cemetery blues.

Documenting my dad's terminal illness: Day nine

Thursday, April 24th, 2025

Most mornings, my mom makes a pot of coffee. She’s had this Mr. Coffee coffee pot for years. My dad always preferred drip coffee over instant. I was never partial to either. The coffee pot makes this very particular sound while the coffee heats up and rumbles. It’s the sound that I woke up to most mornings while I was still living at home. Right now, that is the sound coming from my dad. He’s in the middle of our living room, in a hospital bed, in a, what Eduardo, the hospice nurse, calls a “semi-coma.” He rumbles, not quite a snore; it’s as if coffee is brewing inside him. That is called the death rattle.

Eduardo came by today and said my dad has at most two days. He said, “I would be surprised if he makes it to Monday.” Two days, that’s all the time I have left with my dad, if that. I’ve reached the point of this whole thing where this is our normal. My family has had to adapt quickly. We are caregivers. We change my dad, we bathe him, we reposition him to make him comfortable, we love him. Yesterday was another difficult night. It was the first night when my dad was fully unconscious. I never expected him to be unconscious. Drugged? Yes. Sleepy? Yes. But not unconscious to the point where he can no longer talk to us, he can no longer open his eyes, my dad is no longer my dad. Instead, he is like a copy of my dad, a xerox of a xerox if you will (Bojack Horseman reference for all those who celebrate). It is so strange to witness my dad in this state. Last night, he began to moan loudly. It was a terrifying sound I had never heard before. It started when we began to shift him, he needed to change positions to make sure he does not develop sores. But as we moved him, he grunted and groaned. It’s a sound I know will haunt me for the rest of my life. It’s what I hear when I finally fall asleep (something I do very little of these days). I would not wish that sound on anyone. Why, I wonder, is dying so scary?

I am, on paper, the youngest of my family. I was born last, and I was born small. But for whatever reason, my place in age has never mattered when it came to taking on responsibilities. I have written here before about when both my parents were hospitalized and how I was the first point of contact both times. Not my parents, or my sister, or my brother, it has always been me. I always knew that when this time came, my role would be significant. We are lucky to have a family friend who has been so kind to us and helped us plan so much. But today I did the unthinkable, today I bought two plots at the cemetery. My brother (mom’s son) drove me, and I was thankful he did. I don’t know that I would have been able to drive myself. I was shaking and deep breathing, and doing my best to disassociate from the whole thing. I don’t have the greatest relationship with my brother. Things happened when we were young (too much to get into now) that have left our relationship strained and bruised with difficult memories. However, my brother has been surprisingly great through all of this. It’s not that I believe him to be an evil monster. I knew he would be helpful someday, but I guess I did not know just how much he loved my dad. It’s a testament to the kind of man my dad is. He is kind, funny, charming, and so gentle and patient with those around him. He took my brother in when he was eighteen and showed him a kindness I was proud to witness. My brother will miss my dad, too. My brother mourns this, too.

The cemetery is not too far away from us, which I know is comforting to my mom. She wanted to make sure my dad was somewhere she could visit often. She does not drive on the highway and needs the drive to be easy, accessible, and fast. When the time comes, my dad will be ten minutes away from us (12 if there’s traffic). There’s something both sweet about this and not. It’s morbid, I guess, to think that he will be buried 8 feet under the ground, minutes away from us by car. But he should be home with us. He should be laughing, eating, watching soccer on the TV, and falling asleep on the couch seconds after lying down. I still can’t believe this is happening, and it felt even less real being at the cemetery.

They needed someone to sign paperwork, and my mom did not have the heart to leave my dad. We are so afraid of when his final moment with us will be. We want to be with him, as difficult as it is, none of us wants to miss his last breath. But I am our family’s secretary of sorts; I handle all the paperwork and difficult conversations, so it only made sense that I went. John, the cemetery guy, was very nice. He walked me through the whole thing, showed us the plot (my mom saw it the day before and loved it. That’s what mattered most to me; I just wanted to imagine what it would be like. My brother and I stood there as John explained the size headstone we could have if we were buying a family plot and all the other logistics of everything. My dad would be facing the Pawtucket River. My mom liked it so much because my dad used to love fishing. Every summer, he’d ask me to get him his fishing license online, and I would. He fished a lot more when I was younger, and it was something he stopped doing as I got older. We used to love watching him catch these gigantic basses. It was always a lot of fun.

Anyway, we were at the cemetery, and John went over the paperwork, and I signed it off. I am the owner of these two plots now, it’s my name that will be on the deed. It feels strange to own the resting place of my dad and that of my mom, but I guess this was always the way it was supposed to happen. My mom gave me her card to pay for the plots, but when I gave John my mom’s card, he said, “Bank of America tends to decline the purchases, but we can try it.” So, we did, and like John said, it would the card declined, Suspicious Fraud, it said. It worried me for a split second before I remembered I had my credit card. Shout-out to the Capital One Venture Card, it really came in handy today. I texted my mom and told her what happened, and she apologized. I told her that it was fine, I needed the flight miles anyway. Buying the plots was surprisingly easy. We were able to pay that upfront (thanks to my mom’s savings), and then we were off on our merry way. The rest of the bills will come later. I don’t know how we’ll pay for everything, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. When the time comes, we’ll figure it out because we have to, because this is happening, because we cannot stop it.

There’s something John said to me that I can’t stop thinking about. The cemetery we chose is almost at capacity. The plots we bought are the last ones besides a few scattered around. That means the cemetery is almost full. Isn’t that crazy? The cemetery is almost full of dead people, and they just don’t have enough land anymore. I find that amazing. This whole process is an act of love. We want to visit our loved ones once they pass; we want to believe that they are with us on this earth. Thousands of people had loved ones who wanted this. We are not special in this; we are not special in mourning our beloved, and that brings me comfort. John mentioned that he had lost family members back to back in the past few years. “That must be hard,” I said. “It is. It sucks.” I was glad to talk to someone who understands just how much it does suck. I appreciated the simplicity of it. Losing someone you love sucks, there’s no other way to put it.

I have been trying to seek out community during this whole thing. Talking to people who could understand what I’m going through. I can’t go a day without crying. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and I can’t think of anything else. Losing someone is one thing, losing your dad is another, and witnessing the slow death of your dad, well, that is entirely something else. In many ways, it has been a quick process. My dad was sick for three months, and he will be gone in three (almost four) weeks. That was almost a month of life after the terminal diagnosis. But it has also felt like time is moving slowly, like molasses in a hot pot. We are trying our best to move through this sticky, gooey mess, pushing our arms through the reality of this horrible thing. We won’t make it unscathed, but slowly, we will make it.

That has been a big conversation at our house. Our life has been my mom, my dad, my sister, our dog, and recently my brother. Now, life will be missing someone. My dad is so important to our dynamic. He was always in the middle of our shenanigans. He was the one we always wanted to spoil with Christmas gifts. My dad loved getting gifts. My mom’s favorite prank to pull on my dad was putting his present in a bigger box, and then placing that bigger box in a bigger box, and so on. We loved watching him laugh like a little kid, using all of his might to rip through the tape that my mom covered the gifts in. It was amazing, it was beautiful, it’s what I’ll miss every single Christmas from here on out. We can’t stop talking about it. About how different our lives will be without him in them. I won’t get a phone call every day checking in on me. My mom won’t have someone to cook for when she gets home from work. My sister won’t have someone making her laugh by pulling on her ponytail. My brother won’t have someone to talk to about soccer. My dad’s death will impact our lives fully and wholly, and I hope it does. I hope that it completely wrecks my world. I hope we feel the impact of his death until the end of time. I hope that it knocks me completely off my feet and that I never feel the same. I love my dad so much, and I cannot imagine living my life without him here.

It really is a matter of time until my dad isn’t here. Maybe he’s always here? I hope he haunts me. I hope he haunts me at least a little bit. I don’t believe in God the same way others do. But I believe my dad will be with me, in everything, because I am part of my dad. By knowing me, you know my dad. By reading this, you know my dad, my dad is everything I am and will be. He lives through me. But God, how badly do I wish he could live beside me.

I don’t know why this all happened. I don’t think there’s a good enough reason. I don’t think I needed more strength. I don’t think my family deserved something like this to happen to them. My dad suffered these last few months. He felt pain like nothing before, he struggled like never before. We will come out of this hurt, I can only hope he comes out of this at peace.

I love my daddy, I love him so much that I am willing to endure this pain for the rest of my life. If I had to do this all over again, I would. I would do just about anything for my dad.

Pictured: My family for my dad’s birthday (I can’t remember which one).