Do You Know What to Expect
Welcome to the 46th edition of Candor from Kaitlin. I’m grateful you’re here. Each week we explore topics that can be hard to talk about (personally and professionally) with the goal of bringing honesty and open communication to the things we all experience but often try to get through alone.
On the day this is published, my dad should be turning 72 years old, but he didn’t make it to 70. As a family, we’ve celebrated two years of birthdays without him so far. This year, for the first time since he left us, we won’t be together on his birthday. I still feel like he should be here, I haven’t gotten over the feeling of being shorted on time with him. However, if he could, he’d tell me to shuuuuuuut up. He’d tell me that when God turned the page on the book of life and found Denny Strand was at the top of the next page, that would be the end and that was that. Despite this belief of his, he knew losing him was going to be hardest on those he’d leave behind and that weighed heavily on him.
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, I’m immensely grateful for the year we had between Dad’s diagnosis and death, but I’ve recently realized that I have to stop describing it as “preparing” to lose him, because we would truly never be prepared. He had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer nearly a year to the day, when his body could no longer fight and he suffered a stroke that placed him in a nursing facility for the next 5 days, before leaving his body here on earth. Those 5 days were beautiful and painful, to say the least. As we prepared to say goodbye there was one person who made the greatest impact on helping me come to terms with what was going on, the one and only person who did what she could to prepare me.
Her name is Jodi and she will forever be one of my favorite people. This wasn’t our first time meeting, but it was the first time she had to treat me as an actual client. She looked straight into my eyes, from across the hospital bed where my dad lay, and asked me “has anyone told you what to expect?” It was a shot right to my heart. “No,” I told her, as tears formed in the corner of my eyes. It was everything I needed. I was grasping to understand something. I needed to grab onto something tangible to help me get through the next 24, 48, however many hours remained.
Jodi has been a hospice nurse for a long time now and she is truly a gift to anyone who has been touched by her service. That day, Jodi would walk us all through what was likely to occur as my dad went through the process of dying. She didn’t condescend to us or treat us like children, but spoke to us with genuine care and a desire to help make this easier on us as we said goodbye to Dad.
Jodi walked us through all of the signs and stages of dying. She asked us if he had been picking at his clothes and my brother answered first, “I couldn’t keep him dressed last night!” Jodi wasn’t surprised and replied, “you come into this world naked and leave this world naked.” I’d had the same issue with Dad in the hours before my brother would come take over watch for me, Dad kept trying to take his shirt off and I was worried he’d be cold. “Don’t worry about him being cold, he’s comfortable” Jodi said, as if she could read my mind.
Last November I learned it’s not the same for a dog. The dying process is different for them. When a dog begins to reach the end of their life, they may have challenges regulating their body temperature so if they feel cold, they probably are cold. I tested the theory on my aging, rapidly declining, best girl Rory. She was showing all the signs of nearing the end of her life, signs I refused to accept as old age, looking for an answer that we could treat or decide to not treat. Surely it was just a bit of arthritis that made her a bit uncomfortable, which led to her not wanting to move much, which led to her sleeping all the time, which led to her not being awake enough to eat, which led to her losing weight and suddenly it occurred to me, as she lay next to me that she was cold.
Flashback to the summer of 2020, my dad was having a lot of back pain. He would later learn it was from a tumor growing on his pancreas. At the time though, my mom, trying to help soothe an achy bag, dug out an old heating pad for him to use. I yanked that old, electric heating pad from my parents house sometime in the year after he died, fully intending to return it at the time, now just planning to buy my mom a new one. Rory had been cuddled up to me most of the afternoon, same as the afternoon the day before. She’d sit on the couch next to me while I had my laptop open and attempted to work on anything that would distract me. We were in the basement though, and I knew it was cold, that she was cold. I grabbed that stolen heating pad
and turned it on for the first time that winter season, and placed it near Rory. Near enough that she could feel the heat but not on her if she didn’t want it. As I continued to tickity tap on the computer, organizing my hundreds of open browser tabs and making notes of what to come back to later, she got up unsteadily and did a half a circle, groaning as she went, and lays herself curled up onto the heating pad. Yeah, she was cold. And it occurred to me at that moment that yes, she was dying, wasn’t she.
For the record, I hate that there are similarities in the end of life between my dad and my dog. It feels so ridiculous, so very stupid. You can’t compare the loss of a pet to the loss of a parent, and I resisted it for as long as I could, until I needed to know what to expect. I faced the fear that day with research and found an article online that reminded me a lot of the hospice pamphlet Jodi left in my hands the day she told me what to expect as my dad died.
I know it’s not for everyone, but I’m an information sponge. I seek to understand what’s going on, why it’s happening, and what I can do about it. So, naturally, when faced with the impending loss of both my dad and my Rory, I turned to information for comfort and a way to get me through.
Jodi became a light in a dark time, her simple yet comforting words were what guided me though the stages of my dad's passing. And in a twist of fate, her wisdom would later echo in my mind as I navigated Rory's final days.
The parallels between my dad’s journey and Rory's were unexpected and unwelcome. Yet, they reminded me of the universality of loss and the shared experiences of grief. While the pain of losing a parent can never be equated to that of losing a pet, the emotions and challenges that accompany the end of life are surprisingly similar.
As I reflect on the loss and the ways in which I cope, I'm reminded of the importance of knowledge in times of uncertainty. Understanding what to expect, even when the reality is painful, can bring the comfort that we crave. While I will always wish I could turn back time and change the outcome to spare us all the heartache of grief, I'm forever grateful for the lessons learned and the strength gained along the way.
So as I face another milestone without my dad, I take comfort in the knowledge that I am not alone on this long path of grief, and am grateful for the love shared as we walk it together.
Cover Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash