Death of a Parent: How I’ve Handled It
When a parent dies, the moment you find out your life forever changes in a way you didn’t know was possible—no matter the circumstance or status of your relationship. Unfortunately, I’ve lost both of my birth parents and my mother in law and can speak to the trauma of dealing with this sort of tragic loss. I hope that by sharing my experiences and how I continue to deal with their deaths that I can help someone. I’m not a therapist, guru or anything that gives me any type of expertise in this subject area other than going through it three times—both of my parents and my mother-in-law, who was an integral part of my life the past 20+ years. In this post, I’ll walk you through how both of my parents died, how my mother-in-law passed away, the impact those deaths have had on me and things I’m doing to help myself cope.
Dad
I’ll never forget the moment, ever, ever, ever. It was 2003, long before handheld super computers were tethered to each and every person under the age of 111. I was 25 years old, around 275 pounds and wrapping Christmas gifts on the floor of my fiancé’s room at her folks just a few short days before Christmas. It was around 8:30 or 9:00 in the evening and the two of us (read: her) had been putting the finishing touches on a few of the gifts we’d be sharing in a few days with our families. I had a cell phone at the time but for some reason it wasn’t on my person. The phone rang at my wife’s parents house, certainly odd for that late hour, and a moment later my future mother-in-law walked in the room.
“Will, Pat is on the phone and needs to talk to you,” she said.
Puzzled, I thought, “Wow, why is my step-dad calling me here? That’s really weird,” but I knew something was amiss.
“Will, we need you to come over to Mimi’s (my grandmother) right now,” he told me, and I think I muttered something like, “Why?”
It was one of those calls where I knew something bad had happened, something very bad. I hung up the phone and told my fiancé I had to leave right then. She asked the normal questions after a cryptic call of that nature but I had no answers and my mind was essentially a motor running at redline.
I jumped in my Honda Prelude (don’t judge, this isn’t the time, but it was lowered and had 17” rims with a stereo that would set off car alarms from a distance) and began the 20-minute drive from Vancouver to Washougal. I ran through the scenarios trying to trick myself into hoping it wasn’t Dad. Problem was, every person that would warrant a family gathering of this nature would be there: my mom, step-dad and grandmother. I began doing something I hope none of you ever experience: bracing for the very real possibility my father had died.
Just a few years earlier, Dad had a relatively bad stroke. “Maybe he’d had another one,” I told myself, trying to instill some form of hope in my mind. The problem was, I’ve always prided myself on being a realist. I knew I wouldn’t be driving over to Mimi’s at nine on a Sunday night because of a stroke. I pulled up to Mimi’s house, turned off the ignition, took possibly the deepest breath I’ve ever taken, and walked up to the door and inside the house.
I don’t remember exactly what happened after that, except that either my mom or step-dad told me that Dad had died.
I knew it. I tried to prepare myself the best I could in that short drive, yet it felt like I was getting both clubbed over the head and punched in the gut repeatedly. Tears flowed from my eyes like the Salmon of Capistrano. The next hour or so is still a blur to this day.
My step mother had called my mom and informed her that Dad suffered an aortic aneurism while he was home alone and died almost instantly. I was not prepared for that moment mentally; I don’t know that any person can be prepared for a loss of that magnitude. It was a cascade of emotions, the likes of which I’d never experienced to that point in my life. My grandfather had passed away in 1997 from colon cancer and that was the closest thing I’d have to compare.
I had a complicated relationship with my dad—one that centered around alcohol—and to this day I’m still processing a lot of that. One thing is crystal clear though: I loved my dad with the fire of a thousand suns and nothing could, or will, ever stop that.
Mom
Where do I even start with my mom? As much as I struggled with the loss of my father, who many would probably would say I had the strongest bond to, losing Mom was the worst experience of my life. I loved her soooo soooo soooo much—more than words could ever describe. To understand the profound impact losing my mom had on me you need to understand the medical journey Mom and I (and many other loving people) dealt with.
In 2015 Mom had a double lung transplant at the University of Washington after dealing with the effects of long-term COPD and asthma. The path to a successful transplant was paved with years of tests, traveling back and forth to Seattle, and struggling to breathe with every step she took. She lived in a persistent hell prior to the transplant, losing her breath just getting up from the couch.
All of that changed on a fateful Tuesday in mid-February in 2015. She got the call, her go-bag already packed and by the door, to head for Seattle. They had a set of viable lungs and she needed to be in Seattle within four hours. Mom and my step-dad Pat rushed out the door and within 24 hours she had a set of healthy lungs pumping in her chest (I’ll write a post specifically about enduring a transplant with a family member soon). A miracle doesn’t even begin to describe the entire experience. For the next three months, my aunt, step-dad, wife and I would take turns taking care of her at the post-transplant apartment she had next to UW. Typically, my aunt and I would split time each week, two to three days at a time, caring for Mom until she got the green light to go home.
Living as a transplant recipient is kind of like a waltz, delicately dancing with the anti-rejection drugs that keep them alive while trying to minimize the damage the drugs do to the immune system and the rest of the body. The doctors Mom had were simply amazing and I can’t thank all of them enough; modern medicine really is amazing. But, with all of the good comes the bad. Those very anti-rejection drugs that kept mom’s body from flinging her lungs out of her body (figuratively) were also doing a number on her immune system. Despite that, she was rarely sick and felt relatively good most of the time. Or so we all thought; frankly I think she was just super good at hiding how bad she really felt.
2020 was a crazy year for everyone. COVID-19 was everywhere and if you’re a person without most of your immune system who is over 70 years old, it was beyond scary to say the least. Mom began having some issues: digestive (although those were really nothing new), fatigue and labs that were all out of whack. When you’re a member of the transplant mafia, you don’t get to stay home because of a global pandemic, you don’t have a choice whether you want to go to the doctor three or four times a week. You mask up, buck up, deal with it and that’s exactly what Mom did. The craziest thing about my mom is that she didn’t think she was strong, but absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. When I see the way some people have reacted to this pandemic and the fear they’ve instilled in themselves I think back to Mom getting herself ready (my mother did NOT leave the house unless she was dressed to kill. She knew style and everyone that knew her will attest to this) for every single appointment like she was meeting the Queen. It felt like she went to the doc everyday but getting ready to go was her last freedom, it was how she could show the world she was still a force to be reckoned with, no matter what her body was putting her through.
Things started to change in August. She came up to the house for my birthday. Both my wife and I noticed, especially in photos, that she wasn't feeling well. Later on in August, my youngest son and step-dad Pat were off on a trip to deliver some dogs across the nation. As per the usual, I looked after mom while my step-dad was gone, but she got along well in their apartment. All of a sudden she started to have pain in her leg. At first it was light from what she said, kind of annoying, but it started to get worse to the point that she wanted some pain medication. That was a major red flag for me. Mom did not like taking pain meds, they messed her up pretty good (I’ve got some pretty good stories post-transplant) and made her feel out of it. We had to keep her on a very tight schedule for the pain meds so that the pain didn’t get too bad but it was obvious the pain was progressing. She was struggling to walk and by the time Monday morning came around, she called me to assist her. I rallied as fast as I could, as any son would when their mother is in distress, to help her. When I arrived, she couldn’t walk due to the pain, so I carried her out to the car and we went to the ER.
Two and a half years earlier, my wife and I rushed her mother to the ER at the same hospital because she’d been sick for several days and was not getting better. She was losing strength and struggling. We were taken to a waiting room as the nurses processed my mother-in-law to wait for a spot. I don’t know how long we were in there but it was less than an hour. Once my mother-in-law was taken to a room and the doctors began imaging studies and other tests, it became apparent something wasn’t right. The next day my brother-in-law called us early and asked that we rush to the hospital. When we arrived, the doctors informed us that Sue had stage four untreatable lung cancer. Four-and-a-half months later, my wife and I held Sue’s hand as she passed away.
Back in the ER with my mom, we were taken from the waiting area to an open room for Mom. As we passed through the doors of the ER, I looked to my left and saw that very room we waited in with my mother-in-law. I felt the largest wave of dèjá vu I’ve ever experienced, combined with a very bad feeling about the current situation. I’m a “feeling” guy; I believe there are ways the subconscious mind communicates with the conscious mind that we can’t describe and I’m okay with that. I actually quite enjoy “gut” feelings because more often than not, they’ve done me very well. It’s when I don’t follow my instincts that I’ve made some less-than-stellar decisions, especially in poker.
From this moment on, the clock on Mom’s life went into hyper-drive. Initially the doctors couldn’t pinpoint the cause of her pain; they were running countless tests and the results didn’t point to one specific cause. Until they did: leukemia. She likely had the leukemia for some time, not a long time, but still awhile, and the reason we didn’t know was because the symptoms mimicked the symptoms she experienced from the anti-rejection drugs.
We finally had an answer for what was causing her pain. According to the doctors, the leukemia was causing issues with her bone marrow and that’s why the pain was getting worse. The leukemia was rapidly progressing. One day we were told she would likely survive until Thanksgiving only to have that date revised multiple times over the course of just a couple days. We were looking at a matter of days rather than weeks or months so we contacted Hospice and began making the necessary arrangements. Unfortunately, I was very familiar with Hospice as we’d brought them in to care for my mother-in-law.
From the moment Mom was taken from the initial bed in the ER to the room she was admitted into, she was on powerful pain medication. She could communicate, kind of, but for the most part she was incoherent. I would go to the hospital and talk to her, hold her hand and simply be with her. COVID made even this simple act hard because we were only allowed one person in the room at a time, although we were able to sweet-talk the nurses into letting my step-dad and I in the room at the same time for a little while. Mom wasn’t very lucid but she’d chuckle every once in a while and let us know if she was in pain. We had to show strength for her because hope is one of the most powerful drugs man has as far as I’m concerned.
Just eight days after taking mom to the hospital, her doctors allowed us to take her home so she could pass surrounded by family. I contacted Hospice and got everything set up with them while my wife, kids, and aunt gathered at my folks’ place for dinner. We ate and the kids got to spend some time with Mumu (roughly Finnish for grandmother) before the family left for the evening. It was around seven that my step-dad and I settled in for the evening. I didn’t really have a plan whether to stay the night or not, I was just in the moment. Only a few moments later it became clear Mom was in the final stages of life.
This isn’t something I can really describe effectively with words. Of course I could tell you physically what happened but honestly it wouldn’t describe the gravity of the moment. I had been through this just two-and-a-half short years earlier, yet this was not the type of “experience” anyone truly becomes familiar with. I administered the medications per the Hospice instructions. If you ever have the opportunity, yes I believe this is an opportunity, to provide end-of-life care, you’ll know what I’m talking about. A few minutes later, flanked by her loving loving son and husband, God called Mom to be with him. She was at peace, she didn’t have to fight anymore, no more pain, no more appointments, no more pills, no more bullshit. These are the moments we as family members become selfish because we don’t want them to go, we want them to be there for us, but there was a part of me that felt relief for Mom.
Emotions
I miss both of my parents more than words can express. I miss my mother in law a tremendous amount as well. I believe, firmly, that Sue and I created a bond over the last few months of her life that was on the level of her own sons and in some ways even greater. There’s so many things I wished I could say and do with all three of them. I didn’t get to really communicate with mom or dad before they passed away and that has been very hard for me to deal with to this day. With Mom, I got to say goodbye but not when she wasn’t under the influence. Like my grandmother, I think Mom was at peace with death. She knew she had a new lease on life after her transplant but that came with stipulations, like anti-rejection drugs that lower your immune system and let bad things happen like leukemia. Dad was a different story. The last time I saw him, he and I didn’t leave on the best of terms. My dad was an alcoholic and I made my thoughts known the last time I saw him about his drinking. That was incredibly hard for me because I struggled with my dad’s addiction my entire life.
To be completely honest with you, I wrote this for myself, for selfish reasons. I’m the type of person that typically packs his emotions up nice and tight, throws them in a backpack and tosses them over a cliff in order to deal with whatever challenge is next. DON’T DO WHAT I DO/DID!! Sorry for the caps, but in my very honest opinion, you need to face your feelings and emotions regarding your parents, the life you shared with them and if they’ve passed, how that has impacted you. You can’t run from those emotions, try as you may, so lean into them and face the music. Remember though, this doesn’t have to be a negative process. Think of the good times, the things they taught you, great experiences you shared and the countless memories you may have with them. But don’t run from the loss, learn from it and help create joy in your life in their honor. Yes, there were likely bad times as well, so learn from those too.
Keep in mind you may never fully “get over” the loss of a parent and it is a process to deal with all of that emotion. That’s why it’s called the 5 Stages of Grief. Don’t give yourself a timeline to deal with your loss because I don’t really think this is the type of experience anyone could say will take a particular amount of time. We’re all different and that’s a good thing. If you need help, DO NOT hesitate to reach out to people you trust. If that isn’t doing the trick, contact a professional. There is no shame in admitting you need help as I’ve learned as my life has progressed. If you’re like me, you may think you don’t want to burden others with your trials and tribulations but give your loved ones a chance to help you even if that’s just a cup of coffee and a conversation. Talking about your struggles will likely help you immensely because I know it’s helped me.
Thank you for reading this. I hope in some small way it can shine light on the experience of death of a parent. Talk to someone, get help if you feel like you need it. Jump on the ManVsMood Facebook Group and share your experience and I’ll try to help as much as I can. Heck, email me if you’d like: will (at) manvsmood dot com (sorry to write it like that but I don’t want bots grabbing it and messing with me). This will be the first of several posts I’m writing about the death of a parent/family member because I think we need to discuss this more openly and I want to have resources as well for anyone going through this incredibly painful moment.
If you’d like to reach me on the socials you can find me and ManVsMood at these locations:
Twitter: OneHandMan or ManVsMood
Instagram: SlaterBBQ or ManVsMood
Facebook: ManVsMood or the ManVsMood Group
I’ll be expanding on ManVsMood soon with a podcast and YouTube channel as well. After an incredibly tough past year and a half, my goal for MvM is bring positive discourse to very hard topics we all endure. I’ll shine light on bad actions by others to bring accountability. If you’re familiar with any of my work then you know I want to stick up for the little guy, for those that don’t have a voice, those that need help solving problems and I’ll do it with positivity, encouragement and thoughtfulness. Society is trying to tear us apart and I want MvM to be the stitches we so desperately need. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention my amazing editor Holly Jones. Holly just dealt with the loss of her father, Ron Wysaske. I knew Ron, he was an awesome person and one helluva dad. He’ll always be remembered for his great smile and love for his family. Peace be with all of you.
I.Am.Will