From the Magazine: “I think Dad keeps returning to me in dreams because I feel guilty that my life is easier now that he’s gone. I was troubled by this feeling, but it’s more common than you think.”
.” She explained that relief is a common part of grieving, especially for those who have been involved in caregiving for the person who died. If someone had mental health problems, like my father did, their death can allow survivors to “exhale from that hypervigilance, worrying the worst is always coming.
He couldn’t save his marriage to my mom, but he could save the Sonny Rollins record she bought him for his birthday in 1983, still wrapped, for 30 years. He couldn’t prevent me and my sister from leaving home, but he could save the plastic barrettes that had fallen from our hair into the green shag carpet, in a jar with marbles, rusty paper clips and orphaned keys.My dad was a brilliant, funny, gentle person.
Thus began the hardest years of my life. Until then, Dad had been unfailingly gentle with me, albeit persistently melancholy. The person who arrived in Missouri was desperately unhappy, fragile and belligerent. I couldn’t tell if these changes reflected cognitive decline, resulted from underlying health problems, or stemmed from the unsettling move. Whatever the cause, I felt like I had a gained a third child, in addition to the 3- and 5-year-old we already had.
The trauma Catey experienced was based partly on the sharp contrast between her happy, stable upbringing and her mother’s distressing transformation. People who have been taking care of their parents for a lifetime have a different journey. I talked with a college friend, Oriana Walker, who had lost both of her parents by the time she was 35. She described her parents as “pretty hardcore hippie seekers” who disavowed traditional medicine.
Emboldened, I told my dad in a counseling session that I wasn’t responsible for his happiness. “What are you responsible for, then?” he demanded. His question made me wonder why I had willingly taken on that responsibility for so long.
“You can ask yourself what your father would have wanted,” the doctor said. “Would he be ready to let go?” Despite the gravity of the moment, I almost laughed. I thought of the newspapers, the toothpaste tubes, the plastic forks. No, he was not “ready to let go.” But was I? I called my sister, Zoe. As a nurse, she had seen these situations before, and she was clear: “Just make him comfortable and let him go.
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