Richard Haughey (1944-2024)

My father passed away today.

It was a shock to get the call that he was "code blue" at his nursing home and the news that followed came as a surprise. But it was also something that hopefully gave him some relief after struggling with a long recovery post heart surgery, after decades of living with the effects of a stroke.

I never had complicated feelings about a death in the family until my grandmother passed in 2004. She was someone I saw every week from the day I was born until I was well into my twenties. She was the matriarch of a catholic Italian family and we'd have huge family reunions every summer with about 200 aunts, uncles, and extended cousins. She was a big part of my life growing up.

In the early 1990s, her mind started to go and she became forgetful and then she was diagnosed with Alzheimers. By the end of the 90s, she couldn't remember family members' names, she no longer cooked (something she did for 12 hours a day it seemed in the time before) and she was starting to get up and walk out of her house at any moment. My grandfather cared for her 24/7 but it eventually took its toll and he was once hospitalized with pneumonia from not sleeping and constantly having to worry about/care for her.

The final years were especially hard because her personality and her memories were largely gone, but her body was healthy for someone in their late 80s. By the time she passed I felt some sadness but I also felt an overwhelming sense of relief, since my grandpa could finally not be anxious about her well-being all the time (he lived for another 8 years after). At the funeral, I had to contend with feelings that I'd spent about a decade slowly mourning the loss of her starting back when she first couldn't recall my name, when it felt like the light behind her eyes that recognized me was starting to go away.

Other family members had similar experiences. It was hard to talk about the guilt around the sense of relief that the vessel she moved around in was finally gone, because our memories and the idea of our grandma had left years before.

My dad and I had a fraught relationship for the last 10-15 years. You'd probably call it estranged.

After his stroke in 2001, I tried to get him skilled nursing and physical therapy, but he was dead set in his ways to heal himself as if by magic. It still boggles my mind that he had a massive stroke that paralyzed the entire left side of his body when he was only 57 years old (barely five years older than I am now!) and naturally he was not happy being surrounded by people much older at late stages of life in any care facility he went to.

No one in the family seemed to talk about the stroke's effects on his mind, but his personality changed drastically after. He lost all sense of empathy, suddenly told crude jokes, and in conversations he reminded me of what it's like to talk to a self-centered 12 year old boy.

Post-stroke, he avoided hospitals the moment he got out of them, and hated every second in any nursing home that was trying to help him walk again. Soon he went home and my mom cared for him but whenever I visited he was pretty angry and barked commands at my mom constantly which bummed me out.

In 2011, my mom got an aggressive late-stage cancer diagnosis and it was tragic and shocking to see her deteriorate in just a couple months before her death at age 65. She only retired officially from her last job about two weeks before she died. She worked her entire life all the way up to the end and only got to "relax" for a short period before her time was up. I was beside her when she passed and being there really helped me deal with the loss of my mom as she was a big part of my life.

After my mom's death, things got weird with my dad. He was temporarily in a nursing home while my mom was going through early treatments and her own hospitalization. So a week after my mom died, my dad secretly married a nurse at his facility to "break out" and get someone to help him in his own home.

I was very angry about how things went down and didn't speak to him for a year or so after. Then I would chat with him once every few months. I would briefly visit him in California once a year, but he contacted me a lot more than I ever replied to him. I had to un-friend him on Facebook. I sent most of his calls to voicemail for years after.

Eventually the anger subsided. I realized I was mad at someone who didn't understand why I would be mad and staying mad at him was like staying mad at a brick wall, yelling at a brick wall every day but the brick wall was always going to just be a brick wall and not understand. I made peace with him and my anger years ago. I forgave him from afar.

It's weird to think I'm technically an orphan now.

Over the past ten years, every few months I'd get some chaotic call about what my dad had gotten into and what help he needed (usually money-related). I'm bummed he has passed, but I also feel a sense of closure and relief that the small anxious unknown that's always been off on the horizon that could creep up on me and surprise me at any moment is no longer there.

Goodbye, dad.