It was a quiet Tuesday evening, August 24, 2010. I was sitting in the chair next to my father as he lay quietly sleeping in his bed on the D-wing hall of Marshall Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. He was sleeping so peacefully, so deeply, you'd never know he was dying.
We had made the difficult decision to place my dad under hospice care the day before. It had been a rough summer for my family, especially my mother. My dad had been suffering from kidney failure for several years, and he'd been a routine patient at the dialysis center for over five years. By routine, I mean he would be hooked up to the machine that mimicked the role of his kidneys, three times a week, and have his blood literally taken outside his body. The blood was filtered of the dangerous poisons and wastes that can kill any of us without our kidneys, and then put back in. It was a seemingly neverending process, a routine most of us with good kidneys take for granted. The only routine for my father, though, was knowing he could never again spend a day too far away from a dialysis machine.
Daddy had taken a nasty fall earlier that summer that had snapped the bones in his upper arm and shoulder. We'd had him in the hospital several days before doctors determined it was just too dangerous for him to go into surgery. He was a diabetic patient in extended kidney failure, and was still very overweight. The toll all of this had taken on him just made him too weak for surgery, which was the only thing that could really fix his shattered arm.
With this realization, my mom -- who had spent her career as a LVN and administrator, with the past couple of decades at Marshall Manor -- made the decision to move Daddy to the rehabilitation wing of the nursing home to see if this would help ease his pain. Looking back now, almost 15 years later, it was one of those desperation moves when you really need a miracle, and it might have worked -- except for the fact Daddy still had to be moved out of bed, loaded into a van, and driven to dialysis, where he would have to sit in a chair and be drained of his blood every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The slightest movement caused him to shout in pain from his broken arm. It was excruciating.
On Saturday, August 21, my father sat in the dialysis chair for hours and hours and begged my mother to let him die. He could not take the physical pain any longer. He sat and cried out to Jesus, begging for mercy. It was probably the worst morning and early afternoon of my mother's life, having to listen to her husband of over 45 years cry out in agony. The next day, she pulled my sisters and I aside at Marshall Manor and told us to pray, that she was considering having Daddy taken off dialysis and put under end-of-life hospice care. The next day, she made the painful decision to let him go, and the wonderful staff of hospice was called in to make my father as comfortable as possible.
That was Monday, August 23, and here I was on Tuesday, just me and Daddy alone in his room. We had convinced Mom she needed some rest, and that I would stay and call her should his condition change. Daddy was heavily sedated and sleeping peacefully for the first time in weeks. Mom went home for the night to try and get some rest, and would be back up in the morning.
The room was quiet, and very peaceful. I had brought my laptop, and reached down and opened it up. It was then I wrote my father's obituary, the very first obituary I had ever felt led to write.
I've been a writer all my life, literally. It started with a love of reading, which I believe opens the floodgates to writing. But once I started, I never stopped. It was just natural for me to sit down, as a little boy, and imagine -- and then put that on paper. I learned to type as a sophomore in high school, and used that newfound skill on the way to earning a college degree in journalism. By 2010, I'd made a career out of writing as a newspaper reporter, editor, sports writer, and sports information director. I'd started countless writing projects, most of which were never finished, and been published in newspapers, magazines, and media guides.
But here, as I sat down to write my father's obituary as he lay peacefully dying not three feet from me, I felt the weight of truly capturing one's remarkable life and putting it down on paper. A tombstone or marker is just that -- you see the beginning and the ending dates, and maybe a Bible verse or illustration to remind you of your loved one. But an obituary, a quality, well-written memorial, is something that fills in the gaps and feels more alive.
I could hear my father's soft breathing as I typed his life story. Most of it I already knew, some of it I had to fill in later. But after a couple of hours of intense, emotional reflection and typing, I had it done and ready. I closed the laptop and tried to get some sleep in the chair, awakening every second I thought I heard Daddy skip a breath.
My father passed away a little after 9 a.m. the following morning, Wednesday, August 25, 2010. It was tough saying goodbye, but I felt he would have been proud of the memorial I crafted for him. I have a laminated copy of the newsprint of it tucked away in a safe place, and out of all the things I've written over the last 40 or so years of doing it seriously, my father's obituary is my most cherished publication.
I realize I am not the only one who appreciates a written, heartfelt memorial for a loved one. While my father's was truly my first and maybe the most special, whenever I am asked to capture the essence of one's life and spirit via the written word, I take it very, very seriously. I have had the honor of writing obituaries for my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and my own mother, who passed away in 2020. I have also considered it an honor to write several others for friends and loved ones, at a time when you simply don't have a lot of time for all the things that help you say goodbye.
A well-written obituary/memorial is something we all cherish, and it is something that we can keep as a memory of our loved ones. If you or anyone you know would like help with a loved one's written memorial, I would be honored to help at the appropriate time. These are not easy to write, but they are essential in the grieving process as a reminder of who we all are and the legacy of our loved ones.
