I’ve always been one to pull an Irish goodbye. I don’t know how acceptable that term is because every time I go to ask someone who is Irish, they’re already gone.
I don’t like getting peoples attention when I want to leave. It always extends my departure so if I wanted to say goodbye and still leave when I wanted, I’d have to start saying goodbye as soon as I arrived.
People don’t like when you do this. They think it’s rude. Once I left a party and held my phone to my ear like I got a call and I got a text from someone at the party who saw this and called me out on it. It’s kind of my nightmare actually.
I don’t think it’s rude. I’ll see them again. And if I don’t, then how close could we have possibly been? Unless of course they or I should perish. And that’s happened too. Which is really what I’m writing about. The trio of farewells I’ve fucked up.
The first was my grandpa. I loved my grandpa. He was one of my best friends. I’ve written extensively about him so I don’t want to retread already well worn territory, but he meant the world to me. He was there for me in so many ways, and guided me so consistently, that I’m in awe I’ve managed at all without him. Well I went to visit him in the hospital near the end of his life. Though I didn’t know that at the time. I mean I sort of knew it, but not how soon he would be gone.
He had taken a spill right before Father’s Day, and that began his rapid decline. They moved him from his one bedroom apartment in the retirement home to assisted living and then to intensive care. My family all came out to take turns looking after him and keeping him company. I went down one day by myself. He looked so frail in the bed. He didn’t recognize me at first, but then he did and he was kind and happy to see me. He asked if I could take him out of there. He said it’s all he wanted and that he knew I could help him because he had helped me. I told him I couldn’t at the moment, but that maybe I could bring him some ribs from his favorite restaurant. He said he would like that, but what he would like more was to leave. When the conversation started to go in circles, him asking to leave, me dancing around the fact that he couldn’t, he started to get irritated. He started yelling at the nurses and then he started yelling at me. Truthfully I have blocked a lot of it out, but I remember him saying that he was disappointed in me, that he couldn’t believe I would let him down, that I used to be his favorite, but now I wasn’t. He was sometimes incoherent and delusional asking who was standing in the corner (it was a jacket on a hook), and where his wife was (she had been dead for over twenty years), so I know he wasn’t speaking rationally, but it still hurt my feelings. Regardless of the reason, it was hard to hear this man who I had loved so much, get so upset with me. Especially since I knew he did want out of the hospital and that I couldn’t help him. I was disappointed in me too.
I stepped outside and called my family for support. My family did not help me out. They just sort of shrugged and said to try and not listen to him. I don’t know what I wanted from them, but a little more than “just ignore him.” He was someone I had spent the last decade with. I did the opposite of ignoring him. I drove to see him every Sunday, with traffic it would take two hours each way, and, I’m ashamed to admit, I was hungover for a lot of those. So ignoring him was not something I wanted to do. He was also dying. I wanted to have a better, more loving, last interaction, but I didn’t. I left the hospital room as a nurse attempted to calm him down and the next time I came down he was in a coma. And then he was dead.
When my sister’s dad died, he had planned it more or less. He was going to have Thanksgiving with the family and then shortly after a hospice nurse would help him ease off this mortal coil with a pharmaceutical cocktail. My sister’s dad was more or less out of the picture when I was growing up, but he came around a lot when I was a teenager. He would spend the holidays with us when my sisters were around. We had a lot of fun renting R-rated movies for the family to watch and he always had a crazy stories about bar fights, South American trips for contraband, mountaineering and to my chagrin, dating my mom. But man was he a warm spirit. He’d show up with a small travel duffle, and putter around the house conversing with everyone and always taking an interest. There was no name for what our relationship was. He didn’t raise me, we weren’t related, but he was family. So I went to visit with him for his last Thanksgiving.
I spent a lot of the time on my phone because on the plane ride up I got a call that I had my an improv house team, so a lot of people were congratulating me. I wish I had been more present, but I thought I was, basking in the achievement I had worked for nearly a decade to get. In retrospect, it was a superficial and stupid way to spend my time. I should have just talked with Mike. When dinner was over, and I was headed back to the hotel, I waved goodbye to Mike from across the table and that was it. I would never see him again. I think I was scared. I didn’t want the attention. It felt to important to be in my hands. Other people would say their goodbyes later and I just couldn’t bring myself to be the first person to start the inevitable train of heartbreak. I should have done more. It has left a bruise on my heart I don’t think will ever heal.
My uncle died this last month. He went in for an elective surgery which wasn’t invasive but it did put him under and anything involving anesthesia for someone with a history of oxygen issues (he was asthmatic, and had been suffering from long Covid) was at increased risk. He emailed everyone that he was going to have the surgery, and told us it would most likely be fine but that there was an increased risk. Shortly after the surgery, he passed away. He lived in Colorado almost my entire life and growing up he and his wife and kids would take road trips out to see my grandpa and take me along. He looms large over the idea and memories of road trips. He had a travel mug with a handle that didn’t connect at the bottom so it could hook onto the car door. He’d make sure we stopped for ice cream and cheeseburgers and he once ran down the street in bare feet flailing his arms because of a miscommunication where he thought we were leaving without him. He’d wear tank tops and go boogie boarding and he always had a radio with a baseball game on. He worked harder than just about anybody I know, but I only heard of his work ethic. I just saw him over the summer and over holidays and he could soak up a vacation like a pro. He was a good reminder of staying youthful, enjoying life’s little pleasures, and making the most out of time. He also taught me how to fill out a scorecard at a baseball game. He even had a way to track balls and strikes for each player with his own little system.
When he emailed, I didn’t email him back. It feels weird to try and justify this, but he had emailed a lot before surgeries and they had always turned out fine. He also had a near death scare a couple years prior and I flew out to see him for an emergency wedding so he could give his daughter away. He was a religious man and it seemed like God was working miracles and this would be no different. A few days prior to the email, he texted me and called me about an MLB sports package that was under my name, but was paid for through his account. The details of this are long and boring, but basically T-Mobile gave me a free MLB package one year and I gave the login info to my dad and uncle. Somewhere along the way, my uncle kept the login credentials and put his credit card information in, but I kept getting the emails. So as he was attempting to cancel it. He thought he needed me to do it so he texted and then called and left a message. I never talk on the phone. I don’t like it. I was going to text him back, but he eventually got it fixed and texted me that he solved the issue. Then he asked if I was going to give him any grand nieces or nephews. I didn’t respond. Not for any reason. Just was a busy day and then I forgot. Then he died. I’m not sure what I would have said in the text message, and I’m certain the last time I saw him, I gave him a big hug and said I loved him. But I don’t recall. Isn’t that strangely sad? I remember the goodbyes that never happened, not the ones that did.
I shit the bed on those valedictions. Though I don’t feel as bad about it as I do about not feeling bad about it. Of course I wish I had had a meaningful conversation with my grandpa, or hugged my sister’s dad, or even texted the little family emoji to my uncle. But I didn’t. I got yelled at, waved from a distance, and didn’t respond to a text. It feels self-centered to think that what I did, or didn’t do, mattered, but it feels callous to assume there wasn’t more I could do.
I wonder if it will happen to me, and if I will interpret it as Karma. I think about this a lot. I suspect my own exit will be overlooked. Either for similar reasons, my brain will be misfiring, or they’ll shy away from it, or it will happen when no one assumed it would and conversations will be left unfinished. Although I also wonder if anyone will be around. I don’t have kids and I am the youngest of my immediate family. I have younger nieces and nephews but unless we get closer as I get older, our distant communication will set the scene for a predictable final outcome. I wonder if not having anyone around will be better than having people who miss the moment. It’s hard to know. Hard to imagine the end. And I’m not looking for sympathy. I’d prefer this be chalked up to morbid curiosity than self-pity.
I guess I wanted to write this because I feel shitty about leaving things the way I did, and I want to say I’m sorry. I thought writing about this might make me feel better. It hasn’t. It hasn’t made me feel worse either. I think it’s tough to feel worse about loved ones dying, unless you tell them to go to hell or that you hope they die screaming, and then they do. And it’s almost as impossible to feel better about someone dying because they’re gone. Maybe I think the ending isn’t important. It’s the relationship. Which was good with all of them. I don’t know. I guess life is just a tough thing to navigate and parting from it or being witness to others parting from it is also tough. So I guess I should step up and do my part. This is a little of that. Offer some written acknowledgement of my botched bon voyages. I have been very fortunate to have been loved by so many people in this life. I am grateful for that and I want to practice that gratitude by cherishing the time I get to spend with people who choose to spend their time with me. It’s a lesson I keep learning and a thing I keep writing about. I hope it sinks in for me at some point. So that the next time, I can muster a loving ta-ta.
Bye for now,
Those heart bruises 💙