01 Jan Out of the old life and into the new
New Year’s Eve was never a big to-do growing up but it was still memorable. I don’t recall my parents ever going to a NYE party; we were always home together. Probably because we would have a big holiday roast the next day, Mom didn’t cook. It was rare that we didn’t have a sitdown family dinner. Instead, we had potato chips and clam dip, those port-wine cheese balls and crackers, shrimp cocktail. Dad always got Mom a jar of pickled herring. There was punch, too, so we could make a toast, and Mom and Dad let us try to stay awake until midnight. The soundtrack? Die Fledermaus – we watched PBS’s broadcast of Strauss’s operetta as we waited for the countdown into the next year.
The last time we were all together as a family was in January 2019. Dad was hospitalized after his fall on New Year’s Eve; it became clear that he had a serious head injury and would not recover. My sister in Ohio felt that he had simply reached the end. Dad had always shown an incredible will to recover from previous illnesses and surgeries, but not this time. He went on hospice care and went home. Despite being spread across Vermont, New York, Virginia and North Carolina, and with a major snowstorm brewing, we all made it to Ohio in time to say goodbye.
When I got to my parents’ place, Dad opened his eyes and said, “Hi.” Jenny told him it was Hil, and Dad said, “I know.” (I believed him.) That was about it; there were no more conversations. He said “Wow” once, but I can’t remember why. My siblings and I sat around his hospital bed set up in the little study and played Haydn and Beethoven, shared stories, sat with Mom and tried to get her to rest, cried and laughed then cried again. I knew that this was the last time we’d ever be together – the original seven – and how incredible that felt. How easily we slipped into that old family unit, how we could never be that same family again once Dad died. In most ways, it was a proverbial good death – pain well managed, relatively quick and surrounded by loved ones. And still so incredibly hard.
I’ve been thinking about Dad a lot lately. Maybe just because it’s been five years since his death. Who knows? I just miss him. Jenny read from The Wind in the Willows at Dad’s funeral, the part where Mole realizes he is close to his old home and is overcome by a longing to see it again.
The sob he had fought with so long refused to be beaten. Up and up, it forced its way to the air and then another, and another, and others thick and fast; till poor Mole at last gave up the struggle, and cried freely and helplessly and openly, now that he knew it was all over and he had lost what he could hardly be said to have found.
Grief can be like that, carried on a half-remembered scent or a few bars of music that leads right back to the original loss. Though its reemergence can startle you, there’s beauty in the memories it holds, if you’re lucky. Then you remember grief fades, too, and as Mole discovered, new things await. ~ Hilary Farquhar