Treading Water

"I feel nothing over there," I thought to myself. I was startled awake by that thought and unaware of the horror I was going to feel later after realising my subconscious knew what had happened… and the fact I dismissed it as anxiety and went back to sleep.

I've always been good at suppressing my anxiety and how I feel. I bottle it up and I pretend it isn't there. I push people away so they can't hurt me. I block every attempt the universe makes to allow me to heal out of fear of feeling it. So it's no surprise that I've not even begun to process what happened. I get flashes of it; bursts of emotion that I rush to quell before they overtake me. I don't want my feelings to burden anyone. So I keep it all in.

I wasn't going to write this, but the moment I realized there was even a chance of an outlet I felt my entire soul pulling me to do this. Let it out, if even a little, if even for a moment, and even if I never let it out again.

So, back to the absolute worst day of my life…

I'm a light sleeper, so when my mom came upstairs that morning around 5 or 6am (I can't remember exactly what time it was), I was already starting to wake up from her foot steps on the stairs. But what truly woke me up was after she went into her bedroom and turned on the light, she screamed.

"JOHN?!" she cried. She screamed my dad's name a few more times before she ran down the stairs frantically.

"Oh my god, oh my god," her voice was shaking and helpless as she called 911.

I had been wide awake since that first scream, unable to move or react.

I already knew.

"I need an ambulance," my mother said. "I think my husband is dead."

The lady on the other end of the phone must have told my mom to go back upstairs and check for a pulse and to start CPR, as that is what my mom went to do. Then I heard her put the lady on speaker and say she needed to wake up her daughter for help.

Oh no. That's me.

My heart was in my throat and as my mom opened my door, she told me she needed my help. I was just staring at her.

I got out of bed in a hurry, my body finally moving. I was definitely in shock because I felt numb.

"Prepare yourself," I thought. "You're about to see your dad's dead body."

Sure enough, as I walk out of my room and turn, I see my dad laying face down on the floor next to the bed. My mom was trying to flip him over. I grabbed his ankles and helped her flip him. Everyone always says that a dead body is ice cold. I can confirm that is correct. But seeing his face was worse than feeling his icy skin. His eyes weren't fully shut, he had some green snot under his nose, and his mouth was distorted and stuck that way from being pressed against the floor for hours.

That was the first time I thought about the fact I'd woken up a few hours earlier and declared to myself that I had "felt nothing over there"... as in, across the wall shared between my room and where my dad was sleeping.

When the paramedics and firefighters arrived, I was downstairs waiting for them. I had our dog in my arms and she didn't make a peep when they came inside - even our dog, who barks at the grass growing, knew something was going on. She was completely quiet.

After a few minutes they came downstairs and informed us that, unfortunately, there was nothing they could do. My mom's heartbroken expression was gut wrenching as she tried to keep from sobbing.

I then called my sister. We knew she'd be up and most likely working out at her gym, so it was no surprise to me when she didn't answer.

"I need you to call me back," I said to her voicemail. I didn't want to upset her, but she also needed to know the severity of what was going on. I think I also mentioned that she should come to the house instead of going to work, but I don't remember.

I remember cracking a joke to the police officer who was there, and he knew I was in shock. I remember my uncle coming over and me telling him how sorry I was that he'd lost his baby brother (on top of the two sisters he and my dad had already lost). There was crying, but not from me. The shock lasted through the funeral people coming to take his body away, and it lasted through us all driving to my 94 year old grandmother's house to tell her that my dad had died.

I lost my father, but she had now lost three out of her four children.

The first time I broke down was when we went to see his body at the funeral home before the cremation. I swerved around that casket and refused to look into it - the image of his face distorted on that floor was haunting me. I tried to go over once and broke down crying and backed away when I saw the tip of his nose peeking over the casket wall on my approach.

My dad truly was inside that wooden box.

When I finally did see him though, it was sort of a relief. I cried, but he didn't look the way he had that morning. He looked so young and peaceful. Ice cold and with his hair combed in a way neither myself or my mother cared for (and you can be sure we fixed that), but youthful and at rest. It was surreal and horrible at the same time. I don't regret seeing him that way - it helped to mask over that image of him on the floor… if only partly.

That night I remember going to bed and truly being bombarded by thoughts and questions.

First of all, how did he end up on the floor? He was in the bed facing the other direction! Did he fall? And if he did, why didn't myself or my mother hear him? I was filled with rage and guilt because I had turned on both my fan and my white noise machine the night before.

Is that what woke me up at 1am? Did I hear him fall? And then all the terrible thoughts of why and what if flooded over me:

What if he was calling for help?

What if I'd gotten up and checked on him at 1am?

Why did I have to turn on my noise machine?

Why didn't I say goodnight to him?

Why didn't I give him a hug?

What if he was scared?

It is obvious that I am someone who avoids. I didn't want to see him the way he was. Gaunt and exhausted and in pain. My anxiety makes me a selfish person and I hate myself for it.

He died alone… one fucking wall away from me. I am so sorry, daddy. I cried and cried and apologized to him over and over. Then suddenly I felt this calm come over me and the distinct feeling of someone sitting down on my bed next to me.

No one was there, but I knew it was my dad.

That night while I slept, I had a vivid dream. He came home from work with his bright red work shirt on. Even in my dream I knew it couldn't be true because he had died. But I hugged him and he hugged me so tightly in that dream. My dad and I had a rocky relationship for most of my life and we never hugged much… but that hug I can still feel. He knew how much that was hurting me… the fact I hadn't hugged him. He gave that to me to hold onto, and to say goodbye. I am 100% sure of that. I will be eternally grateful.

The viewings and the funeral were a blur. So much hugging and reminiscing, and trying not to cry every time my mind was quiet enough to hear the Beatles playing in the background. I felt like every time I had bottled anything up had led me to these moments, so I could suck it all back and be strong for my mother. My grandmother. My uncle. My sister. For everyone.

After all, I don't believe death is the end. I know my dad stuck around for a while after his death and he's always available when I need him. It's not the same and it's never going to be good enough… but I know it's better than believing he's gone completely.

Looking back, I think I always knew what was going to happen. He started feeling uncomfortable when he ate in October and by December he had been diagnosed. He deteriorated quickly and I do believe the Canadian medical system failed him for reasons I won't discuss, and I will never forgive them. My dad died of stage 4 esophageal cancer on January 11th, 2019 mere weeks after being diagnosed, and an infuriating 2 days before he was supposed to start chemotherapy. However, I do not believe he would have survived treatment and in the end I think what happened was the better option for him. How it happened? No. But how fast? Yes.

Coping with all of this hasn't been easy. I developed almost instant PTSD. I would get a flashback if we drove over a sudden bump on the road. I would get startled into a near panic attack if I heard a loud, sudden noise especially if I was asleep. If my mother didn't wake up at the time she normally did, I had panic attacks over believing she was dead. I still can't see an ambulance parked on a street without getting tight in my chest.

At night I will usually get a sudden and violent realization that my dad is dead. For that moment I feel it all and it is instinct by this point to say "No, not now" and force it back down.

The PTSD has lessened but I still can't allow myself to process the grief. It's not that I don't want to… I feel like I honestly don't know how because I've been bottling everything up my entire life. I feel lost and disoriented… Hopeless as if I were floating away into nothing with the endless depths of the black ocean beneath me, just waiting for some giant monster to appear and swallow me whole.

The thing that has stuck with me is my new fear of dying. The fear isn't of death itself, it's of the guilt from the idea of my family suffering again… how awful it would be for them if something were to happen to me. It makes me worry about disease and accidents and everything in between. It triggers obsessive compulsive behaviors like, "If you don't check that door again, you will die and your mom will be left alone". Shitty, right?

This isn't a story of how I overcame any of this. I'm still treading water in the dark. Maybe you are too, and maybe that's why I needed to write this. It's all we can do, right? There's no method to overcoming grief, there's no one way to heal.

Maybe in the end all we can do is keep treading water until our feet touch ground.

-

For my Dad

August 1960 - January 2019

58 years old.