When my mother was diagnosed with hernia she thought she could live with it for the rest of her life. At late seventies she tended to be more conservative and always tried to avoid any surgery even something like a bad tooth extraction. Only the reality doesn’t allow her to sit back , heria grew quickly and hindered her motion, and she is the one that kept the family going. My father got stroke a few years before. He kept fading in front of my helpless eyes and already lost self care ability. My mother has never been strong but doesn’t have any chronical disease, a small hernia surgery shouldn’t be a problem, our family need her and she could have better life quality after. The decision was made in the family meeting. One conflict gotta be coped with. The surgery required my mother to stay in hospital for 3 days and 3 more days at home recovery and my father fully occupied the in house caregiver. Need one direct family member to run between my home and the hospital and make decisions and I would be the one. It was November 2018 and I already went back home earlier and used all my vacation for the year. So I borrowed 2 weeks’ vacation from 2019.
Everything went as planned. But I never had a single light-hearted moment, refused to accept my father’s going downhill. Remembered the evening I went home to pick up something and go back to the hospital. It was dark the caregiver was cooking in the kitchen, my father sat in a chair alone and watched me indifferently. Is this the man teaching me everything at the beginning of my life? Does he know what I am doing? Does he know his always indecisive life partner and everything depending on him to make decision’s wife now is in the hospital alone to face the surgery? I shook it off and left. Another evening I had to wrestle with him from dinner time till bed time to convince him that he was at his own home. Like other Alzheimer's disease patients he gradually lost all the abilities. I noticed that he almost never talked this time and he did a lot more six months ago. Now he was losing speaking.
Time jumped to the last night for me at home. My mother recovered very well. The caregiver went her own home two days ago for some urgent matters, no temporary replacement. I woke up every two hours during the night to take care of my father. This last night my mother let me go to sleep and she took care my father although she was not allowed any drastic motion.”你明天需要去赶飞机,今晚我照顾你爸爸”. I was bending low beside my father helping him washing his feet at the moment.
“没关系,还是我来吧, 熬一晚没问题,明天我上飞机再睡觉”. All of a sudden, I felt a warm hand touched my head, still warm as he used to be,”你去睡觉吧,今晚让你妈照顾我,你明天要去赶飞机” my lost-speaking father said every word clearly through basic instinct. The last conscious in him is father’s love. This is the last words he said to me.
Since then I never heard him speaking, never saw him in the family web meeting. In 2020, I went back home one more time, he never got up from his medical bed, never spoke. Last year he gave up on fighting. His funeral is pending for my sister and me to get back.
Now he has left us for over a year. The last words he said to me almost like a miracle to me. He had not said that clear for a year. It must be the power of parental love.
Mother's love deep as ocean, father's love high as mountain.