My father died almost two-and-a-half years ago. I think of him every day.
It began as a profound sadness, an absence that made me feel deficient mixed with a tinge of relief that he was finished suffering. It was a good death, and it was the right time in the trajectory of his illness. Any longer and he would have resented the compromise in his dignity and autonomy.
I've written before about how grief transformed into gratitude. My dreams went from those of him in his late-stage illness and final moments to recollections from when he was healthy, full-faced and in his prime.
I dream of him often, and these days I awaken feeling joy after he stops to visit me on his evening rounds.
I thought of this recently for two reasons.
First, a friend whose father's physical health lasted almost a decade longer than his cognitive health informed me this morning that her father had died. She and a sibling had taken turns driving to and from their parents' home in adverse LA traffic each weekend for years to fill in for a weekday caregiver and ensure their parents had all that they needed.
He was a shell of the father she'd once known, and it broke her heart.
My grandmother had undergone a similar dissolution, where her body had become an empty warehouse for the person she once was in her final decade. It was an entirely different experience to see my grandmother decline at a remove from personal responsibility for her well-being (my father and uncle shouldered that together) than it would have been to watch a parent disappear that way.
The second prompt was a visit last weekend to my hometown, where I have both immediate and extended family.
When I was a medical student, my father and uncle moved my paternal grandparents into town to be closer to family. When I'd return to town, my father and I would drive over to pick up my grandfather and meet my uncle for an espresso at a local coffee house - three generations of men together enjoying a ritual of pleasure and connection.
This weekend, my son and I agreed to meet my uncle (my father's brother) at a local independent coffee house where, among other things, we reminisced about my father.
My uncle told stories ranging from childhood pranks to college shenanigans to getting a new start together in a new city in the foreign country that became their home.
My uncle loved my father and deeply influenced the trajectory of dad's life - they went into business together, our family moved to the same town where my uncle's family lived, and I eventually went on to attend high school and college alongside my cousins, who to this day are like sisters. He and my father spoke in person or by phone every day.
My uncle is now in his late 80s, and I treasure our relationship. Our conversations are as close as I can get to sharing my life's triumphs and challenges with my father, and I suspect that to my uncle I am as close as he can get to continuing his relationship with my dad.
There was something meaningful in the reconstitution of three generations of men from our family enjoying ritual and connection once again, cherishing the threads that bound us despite our losses.