On this day, looking back, looking forward
I wrote this piece back on May 9th, then set it aside for other concerns, and because I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say. Today, Memorial Day, it seems fitting that I pull it out again and post it, though I’ve always felt it a bit strange that we should set aside just a single day a year to remember the loved ones we’ve lost.
Dad.
One year ago today, early on a Monday of a Paper Chef weekend, Dad, the gentlest soul and the best patient a caregiving daughter could ever hope for, breathed his last breath. I was there, by his side, morning medicine in one hand, my other hand on his forehead.
Chopper had to go to work that day and I had to make phone calls, arrange for the funeral home to come from the mainland, and ready Dad for his final journey.
That weekend, in stolen moments between my caregiving duties, we cooked, creating yet another mad collection of dishes for our month-old blog — a blog we’d created as an oasis, a necessary outlet while life around us marched toward its inevitable conclusion.
Dad had pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed in June of 2004, three weeks before our wedding, and for a short while, it seemed we’d have to either put our wedding plans on hold or carry on without my parents in attendance. I couldn’t bear the latter but my parents insisted on it; their concern for our planning efforts taking precedence over their hopes to attend.
Thankfully, Dad’s doctor knew of the situation and did everything he could to declare Dad fit for travel by wedding time. It worked, and because all my siblings knew Dad would be there, even the ones I didn’t expect to see attended. Our wedding became our final complete family reunion.
Six months later, Chopper was nearly through with the on-campus portion of culinary school. All that was left was a six week externship followed by final evaluation and graduation. Dad wasn’t doing all that well — people with pancreatic cancer rarely do well — and we knew Mom couldn’t keep caring for him alone. We also knew I was the only one of my siblings who could leap into the breach. My older brothers and sisters had demanding careers, children to care for, and here I was, working freelance from home with a husband fresh from school. It was up to us.
So, we tossed just about everything we owned in storage, packed what we could, and headed up to San Juan Island, where, on the day following our arrival, Chopper began his externship at a local restaurant and I began my duties as caregiver to my dying father.
The transition was awkward. For the first two and a half months, we lived in a trailer in the turn-around and battled cold nights and an influx of early spring wasps. (Waking up at three a.m. to a wasp on my pillow is not an experience I want to repeat any time soon.)
Dad was amazing: never complaining unless something truly bothered him, making every effort to eat when I gave him food. And working, even. Working on his final book, meeting with colleagues, reading scholarly papers. I was in awe of his perseverance, even on days when he achieved no more than a scant half hour at his desk.
We couldn’t cook much in the house because of Dad’s nausea, and the trailer didn’t provide us with a reasonable cooking sanctuary. One day Chopper attempted Thai curry on the tiny trailer stove, and the fish sauce stunk the place up like sweaty gym socks for weeks on end.
A month before Dad died, his nausea subsided for the most part and it became all about pain management. If we could keep our cooking smells to a minimum, we could cook again. And so, with Dad’s approval, and because I knew Chopper needed an outlet (and because I couldn’t — still can’t — shake the dismay that Chopper never signed on for this sort of duty when he joined my family), I proposed Belly Timber.
It’s a creative outlet, I told him. Something we can do together — and crucial because we really couldn’t do much of anything together, save for those occasional days when I could call a respite worker for an hour or two. (Someday, not today, I’ll write about caregiving, and the wonderful and sanity-keeping thing that is the respite worker.)
It’s vital, I told him. I need to do this — or at least something very much like this — just as I need to care for Dad.
And so Belly Timber was born.
Chopper’s rosemary beer-steamed mussels: the final home-cooked meal Dad loved and could eat. Even when everything else repulsed him, he’d still happily dig in to a plate of Chopper’s rosemary beer-steamed mussels. Some nights, he’d eat five, maybe even six mussels, and we’d count the shells and celebrate. It was the most he’d ever eat in one sitting, and for one tiny moment we could imagine we were in the midst of just another happy family gathering around the dinner table.
It was hard to escape the irony: launching a food blog when Dad’s diet had been reduced to oatmeal and Ensure, but within just a few posts we knew we’d done the right thing, even if it meant, in the midst of grieving and duty, I’d force myself to the computer to type up our entry for that weekend’s Paper Chef.
We’re still here; still caregiving in a way. Our belongings, save for what we hauled up here last year, are still in storage and we’re still cooking in a messy kitchen that we can only claim as our own through the disasters we create there.
In many ways, Belly Timber is still a vital, necessary release, and still an escape from a life that bears more than a passing resemblance to limbo. My freelance career went to hell in a hand basket during Dad’s final months, and I’m just now (at long last) fighting to get it back. Chopper is eager to try more than just island restaurants in his post-culinary school career. He dreams of stages with great chefs, and of travel, lots of travel.
And now, on this year anniversary, and year-plus-a-month (or so) for this crazy blog, we cast a furtive glance or two toward the future and toward leaving this place that’s never quite been our home. We’ll still be here a while — through the chaotic tourist summer at least — but the city beckons, and a life of our own beckons, and Chopper hears the siren call of a kitchen of his own every day.
And oh lordy do I want to unpack our belongings. I roll my eyes and laugh at the triviality of it all, but I miss our silverware. I miss our sake set. I miss my crazy prop collection that would have lent so much more insanity to so many of our culinary adventures.
Trivial, yes, but you know, I think Dad, packrat that he was, would approve. After all, the trolls in the canoe from my Mighty Cheese Warriors post — those were his.
I promised, a long, long while ago, to share a remarkable story about a gift from the Samish tribe in honor of Dad’s legacy. It’s still hard to write about it without getting a little teary, even now, looking back so many months. But, because this day it feels right, here it is:
We live, as many of you know, in orca country. The whales, great pods of them, swim the strait just west of here, and every year when new calves are born, the Whale Museum and their marine naturalists give them names. Not just Pod names like J-14 or K-20, but name names, like Granny and Skana and Spock. Sometimes the names are determined by a vote of museum patrons, sometimes by museum staff, and on special occasions, local tribes are granted the privilege to bestow a name upon a whale in a traditional tribal naming ceremony.
(You can see where this is going, right?)
About a month after Dad died, two women from the Samish tribal council called Mom and asked if they could come for a visit. They had a question for her, they said. Mom extended the invitation, but she was concerned. She hoped they weren’t going to ask her something only Dad could have answered. She braced herself for something obscure, some scrap of knowledge buried in decades of anthropological archives.
The women arrived. They brought Mom gifts. They talked about Dad and about how much he meant to the Samish people.
And then they asked Mom’s permission, if she thought Dad wouldn’t mind, to name a whale calf after him.
Needless to say, Mom said yes. Yes, yes, oh absolutely yes!
This summer, before we leave this place which isn’t quite our home but is very much Dad’s home, we’ll take trips out to the western shore of the island and to the Whale watching park where, if our luck is just right, we’ll see J-pod, and Samish, J-14, and her children, Riptide, J-30, Hy’Shqa, J-37, and Suttles, J-40, or as I like to imagine, Dad, come back as a whale, playing with his family in the waves of the Salish Sea.
That was beautiful and heart wrenching. I have tears in my eyes. It is such a beautiful Memorial Day memoir. Thank you for sharing.
Very moving. Thanks for sharing it with us. I’m sure your father must have been very proud of you.
Miz D,
Thanks for sharing that. And thank both of you for starting up Belly Timber.
And BTW, ingredient nominations for Paper Chef 18 are now open: http://seriouslygood.kdweeks.com/2006/05/paper-chef-18.html. I hope you two can participate in this one.
Wahh!! Blub-blub-blub. Thank you. Blub-blub. Beautiful.
Hi, Suttles! I think I see you! Over there! Breach! Blub-blub-blub.
Snff. OK. I’m OK.
Whew.
Sigh.
This really moving post should remind all of us of what yesterday’s holiday was all about. I tried to tell my granchildren about “olden times” when families decorated the graves of their ancestors and took at least part of the day for some sort of touching remembrance.
Thank you for allowing us to share your story.
Thank you for sharing your story. It has touched my heart.
What a beautiful and touching story. You a truly gifted writer.
Your story is very moving, but very beautiful at the same time. Through your words and crafty writing, one can feel what kind of exceptional man your father was…
You both were very courageous and generous…
This is a beautiful, moving story, Mrs. D, and one that touches close to home for me. I began my blog as a refuge from caregiving for my husband; I feel incredibly lucky that his cancer was not terminal. We’ve been talking about going whale-watching when our nephews visit this summer. I’ll be hoping to see one whale in particular.
Wow! Here I was taking a moment to rest before starting the first round of serious cleaning in a while (a while that’s included a trip out of town, a *serious* bread-baking extravaganza and kitten-birthing) and you’ve gone and made me cry! It actually seems perfectly to create something (Belly Timber) in the middle of such a loss…and I bet your dad would smile at the sheer exuberant joy that you bring to the table. You never fail to make me smile.
Having a lot of professional experience with people at (as they say) ‘end of life,’ and having watched up close and personal as my brother-in-law helped his dad die of cancer, I applaud your willingness to take on such a task. It is truly one of the most difficult things to do, having to dislocate your entire life in the process doesn’t make it easier. What an incredible gift to be able to give your dad. *hugs* (damn, this horribly mournful version of ‘leaving on a jet plane’ just came on…sniffle)
Because I truly believe life is cycles, I invite you to come to my site and take a look at the last few posts. Can you say ‘adorable kittens’? Seriously. 12 minutes old adorable.
Wow, you simultaneously broke my heart and gave me such hope. Your whale story is truly beautiful, and I think what you and Chopper did was, and is, amazing and selfless, and that your father was an amazing person to have raised such and amazingly caring daughter and writer, and touched so many souls. A big, virtual hug to both you and Chopper.
My own dad died when I was three, so I barely knew him. In a conversation with a much older sister, when we were all grown up, she told me that she could see dad in me. So I feel able to say that maybe part of your dad is out frolicking with other whales, but definitately a part of him is tapping away at a computer console.
Wow, everyone, just wow. And huge huge thanks for all the wonderful, thoughtful, and sharing comments. Y’all rock, you know. :-)
I meant to respond earlier, but in typical island form, our phone (and DSL) went down for 36 hours mid-week, pretty much just after I posted, and now we’re crazy knee-deep in planning for a quick trip to the mainland. (Lots on that tomorrow. Eeee, fun stuff ahead!)
And yes, I do very much believe Dad’s still here — both out in the waves, and at the computer… heck, everywhere I breathe. I miss him horribly, and being his caregiver was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. The gift of selflessness and compassion that it brings (because, in a way, it just comes upon you; an unexpected metamorphosis) is life-changing.
Thank you all for being here for my sharing. xxoxo
Mrs D. what can I add? Hug!
And thanks for this year of reading pleasure, you both.
You two are the most kind hearted and loving people. The loving care you’ve provided for your father will in turn would make both of your dreams and future plans come true. Karma in action, I believe in that.
Hugs and best wishes!
Oh my, what a tender, sweet, heartbreaking, and healing tribute to a remarkable father and daughter. Thank you for sharing. Tears are flowing and I too will be thinking of your father if I get a chance to see some whales this summer.
And I am so glad you started Belly-Timber!
Having just lost my own father but a few months ago, on the lovely Island which is Hawai’i, I both got teary eyed, nodding my head “yes” at your post, and felt an instant connection between the native Hawai’ians who honored my father so wonderfully in his last days, and your native tribes who did the same for your father. Whenever I look out to sea, I see my father, because his ashes are in every molecule of every sea, having instantly become a swirling mass around the planet, after sea turtles danced through his ashes as we scattered them. Your dad’s whale calf now swims through my dad’s ash cloud, and I find that so endearing. Thanks for your post.
My own father died just 6 months ago and I couldn’t be there when he died. It’s an enormous loss which hasn’t really sunk in yet but also an opportunity to celebrate the life of a man who gave others nothing but laughter and happiness. It seems your father was that kind of man, as well. I can only wish you a long life in which you will remember him with love, affection, a smile and a tear. My best regards.
This is a bittersweet and beautiful piece of writing, thank you so much for sharing it.
Thanks for this post. My sister and I were caregivers for my mother and father in the year before they died (although we didn’t know they were dying–we were so in denial), and this reminded me very vividly of the pleasures and pains of that time.
I only came across your site this morning and was so touched by ypir story.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Such beautiful words. I too nursed a parent through cancer and can empathize with the rollercoaster of emotions it brings.
I did have a tear in my eye as I read your story but your message of hope swells my heart!
Thank you
Thank you for sharing this with us.
Thanks for the beautiful and touching story…
Thank you all again for such wonderful comments! And Kate: Whale calf swimming through ash cloud: Beautiful! I love it!
What a wonderful story, so beautifully written.