I’ve been saying goodbye to my father since I was 17 and a freshman at BYU. Once I graduated from high school, I never really lived at home more than a few months between college years and a few months before and after I was a missionary in Korea. You can see in this picture that we weren’t a super weepy family. I had been SO excited about serving a full-time mission for my whole life and I was just about to get on a plane to Korea after having been in the MTC for about 10 weeks. This is about as physically affectionate as we got—not quite hugging all the way, a little awkward. My dad and my brother actually SHOOK HANDS after two years of not seeing each other because of Chris’ mission to Korea. 🙄.

I used to think maybe we just didn’t feel things deeply or love each other as much as other families do—not because we didn’t, but just because we didn’t talk about it. But now that I’m not just a mother, but a Mimi, too, I realize that my dad felt the same way about his children that I do. He just had no idea how to express it verbally. It’s like a foreign language we didn’t speak with each other very well.

This week he really went downhill. He’s still hanging on, but at this point he is asleep and non-responsive almost all the time, and he hasn’t had food or water for about 5 days. The hospice team is doing a great job of trying to keep him comfortable and relaxed as he’s starting his journey home. I, on the other hand, am neither comfortable nor relaxed. Not without pharmaceutical help.

We’ve been praying for him to die for what seems like forever. And just like most things in life, getting what you asked for is not what you expected. This is such a painful, hopeful, tender and brutal experience. Most of the time I just feel numb. Desperately wanting something and yet being terrified of actually getting it is the best way to describe my emotional rollercoaster.

My dad taught me a thousand and one things. He didn’t teach me how to watch him die. It offends my control freak-inner organizer-perfectionist sensibilities that I can’t follow the grieving process in order and just be done. I know that’s ridiculous. I think my dad would totally understand.

At least we can touch each other now—now that he’s “actively dying”, which is both a ludicrous way to describe what’s happening, and, at the same time, highly accurate. My sister said she thinks of this process as if he were going through labor to get to the other side. I know I should have infinite patience and compassion for my dad, but part of me wants to just tell him he’s KILLING all of us. To which he would just respond that we’re all dying on a cellular level all the time, so what’s my problem?

I really don’t have a problem. My dad may not have taught me how to grieve for him, but like I said, we have been saying goodbye to each other forever. College, then mission, then back to school, then marriage and my life as a military wife. One thing I have not been as a daughter is physically there for my parents. Now that I finally live just a few hours away, we are saying goodbye again.

Maybe I was ok saying goodbye because I always knew we would see each other again—in a few weeks, or months, or even a year-and-a-half as a missionary. That’s really what is hard about this goodbye—I don’t know exactly when we say hello again. But I know we will. I was listening to another song in the last few days that has been stuck in my head—“Come To Jesus” by Nathan Pacheco. There is a line at the end that says “With your final heartbeat, kiss the world goodbye. Go in peace and laugh on glory’s side.” I came home yesterday to spend some time with my family, but before I left, I kissed my dad goodbye one last time. I hope he could feel it. I love to think of him young and whole and laughing. So I will just keep praying for him to walk through that door, knowing we will say hello sooner than we could imagine.