Two days ago, I held my father’s hands for the last time. They were the hands that showed me how to use a fly rod, pulled covers over my shoulders while I slept and picked up the phone to call and tell me not to drop out of medical school when I felt like a failure.
Two days ago, I held my father’s hands for the last time. They were the hands that showed me how to use a fly rod, pulled covers over my shoulders while I slept and picked up the phone to call and tell me not to drop out of medical school when I felt like a failure. I saw them change through the years. They were beefy when he was younger and so calloused during his years running cattle on his ranch that he could barely feel touch. But two days ago, they were soft from age, frequent massages and Lubriderm. In his right mind, he would have hated their softness.
During his final five days, I held vigil over them because I didn’t want him to feel me let go. My thought was irrational because he had dementia, but somehow, I believed that he knew that the hands that gripped his were mine. But as his death grew closer, I realized there was a different reason I held them so tightly. It had nothing to do with me comforting him.
Just before he died, his pneumonia caused his temperature to spike to 106.7. Even as a pediatrician, I had never seen such a high fever. I hated the fire that death brought. It hurt my hands. It caused him to suffer and I couldn’t do a thing about it.I tried to hold on through the fire but it hurt. So I sobbed. How could his hands hurt me? Death was ugly.
