that his upper teeth were dentures. Whoever made that plate for him made them look just like his original teeth, right down to the gold capped bicuspid he has always had (when I was young and would loose a tooth he would tell me if I could keep from putting my tongue in empty socket my new tooth would grow in gold like his) and the uneven bite that makes his smile so memorable.
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I do not mind using my physical strength to help my father. It is not a big deal to help him move from a prone to a sitting position (although since they gave him a trapeze above his hospice bed he can do it for himself). I do not mind lifting him into his pickup truck. It makes me feel both helpful and powerful to do those things - like a good daughter. Those are things that do not intrude on my comfort level. They cost me nothing, in fact, if I am honest with myself, I think I feed off of them. They make me feel good when I do them.

Cleaning his dentures was different. He hated to ask, but he cannot stand without keeping both hands on his walker. So cleaning his dentures at the bathroom sink is not possible for him to do. Cleaning them in his bed would be a messy, daunting task. He does not want to use the wheel chair inside the house, not yet anyway. I suppose someday he might have to...

Anyway, while cleaning his dentures I felt uneasy, kind of fluttery and odd. It seemed so deeply personal. For years I brushed my kid's teeth every morning and evening. But this was so different, cleaning the disembodied teeth of my father.

I was not sure how to go about cleaning the dentures, so I just slathered them with toothpaste and scrubbed them with his toothbrush. I know I keep going on about how strange it was, but I cannot think of another word to describe it. Anyway, as I scrubbed the teeth and gums it became sort of a meditative exercise (maybe zen, although I do not know exactly what constitutes "zen") and it became supremely important to do this task perfectly for my father.

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