What I Learned From My 88-year old Dad
If my father were alive, he’d be 89 today.
I’m still processing his death, which happened in mid-April, and all he’s taught me during his nearly 9 decades on this planet.
One of the most important things he’s taught me is Love.
Growing up, I always thought I had to excel so my dad would approve of me.
He often told me if I didn’t get admitted to Harvard or MIT, he’d only pay for UMass. (And he made UMass sound like a terrible option. No pressure, right?)
He did end up encouraging me to turn down a full scholarship to Wellesley College and he paid for Stanford, but when I decided to major in history, he got really upset. (He’d been trying to convince me to study accounting or teaching.)
And then I went into TV news… and worked the overnight shift for a few months.
I remember my dad coming home one day with a look of extreme disappointment.
I asked him why he was so upset, and he said he didn’t want me to have to work so hard.
After I went to graduate school and found a stable job as a newspaper reporter, I think he felt better about things and stopped pressuring me so much.
And when I got married and had kids, all pressure stopped.
After my father died, I wrote his eulogy and in the process realized he’d lived through extreme poverty, two wars, the death of his mother at a young age, the death of his brother as a child, immigrating to a foreign country twice, earning a materials science engineering PhD in a foreign language, lay offs, discrimination, physical assault from our neighbors in America and more.
No wonder he wanted me to do well in school and get a stable job.
He wanted — what he thought — was best for me.
During the last 9 months of his life, my father was in a wheelchair and barely talked.
The few times he did speak, he told us he loved us.
My 10-year old would kiss him on the cheek regularly.
One day she noticed he was puckering his lips in return.
So she put her cheek up to his mouth and he gave her a kiss.
She triumphantly ran over to me to announce that Grandpa had given her a kiss, which he rarely did before he got sick.
Of course I had to run over to my dad to get some kisses too.
Towards the end of his life, the caregivers would ask him who I was and he did not know my name.
But one day when he was getting into bed, he looked straight at me and said, “I love you, Alice.”
Three days before he died we all gathered at his hospital bed.
My mother asked him what he was thinking.
He was wearing a BiPap machine to help him breathe and it covered almost his entire face. He coughed a lot using the machine and couldn’t talk with it on.
Using a white board, he summoned all of his energy to write
I love you.
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love
and covered the entire whiteboard.
Later the doctor allowed my daughters to visit for 15 minutes to say goodbye.
My 10-year old leaned in to say in his ear, “Goodbye Grandpa, I love you and I’ll see you in heaven.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” he tried to say, through the rush of air flowing through his BiPap.
——
My father’s been gone for two months now.
I miss his quiet presence at my mother’s place.
The rush of Life seems to have continued and I don’t often want to stop and think about my dad.
But when I do, the simplest and most profound message remains:
Love.
What have you learned from your father? What has been / was his greatest message to you?
YOU’ll ALSO LOVE…
Epiphany: I’ve Been Too Hard on My Parents. Immigrating Can Be Traumatic
