Dying a Good Death: My Father's Non-Linear Journey
After a terminal cancer diagnosis, one father uses his remaining clarity to prepare his family, settle his affairs and die on his own terms.
October 7, 2019
“Time is non-linear. I’ll always be with you.”
My dad repeated those words many times to my mother, my brothers and me after learning that he had terminal cancer and approximately six months to live.
Glioblastoma multiforme. Those two words still make me shudder.
That was my dad’s diagnosis, a highly aggressive brain cancer that takes no prisoners and leaves disaster in its wake. The cancer had spread so widely throughout his brain that even my untrained eyes could see the invader that had made his brain its permanent home. It was inoperable and unresponsive to chemotherapy and radiation.
When I learned the news, I was paralyzed.
My father immediately sprang into action, taking advantage of the time when he was still lucid. He sold his medical practice, settled his finances, planned and paid for his funeral, and made sure his family and friends knew how much he loved them.
He planned his “good death,” clearly sharing where he wanted to die and who he wanted beside him when he took his final breath.
While my dad methodically prepared for his death before the cancer fully took over, I fell apart. I was grieving everything I was losing, especially him, and I could not fully understand what my father was losing.
I remember saying to him, “You’re not losing you. I’m losing you.”
How wrong I was.
He was losing the chance to see his three children grow up and have children of their own. He was losing the chance to grow old with the love of his life, my mother, and to buy the apartment in Tel Aviv that he often talked about.
Only years later, after doing much of my own grief work and becoming an Advanced Certified Grief Recovery Specialist, did I understand how wrong my words had been.
My dad was losing himself just as much as I was losing him.
There is no instruction manual for a dying person or the people who love them after receiving a terminal diagnosis.
How was my dad supposed to balance settling his affairs, managing his healthcare and grieving the loss of his future, all with a very short deadline looming over him? How could he forgive his body for that ultimate betrayal? How were we supposed to carry our own grief while supporting his final wishes?
It was extraordinarily difficult. Much of that time remains a blur to me.
But I do know that my father courageously looked death in the eye and died on his own terms.
