My Father’s Passing

My father was diagnosed with emphysema and COPD in January of 2006, when he went to see the doctor over a bout with pneumonia. He had tried to quit smoking a few times while I was growing up, but always went back to it. He was finally able to quit when the doctor told him that he was going to die.

I’ll never forget the sight of him when I went down to Austin to see my parents. He looked like a walking, smiling skeleton when he picked me up from the airport. He was always a skinny guy, but I had never seen him look this bad. My gut instinct told me that he had maybe two to five years before he would succumb.

The sight of him in that airport continues to haunt me, as does the coughing fits that I heard at night while my children and I were staying at my parents’ house. We were never particularly close, but we got along better as adults. He tried to encourage me to quit, telling me how he filled a water bottle full of cigarettes and set them on the counter as a deterrent. That, and the doctor’s prognosis worked for him.

It didn’t work for me. Over the next couple of years, I would try the Chantix pill in 2008 and the cold turkey method in April of 2009. Neither worked. The longest I’ve been able to stop is a week.

I called my parents on Christmas Day. The first thing my father said to me was, “Get off those goddamned cigarettes, Deb. Please. I love you very much.” He went on to say that he thought I had emphysema, due to my smoker’s cough. That conversation haunts me more now than it ever did.

At any rate, his condition continued to worsen to the point where he could barely walk across the kitchen for a glass of water without getting winded. My mother had to help him do the most basic things that he had done all of his life. The last time I spoke with him was on his birthday this past January. I could hear the effort it took to breathe, much less talk.

My mother’s birthday and Father’s Day fall during the same week. I called her to wish her a happy birthday and to ask how Dad was doing. She told me that he was in the hospital so the doctors could adjust his medication. We were both under the impression that he would be home by the weekend. When I called on Father’s Day and no one was home, I got a bad feeling. I left a message for him, which he never got to hear.

My mother called me that night and told me that the doctor had asked him about the DNR option. Then she said that he was moved to a hospice center. She told me that he had six months left and that hospice was preparing him to go home to die. He held on for a week before he passed away on June 25, 2010 at 1:30am.

My brother and I got the news while we were standing at the gate, getting ready to board the plane. I was glad that he died before I got there because I did not want to see him in that condition. The last time I saw my father was in June of 2008. He had put on weight and was looking better. That was the way I wanted to remember my father.

It was strange walking out into the Austin airport and not seeing him standing there. Instead, my mother, my sister and my aunt were there. It was even weirder walking into my parents’ house and getting confronted by the silence. My father was a dominant force and always had to be in the middle of everything, whether we wanted him to be or not. All of us were in shock because we couldn’t believe how fast he went. But we were also relieved, especially for my mother.

Ever since my grandparents got sick and died, my parents had always talked about the quality of life. They felt that if they were not leading their normal quality of life, then it was time to go. I have the same attitude.

He’s been gone for almost a month now, and I find myself feeling bittersweet about the whole thing. I keep hearing that conversation at Christmas. I look at my two boys and think: I don’t want to put them through what my mother went through. It’s time to quit. It’s time my husband quit, too. I’m currently researching the e-cigarette and its success rate with heavy smokers.

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