Bouncing Forward

How my father's recent passing brings me hope.

Photo by Kolleen Gladden on Unsplash

“Uh, oh. I missed a call from Aunt Barb,” I said to my brother. I stopped by his house around lunchtime on a Tuesday after my eye doctor’s appointment because I was in the neighborhood. “She left a message.”

I stood up and paced, my body tense and knowing what was coming. I hit the play button on my messages. “Kristine, it’s Barb. We are at your dad’s…” then the message trailed off. It sounded like a combination of static and a Charlie Brown teacher. I hit play again, out of habit, or maybe because I didn’t want to call her back, knowing what she was going to tell me.

I called her back anyway, putting her on speaker, standing in my brother’s kitchen, my stomach in knots.

“Hi, Kristine,” Barb answered, her voice strained and frantic, “We came to get your dad for his cancer doctor appointment today, and he hadn’t answered my text last night, and he didn’t answer this morning, and I had a really bad feeling ever since last night, so when we got here, we got the maintenance guy to do a wellness check and…and he’s gone. He’s gone.” I looked up at my brother, whose jaw had gone slack, tears welling up in my eyes, unsure what to ask next.

“He’s dead?” is all I could come up with, wanting to confirm that is what she meant by “gone” rather than he was missing.

“Yes,” she paused briefly to take in some air, then her words came quickly and without pause. “The fire chief and paramedics are here. And there is a police officer since it is an elderly person found alone. I am in the living room. I don’t want to go in and see him. I can’t. I guess they have to rule out foul play, and oh, wait, they are asking me something. I need to go. I will call you back. I’m so sorry.”

I hung up the phone and looked at my brother.

“Dad’s dead,” I said, as if he couldn’t hear it for himself.

Time froze and sped up at the same time. It was one of those moments where there was no precedent for either one of us. Next steps were not clear, yet the urge to do something, to let people know, was overwhelming. The next twenty-four hours were a blur. Communication with our sister in Switzerland, my kids, my mother, friends, work, airlines, hazmat teams, the mortuary, his financial guy, and the staff at his independent living facility swallowed my day. I barely had time to breathe, let alone process or cry.

In less than forty-eight hours after we got the call, my plane touched down in Phoenix, my hometown, my father’s hometown. I only knew Phoenix with my father in it. This would be the first version without him. My Aunt Barb and Uncle Richard were there to greet me. They took me to his place, and the work continued.

It was so weird to walk into his space, frozen. The scene I saw was consistent with my father. His living room was pristine and clean. His beloved paintings and sculptures were bathed in the bright Arizona sun. His beloved Camelback Mountain was visible through the window. A half-full coffee cup rested near his computer in his office. An empty pint of Häagen-Dazs ice cream in the trash next to his desk. Kleenex everywhere. I found sauerkraut in his fridge. Super Beet chews on his counter. And boxes of Alkaline Smart Water. Bottles of magnesium. Apparently, my dad was getting health advice from TikTok.

I did not go into his room. I did not want to see where my father lay for an unknown period of time after life left his body. I let the biological cleaning team, who were amazing, do their thing while I started with the low-hanging fruit—dishes and trash and separating things into respective piles.

My brother arrived the following day, and together we tackled his closet. I was concerned that this would feel like a violation. Too intimate. Too close. I was not sure what I would find from a man I had known my entire life, yet not well at all.

We found that my dad had an inordinate number of polo shirts, jeans, and khaki pants. He still had some of his bespoke suits from his younger years. He was heavy in his 40s and 50’s and started working out with a vengeance in his 60’s, after getting sober for the last time. He got fit and healthy and never looked back. None of his older suits fit his trim body. He took to wearing jeans and embracing a more casual look, something he never did when I was growing up. He was in a suit for work or shorts working in the yard. Nothing in between. His uniform changed completely.

I found it interesting to see what my father saved. He saved his Stanford track uniform from his collegiate running days. He saved articles from high school and from college, when his medley relay team was vying for the American record. Letters typed from his college coach to his parents, written in the late 1950’s. He saved pictures from his time in the National Guard, something he never talked about. He had every receipt and ticket and so many pictures from a trip he took with some college buddies through Europe in 1958. My dad would recount the details of this trip with painstaking precision to anybody who would listen. How they mistakenly climbed the Eiger and bought a Citroen that barely fit four men over 6 feet tall and rambled around, not knowing what they were doing. My dad came alive when he told these stories. He saved the receipt for that car and ticket stubs and every scrap he could from that trip.

There were pictures of his time at the independent living facility, Revel. The last picture he sent all of us, which was unusual, was at their Christmas party. My dad was wearing a festive sweater and a Santa hat, smiling for the camera. He exuded happiness.

What wasn’t there were extensive records of those middle decades. No pictures from family vacations. Very few pictures of his three children. There were pictures of his six grandkids, photos my siblings and I had sent him over the years. This was not surprising to my siblings or me.

My father’s middle decades were rough. Undiagnosed depression. Drinking. Two bouts of cancer. Stints in rehab. A career that brought accolades but not much satisfaction. A pervasive unhappiness that bled onto all of us. He had every trapping of success by societal standards, and he was miserable.

Sifting through my father’s things reminded me of a concept in the Yoga Sutras. The Sutras teach us that obstacles to clarity are inevitable. Illness, doubt, fatigue, and regression are part of being human. In this tradition, regression is not a failure. It is a new starting point. We don’t bounce back from these obstacles. We bounce forward. We take all the experience and knowledge that we have garnered into our next iteration, moving toward clarity and away from suffering.

I think about how many times my father began again in his 87 years.

The last time I saw him, he had been living at Revel for two years. He went there reluctantly. My sister worked her magic and moved him out of the townhouse he had occupied for twenty years and into his new apartment. He embraced this new iteration of life that he resisted at first. He experienced more social interaction in one meal at Revel than he did in over a month in his townhouse. This transformed him. I didn’t recognize the man I saw for the last time. He was joyful. Social. Vibrant. He hugged people. He was eating Super Beets. He participated in twice-weekly Jeopardy tournaments with fellow residents. He made friends with the staff. This place brought out the best in him. I had never seen my father so happy. I had never seen him in a place of belonging like this. Despite everything, he was loved and loving. He belonged.

My forensic dive into my father’s life started with a panicked phone call and uncertain next steps, yet brought me more peace and hope than I expected. I saw the same smile on the bookends of his adult life—when he was running as a young man and in a Christmas sweater and Santa hat surrounded by his new friends. He found belonging and joy and happiness in a place he never thought to look. Every obstacle propelled him forward, into a life he loved at the end. And if my father can bounce forward late in life, I can too. I can find belonging and love and joy in unexpected places. He reminds me how lucky I am that I get to begin again.