A Grief Anniversary:

Listening for the breath of life

February 15, 2020.  On the date my father Bob Cantile took his last breath, I wish I had been there to witness it, to be by his side.

I’ve heard many family members say the same thing. I give my talk: “People will wait until the very last person leaves the room and then take their final breath. I don’t know what happens to one’s psyche at the time of death but I have seen it too many times to discount: Some exercise that final choice in the last moment of their lives.”

That day four years ago remains vivid. My heart occupied two places—one with Dad, the other with my teenage son.

Christopher, then 18, had suffered all week with a respiratory virus. He’d gone to high school a few days earlier and tried to take a test but on Feb. 15 said, “Mom this isn’t going away.  I’m going to go to immediate care.” 

Here is where I confess my Bad Mom Moment. Chris is my first born, my only son—a creative, sensitive boy and my fierce defender. But when he gets sick, he’s hard to read. He faked stomach aches in grade school and once sprained his ankle but wouldn’t let anyone touch it. I thought he’d broken a leg bone but after a seven-hour visit at Children’s Hospital, the doctors concluded he had a bad sprain. He was up and walking in less than two days. No limp.  

I drove him to the immediate care clinic on Western Ave and as he had just turned 18 six weeks earlier, they didn’t allow me in the back with the physician. So I waited. An hour later, he walks out with a diagnosis of double pneumonia and an X-ray to prove it. I hear that voice in my head: BAD MOM! We pick up the antibiotics and more meds for his upper respiratory symptoms; then I make him his favorite foods and put him on the couch with a movie.

“Mom, can you come on the couch with me?” Of course, I tell him. He lies on my lap and I stroke his head while he watches a video. I think: “I’ll make sure Chris is OK and drive to Grand Rapids at 4 a.m. tomorrow to be with Dad,” who had  been in hospice since early January. I thought he’d be around until at least June. He just needed better pain control … right? But I knew he hadn’t eaten since I last saw him on Sunday, a week ago. I hoped he’d hold on until I got there the next day.

Second childhood and childish pranks

My brother, Bill, who visited Dad almost daily since we moved him into a nursing home in November 2018, kept me updated all week. In hindsight, I wish I would’ve taken that week off but we were busy at my hospital with Ash Wednesday and my supervisor refused to give me the time away I needed. I look back today and think about “too busy” in a different light.  

Dad’s dementia had reached the point where he could no longer walk to the dining room of his assisted living residence. He couldn’t take care of himself and bedbugs were found in his room. TWICE! How did they get there?

The nursing home, though not luxurious, was staffed by good people who greeted me every time I walked in. “Oh, you’re Bob’s daughter. We love Bob! He is so funny! He’s sitting right over there…”

First off, I never thought of my dad as funny. Mostly he was quiet, though when Mom whipped him into an angry fit he could yell alongside her. Otherwise, he didn’t tell jokes or flirt prior to his dementia. Yet his shift in mental state changed his personality: He was now outgoing, joked around all the time and yes, whistled at women. Any woman who walked by him at the nursing home, in fact. He lost his inhibitions and his edit button. Who was this man? 

I’ve seen the opposite as a chaplain—demented people who become mean and aggressive. But not Dad: He turned into a kid. At first, he enjoyed privileges to walk outside by himself and sit on the facility’s weather-beaten front porch. In our first house, we had a porch right on Monroe Avenue. It was a great place to watch the world. And at the last house Mom and Dad lived in, he would sit at the patio door in the fall and winter, watching birds with his ancient-but-reliable binoculars. 

But Dad lost his outside privileges when he started to … pull the fire alarm. The social worker told me the story, after Dad’s death, of how he looked right at her as she told him not to do it. But with the spirit of a pre-teen prankster, and acting as though his hand had its own mind, he tripped the alarm right in front of her.  Bill and I worried they would kick him out of the home, just like a kid being suspended school. But in his jokester mode, Dad won over the whole staff. 

Of mourning and mystery

With my son’s head in my lap, his breathing gentle and slow, I got the call from my brother.  “Amy, I have to tell you…. (long pause). Dad just died.” 

After that I heard nothing. I was so upset I couldn’t be there. That I wasn’t there. I don’t remember standing up, only that I sat on the floor of our living room and bawled. “He was alone!!” 

My son, ever his mom’s protector, took me in his arms and rocked me. My husband Lou stood by and asked what happened. Chris related the news to him. I cried in the arms of my two strong men that night.

The next day Lou and I drove to Grand Rapids to clean out Dad’s room, make arrangements and see my brother and other family. My Uncle Jack, Dad’s only living brother, came into town that weekend as well. Putting a parent’s affairs in order during a time of intense, unprocessed grief sucks but it’s necessary.

The moment of one’s death is a mystery. What happens? I’ve sat with people who had no family beside them as they drew their last breath, and I’ve stood in a room full of people as a great grandfather and family patriarch departed this world. Should it come to that, how and when one chooses that moment is a mystery. 

Here’s what I believe happens.

Something like a loving warmth pulls us from the other side of whatever exists beyond and after all this. It wraps the dying one, pulls them through and says… “It’s time.” I’d like to think my father’s mom, Adeline Anderson Cantile, provided that light for my dad.

A premature baby of less than 4 pounds, my father was given the grim prognosis of a very short life. But with the help of a light box and an eye dropper, that baby boy started to grow. Little did anyone know he would live to be an old man of 85.

My hope for dad is that when his time arrived, my Grandma Adeline Cantile opened her arms, wrapped him in a light of love and peace and said, “Welcome home!” I want to hope my dad’s final breath was like that. Who says that the breath of life cannot run full circle, from beginning to end, and to new beginning?