Trigger warning: this post may be difficult for someone dealing with grief or loss. These events happened in 2017 and are part of the lead-up to blowing up my life.
I haven’t decided whether to use real names in my memoir yet. I have changed them here for now.
Three Deaths
On April 1, 2017 my Dad died.
Work is full-bore, and I’m managing renewed demands and dynamics at the office.
I’m out for dinner with my life partner, Jeff, Jeff’s ex-wife Kelly and her new partner, Neil. They are treating us to dinner.
Jeff labours over ordering a full-bodied red that I will gulp quickly. We’ve already bored the waiter with the precise details of how we want our steaks and sides prepared.
My phone rings. My hand comes down on it like a cockroach scuttling across the table. Normally, I would send the call to voicemail, but it’s my sister, Ann. It’s unusual for her to call on a Saturday evening. I flick the screen to answer, excuse myself and step into the lobby area of the restaurant, jamming my finger in one ear.
“Hey, Ann. Sorry, I’m just out for dinner….”
“Linda?”
“Yeah?”
“Dad died of a heart attack.”
People describe the feeling of being punched in the gut. For me, it was like being smashed in the face with a baseball bat. As a kid, I was recruited as the back catcher for a neighbourhood ball game. No one showed me how. I stood too close to the batter and got smashed in the face with the backswing. Sudden, disorienting pain.
My sister is sharing the details:
At Tim Hortons to meet friends. He’d chased their dog, who’d escaped from the car. He entered the Timmies. He clutched his chest. Fell to the ground and turned blue. Friends and workers at the Timmies tried to help. Ambulance came. He was probably dead before he hit the ground. Nothing to do. He was gone.
We’d missed decades of each other’s lives. He always had a ‘please forgive me’ look on his face. I resisted contact, leaving it to the perfunctory calls on holidays and birthdays. He never missed a birthday or Christmas, sending overly sentimental cards I’m sure he wept over choosing. He tried. He always tried to reach out and have some relationship.
I think about the last time he and I spoke. When was that, anyway? I can’t remember. What do we say to each other? Am I impatient with him? Am I trying to get off the phone? Do I have time for him? Am I wrapped up in that resistance again? Those 30+ years of carrying that stone of pain got heavier at that moment.
The opportunity to take a different path, to make another choice. To find closure. To let shit go. It’s gone.
“Linda?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me later. We can talk about arrangements and what to do next.”
I returned to the table, and my puffy, tear-ravaged face gave away the conversation.
“My dad just dropped dead of a heart attack.”
People around me talked and took action. Orders are cancelled, condolences shared. There are waves of ugly crying and sideways glances from other diners. Neil and Kelly send us home.
That suddenness, like the bat swinging back. Had I known better, I would have done things differently. Wouldn't I? Didn’t I see it coming? People warned me: “It’s an important relationship, Linda. You should try.”
I found it easier not to try like a wound that grows over. Best, let the scab be. Unhealed, it devastates me.
Beyond grief, it flays me with regret. I am hit repeatedly by reminders of the shortness of life, the finality of death, and the need to release the pain.
Less than two years later, Neil, our dinner companion that day, also died of a heart attack just shy of his 49th birthday. These deaths brush close, reminding me to embrace life, or I may follow a similar path.
Significant events can shock you into re-evaluating how you’re living. In a recent conversation with a friend, we discussed how midlife, retirement, a sudden illness or death can raise some of these questions:
How have you lived thus far?
What happens when your career ends?
How do you define yourself beyond work?
What mark do you want to leave, if any?
Thanks for this powerful heart-felt post, Linda. Your writing this out for the world to see also reminded me of the fraught relationships with both parents. My relationship with my father, and his early death, quickly came to mind.
I can’t change that, or any part of my past, but I can use your reminder to act with greater awareness, kindness, compassion with my loved ones in the future. Thanks so much.
Linda thank you for this. Today is the 21st anniversary of my own dads death. I was blessed to have had a good relationship with him. The tenor of this writing is so powerful that I hate to bring up a nidgy little question. Your title is Three Deaths. With your dad and Neil I count two. Am I missing something? Or is the third death metaphorical in that your initial perception of life “dies”?