Thanksgiving Memory Stories: Dad Was Sick, Mom Had Died

My most significant Thanksgiving memories are from 1976 and from 2004.

In 1976, Dad was halfway through his two months in a stroke-induced coma that would lead to his passing shortly before Christmas.

Mom, who suffered from dementia, had taken her final breath a month prior to Thanksgiving 2004, in the middle of a peaceful afternoon nap.

I don't want these words to sound wrong. For that first Thanksgiving, I was wishing Dad would meet his Maker, and for that second Thanksgiving, I was grateful that Mom had met her Maker.

Yes. I wished for both parents to die, and thoughts were stirred on both of those Thanksgivings, and those thoughts remain as these words are written in a 2009 Thanksgiving memory storybook.

No, I didn't want Dad and Mom to die. But in their circumstances, my overwhelming desire was that they would not suffer. For Dad, he would not have wanted to become a vegetable or cripple. For Mom, she had been at a loss for two years and the Maker's final taking was merciful.

I am grateful that Dad was in a coma and therefore didn't suffer through the Thanksgiving season of 1976, even though it would have been better for Dad to have had a chance to embrace his retirement from the machine shop and to have had those golden years with Mom. The way it worked out, Mom, in fall 2004, died exactly one day before what would have been their 65th wedding anniversary, had Dad lived for another 28 years.

Near the Thanksgiving season of 1976 Dad took off a day from work to help Mom and her three sisters go Up North, as we say in Michigan, to close their Houghton Lake cottage for the winter. Dad did not particularly look forward to this because his side of the family was more earthly and fun while Mom's side was more prim and proper.

But Dad would make the best of it. So he slept on the couch at the cottage for the evening prior to close-up day. When he awoke the next morning, especially to tease and razz the especially prim Aunt Pat, Dad uttered: "I think I have to get up and take a piss."

Those were Dad's final words (and fitting words; I love him still so much) before the stroke struck and he collapsed. Doctors said this was like a trigger in his brain that could have happened any time, even when he was 20 or 30 or 40. So it's good that he made it to 62, and I'm glad he didn't suffer. Once Dad was in that coma, it seemed best that Dad go ahead and rest in peace.

Mom (and I love her still so much, too) wasn't so prim that she wouldn't occasionally tell the story of Dad's final epithet. Mom, my shy 4-foot-11-inch bombshell Mom (especially a bombshell to Dad!) was so sweet and so brave. Never once, never never, through all of her widow years, would Mom lament how Dad was taken away. Mom did so good that she was still sharp at age 80. In fact, when we candidly made videos of her little 80th birthday party in 1996, she looked into that strange-to-her video camera and asked, "Does that thing record sound also?" And when informed that indeed sound was being recorded, Mom responded with her classic, "Oh, glory be to God!"

Mom's deterioration from dementia started soon after the turn of the millennium, but Mom in her dementia did not become angry and ornery as others suffer. There are some horrible memories, especially when we had to take away her car, when she insisted she still was capable of driving to Wendy's to get her beloved plain hamburger, fries and a Frosty. Still, in the end, she seemed in peace.

These are my Thanksgiving memory stories -- when both my Dad and my Mom met their Maker in Thanksgiving season. They seemed at peace. But this may not be true in other families, where aging is joined with suffering, and for that, I don't know what to say. God? Please explain?