The day my late dad said he would be dead in a year: How I grieved the death of my old man.

I have shared a little about how my dad spoke about his inability to live for another year after his prostate cancer got to the terminal stage. Yesterday, two friends of mine shared a link on grieving the loss of parents and how the death of a parent impacts on the children regardless of their age.

I decided to write about my experience again to bring to light the events leading up to and after the passing on of my beloved dad. This reading might bring tears into some eyes but I thought it is not such a bad idea to finally share my experience. Here, I share how I coped and grieved the loss of my dad.

During the last one year of my dad’s life, I faced what to me remains the toughest year of my life so far. It was a year filled with rollercoaster of emotions. Anger, anxiety, fear, pain, pity; name it and I will certainly check it off as an emotion I faced.

Between July 2015 and June 2016, I was out of employment after resigning from my job. Our daughter was about 3 months old when I left employment, my dad on the other hand was entering the final phase of his very painful end of his life on earth. I would go on to spend at least one week of each month with him in the village, at hospital visits or by the hospital bed whenever he had an admission. At the same time, I was responsible for relaying the information of his status to all my siblings on a real time basis.

I would also be on phone with him many times in a day to check on him and many times find he was in too much pain to speak. This would take a toll on me in ways I never saw coming. I was sinking down fast but realized I had to be strong for him and my mothers. I started having serious sleeping problems. I could lay in bed for very long periods with my eyes wide open. There are many times I would bury my head in the pillow and cry my tear ducts empty and this would happen both at night and day.

My dad’s sickness turned me into a grieving mode long before his actual death. Perhaps it was the reason I did not cry when he finally passed on. I had no more tears of pain but decided to celebrate his life and found joy in the good he had done in the lives of those he had contact with. The daily updates and the fact that he – as well as the doctors – had a consensus that he would not live beyond mid of 2016 was eating me. Every night I lay to sleep, I was sure my dad had one less day to live.

I can tell you that when your mind is full of such fears, the sexual aspect of your life is the least functioning part of your life. You lay there fearing that your partner may be imagining that you are juicing up another woman while that is the least of your interests. A lot of assurances had to be made to ensure my wife is not dragged down with my grieving mode. She would speak to me of how great my dad was and we could have great discussions on his positives, watch our wedding video to listen to his speech etc just to cheer me up.

Then one day while in the village to see him about a month before he passed on, I got a job and he was glad I did even in his final days. I started working with a lot of distractions and phone calls to check on him while it was already clear that he was after all right that he would die in a month. It was mid year and I was hoping he was wrong and the doctors were even more wrong.

It happened. On a Tuesday afternoon, my phone started to ring with back to back calls from my siblings and mum. I was scared. I was in the office. I was putting a brave face. I was hoping for the best for my dad whom I was going to visit on the following Friday. I looked at my flight ticket and was sure the calls were just nothing but of anxious family members.

The phone did not stop ringing and I did not pick it either so it went on for hours. Then my elder sister had enough of it and sent me a text telling me to speak to our mum to reassure her as dad had passed on. I quickly reacted and focused on my mum whom I called immediately to condole with her. It was like I had forgotten that her husband was also my father. When she assured me that was well, it hit me hard that my dad was no more.

My Director and HR called a cab for me and had me taken to my house. As we moved in the usual Nairobi traffic, I sent a few text messages to other kin and friends about the death of my dad; my phone started to ring again. It was like everyone who knew me had been informed that my dad had passed on. I did not want to hear my friends pass their condolences. I did not want the awkwardness that we would end up having in the phone conversations. I did not want someone to be unable to pick the right words to say. I did not want to hear someone break down on the other side of the line. And most importantly, I did not want to have a complete breakdown.

I switched off my phone for I think three days. When I switched it back on, it had hundreds of messages from friends and family. I could not read all of them though but I knew it was a good gesture from those around me. I appreciated them all.

But, I did not cry. I was unable to cry for my dad. I did not know if it was right to cry for him to have lived longer in the pain he endured as he faded away in his death bed. I decided it was right for him to be at peace and eternal one at that. I cried for one of my brothers who was heading to see my dad to hand him drugs that afternoon he died. I could not imagine what he was going through. I did not wish to be in his place. It was pure nightmare for me to imagine walking into a hospital with bottles of medicine to find my dad dead. I truly felt for my brother.

A couple of days later, I sat with my laptop and wrote a tribute to my dad ‘My father Nick Arodi was not a raw deal’ and I must admit that piecing up that together helped me grieve. I poured my all, I wrote about great memories I had about my dad. I wrote about his impact on my life and those around him. I wrote everything I could think of. I did not even proofread the article, I just went on and on and on and found that to be a way that worked for me then.

Friends called, came, reached out in numbers I had never imagined in my life. They helped me grieve. I focused on the good he did, helped me grieve. I was not in denial that he finally died but was alive to the reality that there was never going to be my father in my life ever again. Not as a living human but as someone who impacted on me in great ways.

To this day, I still have flashbacks and dreams about him but they are all great ones. I wake smiling that he still occupies the part of my brain that relives good memories in my sleep.

I do appreciate that everyone has their own way of grieving and quite sensitive to that as well. In the end of all these, you will never bring back the dead. You can only live in the shadows and memories of their actions when they lived.

My late dad rests in peace, always.

Maybe writing this is still part of y grieving. I do not know. I cannot tell. I do walk to his grave every time I visit the village and whisper a few words in imaginary conversations with him.