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Dead Dads Club

New member inbound. 

I am currently sitting in a bedroom in my parents' house alone with my father who is dying of cancer. He is out of it. Snoring badly (he has cancer of the tongue - he can't eat or drink) It may be days, it may be weeks.

I will have to give the oration I have been dreading all my life.  I don't know if I can.

We have always had a great, loving, relationship even/especially when we are butting heads.  I am going to miss him terribly.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

 

Sorry to hear it. I lost my husband to cancer about 18 months ago, and my own father is currently very ill too. He’s 86 in a few weeks. That’s 40 whole years older than my husband was.

I’m rambling because there is nothing to say but I couldn’t let this go unreplied to. You may feel very alone right now, but you’re not.

You can, by the way. You’re going to amaze yourself with what you can do.

Porpoise my dad died 6 weeks ago. I knew him for over 60 years and I loved him to bits. The last 6 months of his life were a shit show that I was powerless to temper or improve. He hated that time. I hated it too. 

At his funeral I said almost verbatim what you anticipate about missing him. I had been thinking it tonight and do so daily. And then I saw  your post. 

I choked a bit at the funeral. I consoled myself in the knowledge that many footballers choke at losing a big match. We have lost our dads. I know which is the greater loss from where I am stood. 

There is a recent post on here by Oyster Bay whose lot in life apropos her mum has been a very different experience. I haven’t commented on it for various reasons but not least of all because it would be trespassing given the diametrically different experiences of parenthood. 

I hope you can celebrate your dad as I tried to. We are very lucky even if heads were occasionally butted. Many here look back on their experience of being a child very differently to you and me. 

Rejoice and let those there on the day be in no doubt about how you feel. We are privileged. Send him off in that knowledge for yourself, your family and those gathered. You can pay him no finer tribute. I hope this is helpful. 
Prodders

 

Dear Peter,

I just came on to say I feel for you and I hope the end is peaceful. And no you are so NOT alone, what you describe about being in your parents house with your poor father, we’ve all been there.

I am very sorry to hear this Peter.

I always thought I would be fine when Daddy Caulfield karked it, but he is now 65 and having so many heart issues that I now worry

Good luck Peter. Tell your dad you love him, give him a big hug, and you’ve got the rest.  You’ll say what you need to at the funeral and get the chance to celebrate his life. Much love xxx

With a father who was given three years to live almost 15 years ago I often ponder this moment and have already mentally written several drafts of his eulogy.

What Penguin and Minkie said plus the following 

When my pa died in his bed with a brain tumour after a difficult and fast decline, I went to see him, hugged him goodbye and spoke about everything and nothing for a while, told him he’d been a good father, we would all be ok and he should not be scared and, if he needed permission, could let go now. And then I went downstairs to the kitchen and my mum and uncle were there crying because there was a baby monitor on and they had heard me all settled and calm. They said well done that was lovely. And at that point a noise welled up inside me which I had  not heard before or since. It came from deep within. Like an air raid siren. A total waol of grief. A letting out of held pain. A warning sirej.

And thus began a dismantlement of me which I then had to rebuild over time. I was suffering pain of compound fracture. I then had weeks of exhaustion and  numbness and contemplation. Just acknowledge this stage is inevitable, entirely appropriate, don’t be shocked by that but let it happen. Make room in your life for it. Talk.

Spelling questionable but you get my point 

I know I have committed the sin of taking your situation and talking about me, but I am trying to guide through difficult waters by giving you the benefit of a journey already travelled. 

mutters - sharing own experiences help others. 

Peter - more than just "makes one think". Sorry to hear about it mate. No words can console except that you are not alone. Hold tight and keep talking to anyone whom you trust to vent / grieve / cry  or just pause. LIfe can wait. 

Sat at my desk in tears for people I don't know and will never meet...Perhaps because of memories stirred of losing my own dad 11 years ago this month. It is the common human experience we all share. Hugs to all.

Thank you all for your kind words.

I know I am not alone; my wonderful mother was downstairs taking a break from the caring and there is a procession of our family to come and sit with him.  When I left last evening I hugged him and said that we love him.  He managed to say: "you can tell".

The point about being alone with him was the silence and prompt to think about the unresolvable existential matters that we, certainly I, deliberately avoid most of the time.

I think my klaxon wail is yet to come.  At the moment it's discovering (as a man who does not cry often) that tears are surprisingly hot and stinging.

May we all continue to give eachother strength, or at least a distraction, to enable us to KBO.

I'm very sorry to hear this. I wish your Dad peace and hope he isn't in too much pain. 

My Dad died a few years ago and I miss him every single day. I work in a toxic workplace, with v cliquey colleagues, which doesn't help. I don't have a single friend there. I would usually talk to my Dad about these things, and much more. Luckily, I also have a lovely Mum.

I still cry at least twice a week about him.

Hugs to you all. 

exhaustion and  numbness and contemplation

Goodness, that’s a succinct capturing of what grief feels like.

The value of talking, and finding a distraction or a way of blotting it all out some of the time (if you can find a healthy way to do that) resonate with me too. 

Peter apologies for confusing you with the boards other PP and addressing you as Porpoise. I probably should have deferred replying until this morning after a 21 hour day. I was flaked and not being flippant. 
 

Very sorry to hear what you're going through Peter.

I lost my father in quite different circumstances, he passed very suddenly and unexpectedly (10 years ago this year). 

I can't offer much by way of advice given the differing situations but I would recommend plenty of talking about great (and even some not so great, but memorable) times you've had together that you wish to treasure. Talking about them should help you keep vivid memories of them for when the time comes that you can only think about them rather than discuss them with him.

You'll get through the eulogy, try not to worry about that now and enjoy (if you can) what's left of the time you have with your dad.

Yep, joined this club over three decades ago a few weeks before my 18th birthday, also cancer. I remember the moment I became older than he was when he carked it. A very weird feeling. Can't really offer much in the way of practical advice. Certainly I didn't do anything at the time which made it any easier but we live in much more enlightened and supportive times now thankfully. 

I still have my parents, thankfully, but I do have quite a lot of experience of bereavement. We all must die. When someone has lived a good and full life, focus on that. It is much harder when someone has died too early - that is when the anger and frustration can be difficult to cope with. And when they are old, our wish is for as good a death as possible. Of course you will miss him terribly, Peter, but it sounds like it is time, and then it will be time for you to celebrate his life and what he meant to you all. 

I vividly remember my father dying. It was the waiting that was far more painful than the end - the fear of not being there at the moment, mixed the guilt of wanting it over and dread of the aftermath.   

As a family we were with him when he died.  As his breathing started to falter, I remember my mum saying "he's going" and we all just started speaking to him - innane, trite rubbish, thanking him for being the best dad, telling him we loved him, I think I even said "goodbye and take care" or some such drivel. Like the OP I had often thought about and dreaded having to give the eulogy, but I had not even thought about the moment of saying goodbye. When it did happen, what came out was banal, but a moment of raw love, of gratitude and loss.  

Its amazing how people behave in these raw moments,  I cried and comforted my mother.  My younger brother lay on the bed next to my dad, and turned on the six nations on the telly, (they had talked of watching it together in the days before).  I remember looking at my brother, remote in one hand and the hand of a dead man in the other, and then at one point he turned to my dad and commented on a forward pass or something.  It was a bizarre, almost comic scene - but beautiful in that moment. 

Gulp.

 

My father had terrible confusion in the closing hours and a lot of hallucinations which scared him. A mix of dehydration and the impact of the tumor. They had a little brown dog at the time (smooth brown Dachshund) that liked to sleep on his bed. We were watching Countryfile and it was about beavers being released and the TV and real life seemed to blend for him.  At one point he said "are you John Craven". I said no. He said "then what are you doing in my room - go back inside the telly".  The dog jumped up onto the bed and he shouted "BEAVER! OUT! BEAVER" and started batting his hands at it. Beaver was in fact his last word in my presence.  He was silent after that. When I said the stuff above, he didn't respond.  Killed by a beaver. 

My mum has been having a big clear out and turned out some letters that my aunt wrote as she was dying of a brain tumour.  She might have had trouble speaking and getting the right words out but could still make sense on paper and some of those are quite hard reading even nearly thirty years on.  She was very near the end at her daughter's wedding and I had a long drunken conversation with her that I don't really recall but which she said was wonderful and then went home and sat in the garden and cried at the anger of it all as it was my first experience of losing a close relative.  

My lovely dad has been diagnosed recently with lung cancer. We have no idea how long he has left and, whether it's the cancer or not, he seems to be failing in many ways.

I've been working on his eulogy and there is so much I want to convey about him - how he managed to retain his sense of mischief despite his brute of a father, how he was a very bright little boy who was given no direction or encouragement but gave me all the opportunities he lacked, that as an adult he was scared of no one. So.much to say and I don't think I'll be able to deliver it without breaking down horribly. There is no one else so I might have to resort to whoever officiates.

I am so sorry Peter and all the other posters who struggle with the loss of their fathers. We were lucky to have them.

My dad died of cancer nearly 18 years ago. He had lung cancer that spread on his brain. He was only 59 years old and for thirty years in my life at that time, but the last time I saw him he looked twenty years older and the cancer wiped out his memory in the last six months of his life. I was heartbroken then. 

My dad was a very bright kid, but directionless due to unstable upbringing in a sense that he could have done more with his fantastic artistic and mathematical abilities. Despite all that, he achieved a lot within the constraints of his life. 

I miss him and often think of him. Wish he was happier in life when he was healthy. 

I agree with GwenllianJones, we were lucky to have good dads!

Wish you, Peter, to stay strong and days will come when memories of your dad will give you strength to move on in life. 

Dear Gwen and Fleur 

I can’t summon the bandwidth to respond to the many above or even you two individually but you are both seserving of some comfort. So here goes. 

I am a father of adult children and an adult child of a too soon dead father. And although I only have a little glimpse into it all I have gone deeper into the parent /child dynamic recently (RoF passim) so I presumptuously speak in this post on behalf of the parent. 

All we want to know is that our efforts -hit or miss - end in a short comment like the ones you give above. If they put ‘A good Dad’ on my stone I’d take that above all other stuff. 

Cherish the things that make you remember him as a good dad. For me it was moments in which I made decisions based on values that my father thought important. It made me think he is alive in me not dead. 

My sympathies. Have given eulogy for deceased parent. Oddly, when putting it together me and siblings collectively recalled much that the others either didn't know/ remember or just hadn't thought about for years. It was joyous in many ways and only then did we truly appreciate what was done for us as children and young adults. Being able to relate how awesome my mother was to a packed house was a privilege, but also very hard. It is wonderful when you hear things about your folks you never knew from those who knew them when young. It is hard but I truly believe a life well lived us to be celebrated. 

Well, that’s it. I’m in the DDC.

He died peacefully in his bed surrounded by his family.  There was no fear or distress.  May we all have such a death.

I arrived at home moments after he took his last breath. My sister was there to meet me. When she told me I’d missed him the grief hit hard and it felt like I was plummeting. There was no howl; just a gasp and a burst of expletives.

He would have been appalled.

 

I think I'd like my last words to be about beaver. Hugs to all concerned. Mrs and I are both a long way from our fathers - 10hrs and 20hrs, respectively. Both resigned that we likely won't be there. You have that, I guess. 

Ah I'm sorry to hear that. 

I'm in the DDC too (11 years, cancer, far too young, miss him terribly).

Don't worry about the eulogy, you'll be fine and everyone is there to support you.

eugenie - also really sorry to hear about your situation, very very tough.

Peter, a gentle passing. May his memory be a blessing. How fortunate in this world to know and share love - a good dad per Mutters. Take time. And take care of yourself. 

Sorry for your loss PP. sounds like he was a great father surrounded by a loving family. What more can we all hope for in our final moments? I’m sure you’ll deliver a touching and worthy eulogy. I still have a playlist of the music that we selected from for my dad’s funeral and it acts as a nice connection to him and brings back great memories.

A peaceful pasding, a blessing indeed.

By the time you read this ( if you ever do) you will be extremely tired with masses to do, this is entirely normal, just go with the flow.

People will be very kind and you will burst out crying, this also is normal.

Actually all grief whatever the form is  pretty normal, dont get anxious about  any of it, a good funeral and take time with the family is all thats really necessary.

Sleep well x

Sorry for your loss, PP, I hope your journey through grief is a gentle one, and that you are able to find peace of mind at least some of the time. It’s great that you have your family around you. People are everything. 

I am so sorry he has died. The time alone with him when dying was I am sure appreciated. I remember the last time I saw my father before he died - we were alone and he just held my hand, knew I was there. He used to read and read and read but dementia meant he could not remember the start of a book so had to turn to TV by the end. He had on that day when I was there some black and white 1930s footage, something about Charlie Chaplin's life - it was from the time when he was young (he was born in 1928). Perhaps most of us in a sense return to child hood helplessness when we get old, the circle of life.

My father in effect died twice - once slowly as dementia took hold  - he retired from being a doctor at 77 and secondly we lost him  when he properly died at 79 - his physical health thankfully gave out so he did not have too much time with the dementia; whereas my mother died at only 75 bright and aware to the last. It is never, however, easy and I am sorry for everyone's losses on here. Although it is PP's thread, I didn't know about eugenie's husband  - to die early like that always seems worse to me than when parents die who are elderly and expected.

We 3 siblings jointly put together eulogies for our parents and one of us then read it at my father's (and the priest did at my mother's). I also sang at both funerals and my son played the Last Post on his trumpet which meant a lot to me.

 

Our parents died when we were so so busy, all 3 of us supporting our families on one wage and I with little 9 year olds was the sibling with the oldest children so my siblings were even busier than I was, hardly time to sort out arrangements. There were just so very many things to do and not time to pause, think, rest. Had they lived into their 80s like most people's parents these days in some ways it would have been easier. I became the oldest member of the family in my late 40s.

Do look for funeral wishes as I only found my mother's written down in a very obscure place after she was buried (although we pretty much had done everything she had wanted).

I joined this club this afternoon. It was a good death, only a week of physical incapacity and then he died peacefully in his sleep.in hospital. As Young G said, he could not have been more loved.

Sorry for your loss G. May he rest in peace. Sounds like young G said everything that needs to be said.

Oh, and that sounds so typical of a proud Welshman….go peacefully now so that there’s no chance of having to see the result of the rugby later today!

Sorry for your loss Gwen. As one of the good ones, you will have made sure your Dad knew he was loved.

Incidentally, my firm sent me a handwritten card of sincere condolence and a charity scented candle this week marking a donation in his name. That care is a sign of people you want to work with.

Bloody hell. 
That is superb and well done for (a) you telling them what was important to you (b) them remembering that and (c) them for that important and kind gesture. 

Organisations like that are rare

So that’s the funeral done and his inanimate husk disposed of.  He actually left us weeks ago.

Eulogy went well. Pulled my big boy pants up and pretty much got through it with a carefully modulated display of emotion tiny crack at the end.

Contrary to Mrs P’s Irish family tradition of wake lasting the entire but few days before the funeral, I prefer the longer gap so I had time to button down the emotions in time for a properly suppressed English funeral.

And onwards!

 

Almost 2 weeks to wait for my dad's funeral. Apparently the crematorium is very busy. I don't know what I feel about the delay.

Glad it went as well as it could PP.

Sending ❤️ to PP and Gwen. 
(We have the funeral tomorrow, similar crem queues even tho they’ve opened a new crematorium - get us! No more missing the funeral due to the country roads out to barham just straight to herne bay - naice🤣)

One of my dad’s friends happens to be a celebrant and she told us that the most unusual song played was : my neck, my back. Selected by a 54 year old lady and her wishes were met.

Ring of fire is much more popular than you might imagine as well. 

It was as good a funeral as it was going to be and we enjoyed a peaceful and calm experience. 

Thank you. Just back from supper with Dad. The major blessing of this period is the quality 121 with him that I wouldn’t be able to push for in normal life. 

My overriding memory of the funeral today will be dad and I having sandwiches sat outside listening to the birds before the service, finding morel mushrooms growing outside the crem, nesting blue tits in the ashtrays (grim but this is Herne bay ) and then sitting calmly just the 2 of us in the crem room listening to the music we selected at the weekend after googling : ‘best requiems’ and then going home and sitting on his garden bench which is on the sea front all afternoon drinking tea chatting about everything and nothing and looking out for cormorants and egrets.

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