Burying God

My husband, James, drove us home to take a nap, somewhere around midnight. I was worn out, physically and emotionally. Two days of watching my dad dying left me needing my bed but also feeling guilty for not staying in the hospital room with my mom and siblings. There are eight of us kids and we were all there. I came back after a few hours of deep sleep, the kind that you only get when your brain has been pushed to its limits. My youngest brother had called and asked if I was coming back. I will always will be grateful that he woke me up.

            I drove back alone. James stayed with our sleeping kids. It was still the wee hours of the morning. Plus, we were both pretty sure that Dad would be done with his battle in the next few hours and James didn’t want to intrude. He’s just like that, especially about these kinds of things. I arrived at the hospital and made my way up to Dad’s room. My family was spread out over chairs, the floor, and the empty extra bed in the room. Dad was propped up, my sister giving him swabs of the apple juice I had gotten for him before I left earlier. He loved apple juice. We had tried water on the swab but he wouldn’t take it. I dipped the little pink swab in apple juice and saw the first signs of life that we had seen in several hours as the sweetness hit his tongue.

            Half of the family was sleeping when I walked in, tired but recharged; the others were joking. That’s what we do, we laugh and tease and it was always one of Dad’s favorite things—sitting, listening to us all being noisy. We were a “forever family.” Dad had converted to my mother’s religion when I was three years old. We went to a large white building and a man said that death would have no power over our family bond. We were sealed together and God was with us. My parents believed it and taught me to believe it as well.

            When Dad got sick, we prayed, we fasted, we tried to cash in any chips we had earned. The doctor said Terminal. Maybe we didn’t do enough? Or we hadn’t been good enough? Or Dad hadn’t been good enough?

            In the sterile, tight hospital room, everyone welcomed me back, poking some good-natured fun at me for needing sleep. I knew that they wanted sleep too and there was no accusation in their teasing. I made my way past all of their slumped and stretched out forms to my Dad’s bedside. Leaning down, hugging him, telling him I loved him, surprised and grateful to hear him say, breathlessly, I love you.

            He didn’t speak again after that, and never would. He used to always say Remember your prayers, morning and night. I had obeyed, most of the time, but especially after he started bleeding, and even more when his hair fell out, and then desperately when the tests showed that the rogue cells were out of control and there was nothing more that could be done. He had a stroke and I spent hours on my knees, begging the God that I loved to help us.

            I held onto Dad for another moment, surrounded by people who shared my suffering. His eyes stayed half open for another hour or so, he would occasionally take the proffered moist swab, but mostly just lay there, moaning softly, his eyes closed tightly in the pain of death. Those eyes, they were yellow where they were supposed to be white, evidence that his organs were shutting down, poison being released throughout his body. One of my brothers played some of Dad’s favorite Mariachi music, close so he could hear it. We told more stories, did anything we could to make Dad more comfortable.

            He had spoken to me last, and I think it was a sign. Or maybe an assignment. A little later that morning, I looked over at Dad while my mom was dozing and my siblings were involved in some old tale of childhood that I had heard a million times. Dad was gasping, silently, his chest heaving, a pained rise and fall. He was telling us that it was time.

            He can’t breathe, guys.

            Um, yeah. He’s dying, Julie. He will struggle to breathe.

            No, guys! He’s dying NOW!

            My sister woke up our mom, she was immediately alert and grasped Dad’s hand, whispering permission, telling him it was okay, she was okay, it would all be okay.

Let go.

I held his other hand, warm, in mine. We all gathered in close, many hands holding onto whatever they could reach of his last moments of warmth, saying those last-minute things that you hope a dying person will hear and take with them into the abyss. One or two more pained, gasping movements, no sound of air.

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James came to be with me and several sisters in law also arrived. Some of my siblings left, needing to sleep, or cry alone, or just get away. My mom left with her parents. Soon they were all gone. After our large crowd, the room felt unbearably empty as James and I sat with Dad. His bed was laid down flat, breathing tube removed from his nose, and a blanket pulled up to his chin. I held his hand again, it grew cold incredibly fast. That fall in temperature shocked me more than almost anything that day. So immediate, final, dramatic.

An hour or two later, I guess I lost track of time, a smart young man in suit and tie showed up to collect my old Pops. James and I waited in the hall. I found the cold tile floor surprisingly comforting, numbing, and wondered how that skinny kid was going to maneuver Dad onto the stretcher he brought along.

Then the boy, really, barely a man yet, came out and invited us to have a moment before he took my Pops away. James didn’t come with me. Like I said, he’s like that. He just knows when he’s needed, and when to leave you alone.

I don’t know how long I stayed in there, but I do know that every single second of that time shaped the person I am now, two years later. My dad, his dark skin turning gray, his eyes closed, his body cold, draped in a beautiful quilted fabric in soothing tans, warm reds, light copper, that would soon cover him completely. I was grateful for that covering. It spoke of love to me, more than those velvet green ones you usually see. I said a few things to Dad, even though he was gone. I wonder if part of him heard my words.

The young man, looking like a little boy dressed in his daddy’s grown-up suit, reminded me of a Family Circus comic I had seen once, and I would have smiled if I wasn’t standing next to my dad’s lifeless body. The boy spoke softly to me when I came out to the hall.

May I have your permission, for your dad’s privacy, to cover his face before I bring him out? Would you like to see him one more time before I do?

I could have kissed that boy. Instead I thanked him. He knew, probably from experience or training, that covering a loved one’s face is an incredibly traumatic event for family members, superseded only by watching their coffin lowered into the ground and covered with dirt, heavy, suffocating. I felt my own chest tighten when he brought Dad out, covered. I had to fight to start breathing again. James held my hand, tight, a squeeze of support. He didn’t know what I was feeling. How could he? But we’ve been together a long time and sense each other’s rhythms and unspoken needs. I loved him in that moment, more than I probably ever had before.  

We walked behind the stretcher, a solemn little procession, until we got to the elevator. There we had to part. Burned into my mind was the sympathetic, but also annoying, look of the doctor as we left. He had pronounced my dad’s death, life over, ended, no more. He hadn’t done enough to ease the incomprehensible pain that I saw in the contortions of my old Pops’ face during those last hours. I hate him for it, with his shiny stethoscope hanging around his neck, typing up something, probably my dad’s chart. Another day, another death. Some things are unforgiveable. I want to flip him off as we walk out. Instead, I look away, trying to release the anger. It will only hurt me, not him.

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Twilight had come by the time I woke up again. I slept the sleep of the grieving and rose to order flowers and make phone calls, comfort my kids, try to explain to them why their prayers hadn’t been enough.

A Mariachi band in gleaming white costume with gold cording and brass buttons played traditional Mexican ballads as my six brothers carried Dad’s coffin on a stark but unseasonably warm February day. He went out in style, his only reward for a life of hard work and sacrifice, religious devotion, and obedience. Of course, he wasn’t there to enjoy it, the funeral, or even much of his life. He worked full time until the last two weeks of his life, prayed, went to church, checked all the necessary boxes on heaven’s requirement sheet. He stayed faithful, hopeful, but also characteristically defiant to the end. He wanted badly to live, so he was blessed with the true priesthood power. But it wasn’t God’s plan for him to survive, despite his life of service and his family’s desperate pleas.

 We buried him, everyone contributing with shovel in hand. I only managed one shovelful, the bile rising quickly in my throat. I handed the shovel to someone else. James kept moving dirt with my brothers, because he’s just good like that.

My dad’s brothers crossed themselves, my siblings bowed their heads, my eldest brother blessed the fresh grave, asking God to protect it.

February 2, 2015: I left God, appropriately, in that hole with my Pops.