To My Dad: A Victim of the Coronavirus Without Ever Having It
Yesterday I became an orphan.
I know that’s a ridiculous thing for a 46-year-old, full-grown adult to say. It’s also inaccurate, since by definition an orphan is a child. Yet that’s how I felt when I got the call that my dad had died, alone in the isolation ward of a nursing home I’ve never seen, thanks to the altered reality we’re living in due to COVID-19. I felt alone. Cast adrift. Like there was no adult left to sweep in and take control. Irrevocably, I’m that adult.
Finding out you’ve lost a parent causes strange physical sensations I remember from six years ago when my mom died of cancer (they gave her six months, she was gone in four). At times I feel dizzy. Others, it’s like tumbling down a deep, dark well, to depths of sadness that seem bottomless. Last night as I tried to escape into sleep, existential questions flooded my thoughts: Who am I, anyway? Why am I here? How can I exist without you, the one who brought me here in the first place?
My mom’s death wasn’t perfect — is death ever perfect? — but I wouldn’t mind a similar one myself (minus the cancer). I was able to be at her bedside in her final days. In her last hour, I played John Denver songs while holding her hand. I tearfully watched her breathing slow, then stop. After she passed, I got to spend an hour alone with her saying goodbye. I was devastated, of course I was, but I also felt so close to her in those last moments. It gave me a lot of comfort to be there when she moved from this world to whatever’s next.
My dad’s death was different. At 82, the beginning of the end came in the form of bad balance. He started falling every few weeks at his assisted living residence in Dupont, Washington. Usually the falls were minor—until they weren’t.
The doctors thought his balance issues might be due to his medication and started tinkering with his doses. My dad (John, or “Big Man” as we fondly called him) trained himself to stand up slowly, wait a few beats before taking a step, hold tightly to his walker or a wall for support. I offered what help I could from my home in California, keeping in regular touch with the nursing staff. The falls continued, and bruises colored his body. He remained hopeful this was a temporary setback, that he’d get better. We started talking about plans to relocate him to California.
And then in March, right around the time the coronavirus hit the U.S. in earnest, he took the big one: a tumble in the bathroom, where he whacked his head on something solid and was rushed by ambulance to the ER for stitches. He was rattled but seemed okay. I asked if I should come, and he said no. I should have gone anyway. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after losing both parents, it’s that there are no do-overs.
A few weeks passed. I called him every few days. He sounded okay: like an old man, sure, but still lucid. Then, at a routine doctor’s appointment, his longtime physician noticed he was slurring his speech and sent him to the ER, where they found a hematoma on his brain caused by the fall. Neurosurgery decided not to operate given his age and condition. After a few days in the ICU, he was moved to the main hospital, his home for the next six weeks.
What was I doing during this time? Stocking up on toilet paper. Trying to entertain, educate and comfort my two elementary-aged kids when they found out school was canceled. Attempting to keep up at work and turning my 7-year-old’s bedroom into a makeshift office. Laying awake for hours at night worrying about whether my sore throat meant I had the virus and unstimulated kids and an ailing father in a different state. My membership in the Sandwich Generation wasn’t new, but I was feeling squeezed like never before.
A phone call came, this time from a palliative doctor. That was the first time I heard the “d” word — two of them, actually. They thought my dad was declining. And also, possibly, dying. The room spun. Hospitals were locking down to keep patients and staff safe from the virus sweeping the world. I asked this kind doctor what she would do if she were me. She told me she’d get on a plane, that I could get in to see him because he was considered an end-of-life patient. So I did, first calling my brother in Japan and telling him to get there, too.
For those who haven’t flown during the pandemic, it’s a surreal experience: Empty airports where reluctant travelers hide behind masks and clutch hand sanitizer in gloved hands. Empty planes reeking of disinfectant, with a skeleton crew of weary flight attendants (just three on my flight, the same as the number of passengers). I took the requisite spooky selfie, then deleted it. There’s not much I care to remember about that time.
On the ground, I rented a car, and (once I had sanitized my hands, my credit card, the keys, the handle and the steering wheel) drove directly to the hospital. After a long process of temperature-taking, disinfecting, mask-donning and several phone calls, they let me go up to his room on the 9th floor. At last, there he was, tucked in his hospital bed: Dad.
Over the next few days, my brother and I got to spend several precious hours with him. I’ll forever be grateful for the kind staff who let us keep visiting, even though an end-of-life visit was supposed to be limited to just one.
My dad’s condition fluctuated — sometimes he was able to talk with us about the things we’d done in the past and the things we’d need to do after he was gone. Other days, we were barely able to rouse him. I spoon-fed him pudding and yogurt and thickened water, reflecting on the inescapable cycle of life: How it can bring you right back to where you started, helpless and depending on others.
I’m so grateful I went when I could. As CNN blared on in the background and terrifying numbers about death rates and equipment shortages flashed on the screen, we sat with our dad, and he knew he was loved. He understood we were doing the best we could under what felt like impossible circumstances.
The doctors became uncertain about whether he was actively dying, and so my brother and I were told we could only visit one more time, for an hour. How do you say goodbye to someone who’s known you for your entire life? It’s too big to contemplate. If I went into that final visit thinking about how it was the last time I’d kiss his cheek or hear his voice, I’d lose it. So I didn’t think about words like “goodbye,” “forever” or “final.” I focused on telling him how much I loved him, how much his grandkids loved him, how he had lived such a good life. My brother told him it was okay to go. I’m crying now just thinking about how sad that last visit was, but at the time we held it together. One last kiss, and we had to walk out the door.
I went home. So did my brother, catching the last flight from Seattle to Osaka (he can write his own essay about what he went through at the Osaka airport). We waited for news. Dying is an inexact science, impossible to precisely predict. Would it be hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Might he even recover? It’s so tempting to grasp on to hope.
Time passed. They put him on a biPAP machine to help with his breathing, then took him off after we switched his orders to comfort care. I mention that like it’s an insignificant detail. It’s not. Putting someone on comfort care means they’re no longer given medical treatment—they’re just kept as comfortable as possible. There would be no breathing machines or feeding tubes or dramatic lifesaving efforts. The last granules of his life were trickling through the hourglass, and eventually they would run out.
We stayed in touch with the hospital. His care team was wonderful — angels on earth. They called with frequent updates about his condition and eating and mental state.
Then some new news: After so many weeks, the hospital could no longer keep him. We had to find someplace else for him to go. It couldn’t be back to his assisted living residence, since he was no longer able to live independently. We considered a rehab facility, but in the end he wasn’t physically up to it. That left a nursing home. Fortunately, money wasn’t an issue — we would have paid whatever it took — but for conversation’s sake, do you know how much a nursing home costs? $12,000 a month was the number we were given. I don’t know how families do it. A life savings can be wiped out in a matter of months.
We were fortunate that my dad, a longtime Marine, was eligible for hospice care paid for by the VA. There was one facility nearby where he could go, and in a stroke of luck, they had a spot. Plans were put in motion, and my dad was told we’d made some important decisions regarding his well-being. He was confused about why he had to leave the hospital and why he couldn’t go back home. I can’t fathom what losing control of your life like that must be like. One of the last things he said to me on a call from the hospital was, “I don’t know what’s going on.” It was heartbreaking.
He was taken to the new place by ambulance, and that’s where this story ends. My dad spent a week in the nursing home before he died. What happened during that time is opaque. Due to COVID-19, we didn’t have the option of visiting; the place is under total lockdown, like all nursing homes in the U.S.
Here’s what I know: that they planned to keep him isolated from the other patients for four weeks to make sure he didn’t have the virus — yet he also had a roommate (who was described to my brother as “disruptive,” a concerning detail we never got the full story on). He had a bed by the window, but of course I never saw his room. I hope the people there were kind; I’m optimistic, based on those I spoke with.
On May 6th, at around 4:20 in the afternoon, they discovered he’d died during a routine check. A nurse called me with the news 20 minutes later.
Today I’m left to put together the puzzle pieces of what his final days were like. I talked to him twice during that time, but they were stilted conversations facilitated by staff members pressing their personal cellphones to his ear. We said a lot of “I love you’s,” but not much else.
One thing that gives me comfort is that a kindly chaplain from hospice visited him a few hours before he died. He said he sat by my dad’s bed and made sure to make eye contact. He described my dad at spacey, but also said he was shocked to find out he died just a few hours later. The main message the chaplain made sure to communicate was how much his kids loved him. Thank you, wonderful chaplain— one of the many hospice angels who make dying easier for everyone involved.
Today I’m letting myself lounge in my robe and eat cake with my fingers. I’m going through old photos, remembering happy times and studying every detail of the fascinatingly dated black-and-whites. I’m writing an obituary that will be a more polished, less personal version of the one below. Like the rest of the nation, I’m only open for essential business.
We’ll plan a memorial service when the travel restrictions lift, and his ashes will be buried in the plot that’s been waiting for him for decades, beside the graves of my mom and oldest brother.
Regarding the title of this essay: Coronavirus didn’t kill my dad, despite the risks of living for weeks in the hospital. But it did rob us of my version of the perfect death. One where I’m sitting by his bed, stroking his hair, playing the old-timey jazz he loved as he gently journeyed into the great beyond.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be there with you, Dad. But while lots of things went wrong these past few weeks, we got a few things right. I know you died knowing you were loved.
John Doyle, 9/3/37–5/6/20
My dad John (aka the Big Man due to his role as patriarch of the family and towering 6’4” height) lived a life to be proud of. Raised in Wareham, Massachusetts, a resort town on Cape Cod, alongside his younger brother, Jim, by his Italian mother and Irish father, his first job was putting the jelly in the jelly doughnuts at a local bakery. At 17, he joined the Marines and served his country for the next two decades, earning his B.A. and master’s through night school and working his way up to Major. His role in the military took him and his wife, Joyce, and their two boys, Jim and John, to various locations around the U.S. and to Japan, where I was born.
When Big John retired in 1978 (he proudly wore his Marine Corps ring until almost the day he died), he started his second career as a director for the Washington State Department of Transportation, a role he held for decades until he retired for good. He had only two jobs his entire adult life and didn’t understand why his daughter hopped companies every few years. Ever practical, he also didn’t understand how she would make a living as an English major and encouraged her to switch to journalism, advice she’s still grateful for today.
John loved vintage jazz, napping in his big leather chair, reading (Cormac McCarthy was a favorite), and watching CNN with the volume turned way up. He enjoyed a glass of Jameson most evenings but could always stop at one. He knew more about world history than anyone I know — seriously, an absurd amount about obscure international events. He missed his calling as a history professor, except that he wasn’t the most patient guy. He loved to travel and was lucky to take a few epic trips later in life, including visiting Angkor Wat with his family, Myanmar with his son, and his beloved Ireland with his wife. He was a Democrat. He loved to golf until he suffered a stroke. He always got to the airport way too early.
Despite his gruff exterior, John was a total softy when it came to his kids. One of his favorite saying was, “You have to love your kids, but you don’t have to like them. Luckily, I like my kids.”
If he left me with one gift, it’s the security I feel of knowing that someone loved me unconditionally, would have jumped in front of a bullet to save me, and thought I was the greatest thing on earth. Now it’s my job to pass that same gift on to my kids.
I’ll miss you, Daddy. Rest easy, soldier.
