Burying My Father

I have been lucky in parental support. My parents always made it known that they supported me, and they did so both financially and emotionally, for a long time. I wasn't an orphan when I signed up for Medicare, but I did lose my father that year. The fact that it was a long time coming didn't help. That surprised me, and I am still struggling a bit with it. So it has come to this--the time to bury him, whether I am ready or not, it is time to make it final. My father was not ready to die. The last conversation I had with him was when he agreed that it was time to enter hospice. Intellectually he agreed that he did not want to go back and forth to the hospital any more, but emotionally he was nowhere ready to die. He was, we all agreed, a terrible patient. He became moribound from his congestive heart failure, get rushed to the hospital to diurese, and then wake up and become ever so grouchy about why he was there. He made me promise that when he died that I would bury him next to my brother in a family plot he had bought when he was in high school in Northern Maine. That turned out to be a bit tricky, because the geography of the gravesite left only one spot next to my brother, and my mother was definitely pulling rank and wanted to be buried next to my father--thankfully, they both are opting for cremation and they can share a spot, allowing both of them to be next to my brother. On the other side my brother, who died as a child, is flanked by my grandmother, who died long before I could ever meet her, but I have her genetic mutation. It killed her, but not me, at least so far, but being in that place, with all of them, me and my mother alive, my brother and father dead, was emotionally complicated for me. I feel grateful to have had them, even for the short time my brother live, grateful to be alive, and grateful my family came with me to say goodbye. My father was disappointed that while his mind was clear, his body failed him--I am happy to say that we did not.