Well, what I have wished for, for more than a year is finally here. And I'm so not ready for this.

[MadameButterfly]

26. My dad is dying and my mother will not last

much longer. I am torn because I feel I should be sadder but I am relieved. He is suffering. She has been ready to die for a while.
Sometimes the hardest thing is to not feel grief when a loved one passes. I want them to be out of their misery. I really lost them a while ago, as they gradually lost their faculties, were less and less able to converse or have any quality of life.
There was never a moment to feel grief. To process what was happening. We lost them so gradually until their meer presence was a discomfort for us and for them.
I spent every visit in my dad's last days talking about his life. I learned so much I had never known. He wanted to go over everything. He wrote it all out until he couldn't write anymore. But more and more he couldn't hear, he couldn't understand, he wasn't the man I had known.
I printed all the old photos I could find of their amazing lives and hung them around their assisted living apartment. Young vibrant people in love. A beautiful wedding. Dad in his office with colleages in the prime of his career.

But in their time of passsing I'm at a loss. I can't be there as much as I should. My own life will collapse if I drop everything and go where they are. If I do, I will not be able to relieve their suffering. Is it enough to call or zoom my mother every day? Meanwhile I wonder if none of this matters, my life or theirs--whether I should let it all go to hell and be in Pennsylvania for a week knocking on doors.

Glamrock, you have done so much. I am impressed. you have gone above and beyond. Know this. You have been there for your parents. You have no reason to feel guilt, even if the Universe has made it very hard. Let yourself feel grief--that is necessary--a blessing even--but don't let that make you wrong.

The hardest thing for me has been wishing for my parents' deaths. Not being able to mourn their passing. i have mourned the loss of their faculties but it's not the same. That is so gradual. It is an ongoing challenge of meeting their needs. There isn't one moment to grieve. i miss who they were, I want to spare them pain.

i am not an atheist, formerly an agnostic, and now tentatively believing in God or some form of afterlife. It's hard to rely on this when you (I) haven't been raised to believe. I'm no evangelical, don't want to press my budding beliefs on you, but I do take comfort in believing our loved ones are not destined for oblivion but for another dimension in which their failing bodies will not matter and they will experience peace and joy. There are so many stories of near-death experiences giving evidence of this. It is a comfort to me that i believe my Dad isn't disappearing but about to join pure positive energy and be his true self again, ready for the next cosmic choice. i hope you will find whatever belief gives you comfort, but regardless give yourself a pat on the back for all you have done.