Facing Loss

In 2005 my mother suffered a massive stroke which left her unable to speak and bed-ridden. I would imagine in most families there would be a discussion about final arrangements, what the future would hold, etc. Not so in mine. We did not discuss anything. I would try to approach my father trying to get an idea of what kind of service we should have when mom passed away, who should officiate, what was their financial situation. He refused to talk about it. I don't know if he was in denial, believing she would recover, even though the doctors had said she would never recover from the stroke, or if he just believed it was none of my business.

Whenever there was a need to handle financial issues related to mom's care, he would seek help from my cousins. They would suggest to him that I be included in these discussions but he wouldn't have it. They suggested giving me power of attorney, in case anything happened to him. Again, he wouldn't hear of it. It was suggested that he put my name on his banking account and on the deed to the home. His response was that since I was an only child, it was all going to me anyway, so why should he do that? When he was told that it would have to go through probate, he scoffed, again saying I was an only child, there wouldn't be any probate.

During the next four years mom was in and out of intensive care and on the verge of death. Every time I would ask dad what we should do about making funeral arrangements and every time he refused to talk. Finally, on December 7, 2009 (my 50th birthday) mom passed away. Dad was in Pensacola visiting friends and my family had taken me to Disney World. We were on our way home when we got the call. I thought I had prepared myself for her death, after all we had been going through this for four years. When we got to the hospital I totally fell apart. Dad did not get home until late the next day. So for twenty four hours I was left to deal with it, not having any clue what needed to be done.

When we went to meet with the funeral director dad got upset with me because I hadn't made arrangements for someone to officiate. I had been asking for four years who they would want and never gotten an answer! I have many friends who are in ministry but wouldn't you know that none of them were available. I finally found a friend, whom I hadn't seen since high school, who was a Lutheran minister. We had just reconnected on Facebook a couple of weeks before. She did a wonderful job at the service.

A month or so after the funeral I suggested to my father that we should discuss what he would want in case anything happened to him. He got angry with me for even bringing it up. He said he would go to the funeral home and make all the arrangements so I wouldn't have to be bothered. Once again he refused to consider giving me power of attorney, so I had no access to his accounts, I had no say in his medical treatment if something were to happen. Oh, it was frustrating.

Toward the end of March, during a check up the doctors found a spot on his kidneys that concerned them. They scheduled a biopsy for the beginning of April. Dad took a week and went back to Pensacola to visit his friends. A few days after he returned he fell walking up the steps into the house. He didn't think much of it because he didn't feel in any pain. He went for his biopsy. The day after his biopsy, he began running a fever. He asked my husband and I to come over to take care of him. He noticed he was also losing some feeling in his leg. His thought was that he must have done something to his back (he had had surgery on it a couple of years before). After three days his fever was not going away so we went to the doctor. The doctor said it looked like a urinary tract infection and gave him a high powered antibiotic. After twenty four hours on the antibiotic the fever was on the rise so we went to the ER. They diagnosed him with pneumonia, even though he had no symptoms of pneumonia. They pumped him full of IV antibiotics for several days. During his time in the hospital, he got the results of his biopsy. It was positive for cancer but they felt they could treat it as an out patient thing once he got the pneumonia under control. While all this was going on he was losing the use of his left side more and more.

I'm still trying to get him to give me power of attorney so that if anything happens I can have some kind of say. He is still being stubborn and refusing. He had never gone to the funeral home to make any arrangements, refused to discuss it, and would become very angry if I brought it up.

They were still seeing shadows on his lungs so they decided to do a bronchoscopy to check for cancer. Those came back negative. His orthopedic surgeon was called in to see if there was any damage to his back. That was negative. A neurologist was called in. Tests were run. Results were a tumor on the brain. A neurosurgeon met with us and with his other doctors and it was decided that he would remove the tumor.

Once dad was facing surgery he finally agreed to give me power of attorney. Our neighbor, who is a lawyer, drew up the necessary papers. That was taken care of.

The surgery was done and the doctor told us that the tumor was larger than he had expected. It was a very agressive cancer and he believed it came from the lungs. Dad was expected to recover and was accepted into the physical therapy unit. He was moved up there on a Friday and was excited about getting started on therapy.
He had a few sessions during which he showed great progress.

I had been at the hospital everyday from 8:00am until 7:00pm for four solid weeks. On the Monday after dad was moved to the PT unit, I developed a migraine and stayed home. I was still feeling the effects on Tuesday, when my husband left for a job in North Carolina. On Wednesday morning when I arrived at the hospital my dad was totally incoherent. They said he had pneumonia again. He would complain that he couldn't breathe. He complained of stomach pains. He would be lucid for brief periods of time during which he would argue with me about different things. My kids came to the hospital to sit with us. I called my husband and told him he needed to fly home immediately. He talked to the nurse and confirmed that all we could do was make my father comfortable. By 9:15 my father was gone.

I had no idea what his wishes were for a funeral. I had no access to his money because power of attorney ceases to be affective once the person dies. Thank God for my cousin who had helped dad with the finances related to mom's care. He knew where all the paperwork was. We made the funeral arrangements, using the same minister that had officiated mom's service just six months earlier. My god-father gave the eulogy. It was helpful to me because he talked about how much my fahther loved to argue. And all these years I had thought it was just me he argued with.
I had recently reconnected with another childhood friend on Facebook. He turned out to be a lawyer who specialized in elder affairs. He told me to just bring all the paperwork I could find and he would sort through it. He has been a life saver for us.

It has been a year now. Yes, I am an only child and everything will come to me BUT, it is still tied up in probate. I had to get a loan from my cousin to pay funeral expenses until the life insurance policy paid off. We have had to go through the courts to get the house transferred into my name. Now we will deal with raised property taxes because my father paid a lower tax due to the number of years he owned the home. His money sits in the bank, untouchable. All of this could have been avoided if my parents had put me on their accounts and put me on the deed to the home. The stress of all this has been unbelievable. And through it all I have grieved for my parents. I have felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life. Yes, I have a husband, kids and grandkids. But I have no one that shared childhood family memories with me. I am alone in my grief. I am alone in my stress. I am alone in my sorrow. I am alone in my loss.