A Farewell To My Father

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
Yesterday, my dad asked his beloved wife Lee to help him find his passport and then get him to the airport. He had a trip to make. Lee assured him she would. The thing is, she won't. My father had a stroke on April 11. He spends his days in the advanced stages of dementia. My father is dying. Those words are not easy to write. When I think of them--which I do, about 247 times a day--I feel guilty. Sad. Powerless. He is my father; during the best parts of our relationship, he was my dad. Now, he is an 81-year-old man who cannot do anything for himself...who survived emergency brain surgery only to barely escape falling victim to heart attack and then was left too ravaged to fight off pneumonia. He has lost 45 pounds in five weeks. He doesn't want to eat. He hardly wakens, and he will never again do those things which brought him happiness--read a book, watch a...
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Saying Goodbye to Tom

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
I awoke this morning to a phone call I didn't want to take. Tom, the man I have considered my stepdad for more than 20 years, had died some time during the night. Mom and Tom had been together 17 years when she died quite suddenly and completely unexpectedly in 2004. They'd never married; I didn't care. They were more "together" than I had ever known my mom and biological dad to be, despite the fact that they were married for 27 years. In my heart, if not on paper, Tom was my stepdad. Today he is gone. All those stupid things people say to try to comfort those in mourning mean nothing. I don't care if he is with God or if he is in a better place or if his suffering is over...he is not here. And yet, what was here to Tom? In all the years Mom and Tom were together, she encouraged Tom to be dependent on her. She...
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