Kiss My Ash
If you subscribe to my other newsletter, Subject to Change, you might be surprised to find me in your inbox twice today after an extensive writing hiatus. Let it be known this is not an indication that I’ll be writing more consistently quite yet (though that is the ultimate goal), but I’m ready to share the absurdity surrounding my father’s recent death. I wrote this several weeks ago, and I promise, you have permission to laugh with me here.
This whole experience (being a power of attorney, navigating the healthcare system and trying to make sound and ethical financial decisions on behalf of someone else, etc.) has felt like being strapped into the VelociCoaster at Universal Studios Orlando (can you tell I’m a big fan of similes and metaphors?).
If you haven’t been on it, it’s one of those rides that goes so damn fast that they advise you to keep your head held against the headrest to protect your neck, but it takes every strained muscle fiber of your being to actually hold it in place. You’re barrelling forward at such incredible speed that the wind dries out your contacts immediately, making your eyes water. When you blink, you feel those tears stream back, tickling your ears, but when you try to lift your arm to wipe them away, you’re reminded that your puny human strength is no match for centripetal force (or is it centrifugal?—doesn’t matter, you get what I’m saying—Mr. Stimson, if you’re reading this, please let me know in the comments because I’m too lazy to Google this). Rides like this require you to relinquish what little control you had, lean back, and accept that you’re at gravity’s mercy until the ride culminates in a screeching halt right where it started.
Now that I’m back on terra firma (having left the ungodly heat of Las Vegas in July, 24 hours after our arrival), I’m starting to catch my breath. And with my blood re-oxygenating, I now have the brain cells to reflect on the absurdity of the last week.
Buckle up!
The Strangest Conversation I’ll Ever Have
Since his discharge from the hospital to the first memory care facility in December 2023, I’ve been in communication with a wonderful nurse from the hospice organization assigned to my father’s case. Arleen is one of the loveliest human beings to walk this earth. Seriously. Case in point: Within a few hours of my father being kicked out of his memory care facility at the end of June for being too violent, Arleen helped me to secure a room at a hospice group home when I didn’t have a plan B in place. She’s also the one who called me on Sunday to report the news:
“Hi Jessica, this is Arleen. Have you spoken to anyone at the group home today?”
“Hi Arleen. Nope, why? What’s going on?”
“I just got a call from someone at the home. I think your father died. I’m so sorry.”
“Wait, what?! What happened?”
“Yeah, they said he was fine at breakfast but now he’s not breathing. He has a DNR right? They think he’s not breathing anymore; they think he maybe died.”
“Wait, so they think he’s dead? But they’re not sure? Can they…check?”
The hour-and-six-minute wait between this conversation and receipt of confirmation were indescribably strange, but a fitting end to a wild ride. Pro tip from a licensed professional counselor: Might be worth confirming the death prior to reporting to family.
The Phone Calls
As a millennial, I’m not one to pick up the phone to make a call without cause. When my grandmother died several years ago, on Dave’s1 birthday, I volunteered to help my mom manage my grandmother’s phone and make the requisite calls to friends and family. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, and neither was this round of calls.
Given who he was, it likely comes as no surprise that there weren’t many calls to make. I called my mother (who’s been divorced from him since 1992), my aunt (his surviving sister), my brother (who’d been estranged from him for over a decade), my cousin (the son of his other sister, who passed a few years ago), and his good friend Mike (a remarkable human who spent many months going to my father’s house every morning and night to make sure he took his medication, long before I knew what was going on there).
When I took on the role of Power of Attorney, specifically when I was selling his car and house, I had to make a lot of phone calls to get accounts settled up. This is what I shared with a friend when I was in the midst of it all:
Every single person I've spoken with loves my dad. It's like he shared whatever "good" parts there ever were with everyone but his family. Even his insurance broker was sad to hear he was in memory care and not doing well. His neighbors--also sad. One even helped me yesterday to move some shit out of his garage for a bulk trash pickup (I did what I could when I was there a couple weeks ago, but I can't keep going back there every other week for this shit). All of the caretakers at the memory care facility text me about how fun, kind, and wonderful he is. Truthfully, it makes me kind of nauseous just thinking about that. I'm exhausted from being asked why I don't spend more time there. That whole identity crisis leads me to actually feel guilty about this.
It was a lot easier to navigate the few phone calls I had to make upon his passing, to people who knew who he genuinely was.
The Mortuary
For some reason, I felt compelled to go to Vegas when he died; it felt wrong to not be in the place where it happened. But it turns out we could have taken care of everything over the phone, because I had already taken care of most of the things months prior to his passing. But we were out there, so it made sense to go in person to the mortuary (and for all you goons out there sharing my morbid curiosity: no, we didn’t see the body).
We had an appointment scheduled for 10 am, and checked in at the front desk about 15 minutes early. I kid you not, this place was called Affordable Cremation, and I think my dad would have loved that. The appointment time came and went, while we sat in the lobby watching it fill with attendees from a funeral that had just ended. Everyone was so emotional, while Dave and I were…not.
At 10:15, I received a phone call from the mortician we were supposed to meet with:
“Hi is this Jess? We had a meeting scheduled for 10 am and I wanted to check in to see if you can still make it.”
“Hi. We’ve been in the lobby for 30 minutes.”
“Oh. I’ll come get you then.”
“Great!”
We were already off to a smooth start, as with every leg of this journey! The guy apologized and expressed his scripted condolences while leading us to his bizarrely decorated office. There was a shelf that wrapped around the entire office, about a foot from the ceiling, that housed dozens of urns. They each had plaques with names and dates, so I assume they were people that families didn’t want to claim? Who knows.
The mortician continued to express condolences until I finally explained that we appreciate it, but we are fine and actually need to catch a flight soon (does that make me a shitty person?). He decided we should hop straight into completing the death certificate, which turned out to be another smooth conversation. Here’s my favorite quotation:
Under most recent occupation, we actually can’t put Mafia, but it does come up quite frequently here in Las Vegas.
Kiss My Ash
Over the last year, there wasn’t much I could do to lift my father’s spirits. He was an angry and miserable man for much of his life (and certainly most of mine), and those feelings were only exacerbated by the dementia. But as a culmination to my filial duty, I did indeed honor his final request:
His cremated remains were sent to his sister, in a vessel engraved with his requested engraving:
Sometimes, details are important.
The following week, Dave returned to school.2 Similar to a first day of camp, or any other orientation, the staff engages in Circle Time. On day one, they went around the room sharing where they had gone over the summer. Keep in mind that there has been a lot of turnover in staff at most schools, in most districts, throughout most of the United States—and his school is no exception. Point being: there were a lot of new people who don’t yet know Dave.
On Dave’s turn to share, he said something along the lines of:
Well, the furthest I had gone was into the mountains, until last week when we went to Vegas because my wife’s dad died.
For context, he told me this while sitting on our couch at 5:30 pm. I thought about it for a minute, and then asked:
Did you happen to mention that my dad lived in Vegas? Or do all these new colleagues just think that he died and we went out gambling to celebrate?
He did not. And probably.
A Final Note
As you might recall, July 21st 2024 was kind of a big day in the United States. It was the day that President Biden stepped aside and endorsed Vice President Harris as our democratic nominee. My father, a Trump-loving MAGA supporter, really struggled with the notion of Hilary Clinton running for president years ago. His politics were, for as long as I can remember, rooted in bigotry.
My father was fine the morning of his passing. He ate breakfast with the other residents, had conversations, went in the yard for a walk and some sunshine, and then went into his room to watch the news. The timing of his death coincided with Biden’s endorsement, and he was found unresponsive in front of his television that was blaring Fox News’s announcement of that major turn of events.
I don’t know for sure that this was the cause of his heart attack, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were. What I do know for sure is that, in a state where the vote mattered more than most (Nevada), Trump lost one confirmed vote, which is a shiny silver lining if I’ve ever heard one.
Ex-boyfriend, current husband.
He’s a school psychologist at a K-12 charter school; the man has stories that I hope he’ll share here at some point.
OMG this is so good. Heartbreaking, funny, surreal—all the things. I'm sorry this summer has been a brutal roller coaster (which seems to be putting it mildly) but I'm so grateful for the gift of your writing, and for your perspective.
As someone who lost her father in May this year, I read your post with a heavy heart. But, you made me lol at least twice in this wonderful article. Thank you!