Memento Mori

After making his goal of living until his and my mom’s 50th wedding anniversary, my dad passes away the next morning on Saturday, August 19^th, 2023. The medical examiner declares him dead at 8:23 A.M. 823 is a prime number. This would have made my dad happy. He liked mathematical things like primes, the Fibonacci sequence, pi, and the Golden Ratio.

It’ll be a little bit of time before I can separate the hardness of the last eleven months and the pain of watching my dad lose function even as he tried to keep exercising, to maintain a healthy nutrient balance, and to stay pain free from the beautiful things that made him who he was. There were many beautiful things. For instance: his love for my mom who he always called his beautiful bride, his constant pursuit of knowledge, data, and information, his love for his kids, his compassion, generosity, and the righteous anger he had toward injustice.

I’d expected to have my dad for another twenty years at the least. He’d expected that too, and more. He’d been shooting to live to the age of 120. It’s no comfort knowing that we don’t always get what we want. Despite what the Rolling Stones sing, this does not feel like getting what I need either.   

We will all one day die. At some point, we become aware of death. I don’t remember the moment this happened for me. Not exactly. My four year old nephew, my dad’s third grandchild, is walking the edge of that moment.

Hours after my dad has left the land of the living, My oldest sister sits on the hallway floor sorting through pictures of Dad when Thatcher comes up and asks if she wants to play.

She says, “I can’t. I’m looking through pictures.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Well. When someone dies, you get pictures of them to celebrate and remember.”

“Who died?”

“ChaCha died this morning,” she tells him.

“How did he die?”

“He died of cancer.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“No.”

“How did he die?”

“He was sick and sometimes when you are sick, you die.”

“Oh,” he says. Filing that all away, he goes off to find someone who can play with him.

The next day, my youngest brother is helping get ready for the celebration of life for my dad when Thatcher comes up to him.

“Do you want to play with me?” he asks.

“I can’t play right now, buddy. We can play later. But people are coming over to say goodbye to ChaCha and I have to help.”

“Why are people coming over?”

“Because he died.”

“Why did he die?”

“Because he got sick.”

“So getting sick makes you die?”

“Yes.”

“But I get sick.”

“Not all kinds of sick make you die.”

“What kind of sick makes you die?”

“Cancer.”

“Cancer makes people die?”

“Sometimes.”

Later that same day, after nearly all the people have left, all those who were able to come at such short notice to honor my dad’s life, I sit to watch the slide show of pictures of my dad on the TV screen. Thatcher comes over and climbs up into my lap.

“Are you saying goodbye to ChaCha?” he asks me.

“Yes,” I say.

“Were all the people here saying goodbye to ChaCha?”

“Yes.”

A brief moment of quiet passes and I watch the pictures as they change from image to image.

“Does ChaCha still have his skin?” Thatcher asks.

I mishear his question as “kin” and while I’m trying to make sense of it, I ask, “Kin?”

“Skin,” he repeats.

And then it sinks in, the right word. Skin. A month or so ago, we’d gone to the Perot Museum and seen the dinosaur skeletons. And who knows what representations of death are shown on the shows he watches. Death has been on his mind, he’s been thinking through it since then, becoming more and more aware of it. Even asking my younger sister why I killed the mayfly in a bottle in my room. For the record, I did not kill it.

“Yes, he still has his skin,” I say, thinking it’s too early, too complicated to tell him that ChaCha chose cremation. Because, let us deal with one thing at a time. “It takes a long time for the skin to come off.” I talk a little about the dinosaurs and how they were buried for a long time before they became skeletons, about how paleontologists dig them up. I think that my dad would find this funny. There’s a scene in the movie Some Kind of Wonderful where the main character is in high school detention with a rougher classmate who is drawing a picture. When he finishes, he turns the notebook the main character’s way to show a skeletal head and shoulders, and says, “This is what my girlfriend would look like without any skin.” That scene always made us laugh. Romance with a twist. And my dad was a tried and true romantic at heart.

Thatcher seems satisfied with my answer and no one else in the room gets on to me for my response. Death isn’t something that should be skirted. After all, it happens to us all.

Even so, it’s the dying that is the hard part. I’ve grieved throughout the journey that led to my dad’s death. And I will grieve the gone-ness of a man who showed what it is to love, to live, and to be a great father while I will also take joy in having the memories and genetics and sense of humor that he passed on to me. Even the darker humor, that humor with a twist. (Sadly, he did not pass on to me the genetic inclination for being great at mathematics though I got his love for the visual depiction of the Golden Ratio and fractals.) As the days go on without him physically present, I will be glad that his impact has a ripple effect that will last a long, long time.

Rest in peace, rest in love, Dad, with or without your skin.