On January 22, 2022, my Dad died. My theme, “Letters to my Dad” is based on random thoughts about him and the aftermath of not having him around anymore.

Hey Dad,

We never talked about it but for a man who loved his freedom, the isolation must have been heavy for you. And the constraints of the pandemic truly didn’t help us, did it?

Deciding to stay indoors because you have a choice is much different than being forced to stay in due to illness and a pandemic…

But we did our best to keep you from feeling isolated and alone.

From the moment you were diagnosed, you were never left alone. We made sure of it. You even boasted about it to others about how well taken care of you were. We gladly took shifts and would do it again in a heartbeat if we could.

I didn’t think that it was possible for us to be at the house more than we already were (pre-cancer) but I was wrong – it was more than possible. The house was always our ground zero and it soon became the same for the grandkids who started dropping in so much more, sanitized and masked up, at all hours.

It was sweet, very sweet.

We tried to fill the non-hospital appointment and no chemotherapy time with a bunch of different things to switch things up for you – watching the old movies you love on TCM and Silver Screen, treating you to manicures and pedicures (à la Marquessa), buying all the food stuff you would only indulge in at Christmas and holidays, running out to the corner store to buy your lottery tickets and no longer teasing you about wasting money on them, going for very short walks with your walker and slightly longer rides in your wheelchair for fresh air…

I even introduced you to some of my favorite podcasts and finally got you to understand the difference between a podcast, Youtube and “that google music machine thing”.

Or maybe you were just pretending to understand – hahaha. 🙂

I truly enjoyed listening and chatting about them – you in your Lazyboy and me on the couch – and wished we had chatted about some of those podcasts topics about life experiences long before you got sick.

Better late than never, I guess.

In the week before you passed when you were agited and weak, I loved how you smiled when we took you to the mall where we used to spend so much time. But it was also so very sad knowing that it was likely the last time you would ever visit it again.

Dad, I pray that our best was good enough to take your mind off things, even if it just for little moments of time.

But I know that no matter what we did, the “apartness” of being terminally ill must still have made you feel isolated.

Loving you always,

M