Several minutes before the clock hit the twenty-fourth hour, thirty-two days after Thanksgiving, fifteen days after his 70th birthday, two days after Christmas, four days before the new year, in 1999, my father took his last breath. According to my eldest sister, the nurse on duty was alerted but came into the room after midnight. As a result, the official record shows he died the following day. It’s strange how one remembers small things experienced in the midst of coping with grief.

My father was at death’s door throughout Thanksgiving and Christmas. As the years have accumulated, to lessen the awful memories of his death, I have rationalized that my father’s passing amid the holidays may have been a blessing. Thanksgiving and Christmas are about family and his journey on earth concluding during this period ensures that his spirit will always be close during the holiest time of the year. For Christians, the holidays are also about gifts. My father’s December death makes one cognizant that the most important gifts bestowed upon mortals are our parents. Without them, we would not have grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, in-laws, cousins, spouses, nephews, nieces or children.

Two months or so before the end, I drove my dad to the emergency room in his old Astrovan. Not long after that, my mother called to inform me that my father, aware that he would never come home again, wanted the chemo therapy to stop. In pain I could only imagine, I heard him in the background wailing. My father was as tough as a human can be. I had never heard him like that. I was shaken. My mother asked me what she should do. After doing some research, I called back to tell her to place him on a morphine drip in hospice care. In retrospect, I now wonder if I, the seventh of ten children, should have been the one making this life and death decision.

The number of years that have passed since my dad died equal a primitive generation. I’ve changed jobs, married and raised two children into adulthood. As a child, I remember time moving very slowly and decades seemed like a lifetime. Now, the memories of my stomach being in knots, not being able to eat or sleep, struggling to get out of bed, dreading visiting the hospital and not wanting to talk to anyone don’t seem that distant. 

The fact is that the passing of time helps the melancholy. It gets one use to the idea of not having a loved one around. Still, the holidays are the days when the agony of losing a dear one is most pronounced. Like many people, during this period, not knowing whether one should feel happy or sad, I live a conflicted existence.

Thousands of sons and daughters lose their parents every day. So, I know I’m not alone in saying this: Watching a parent suffer is one of the most excruciatingly terrible times of a child’s life. Although death is a reality one cannot avoid, most people are not conditioned to contemplate it nor prepare to face it. Having had the responsibility of addressing all aspects of my father’s departure, at its conclusion, I was completely emotionally, physically and spiritually exhausted. I did not want to think about it or deal with it anymore. Selfishly, I wanted finality. I arranged the funeral to take place as soon as it was feasible. Services were scheduled to take place two days after his death.

Not giving it a second thought, I buried my dad the day before New Year’s Eve, on the date I was born. The calendar date is now engraved within me as an unforgettable lesson and eternal reminder that for all beings on this earth, no matter the season, there is a beginning and an end.