Laraine Denny Burrell - Our Grand Finale: A Daughters Memoir

Copyright 2017 by Laraine Burrell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-238-3
E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-239-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017945184

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

Cover design Julie Metz, Ltd./metzdesign.com
Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

For:

Mum, Dad,
Loretta & Mark
Love you always x

It is late afternoon in April, and only hours after landing in England, I find myself standing in the ward corridor in the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. My mother points through the open door of a hospital room toward a man reclining in a bed. I look past my mother and through the doorway at the man I have traveled thousands of miles to visit, and the smile I carried with the anticipation and eagerness in seeing him again dissipates at the sight of him. My nervous excitement instantaneously vanishes, to be replaced by an invisible barrier of distress preventing me from taking the final steps forward in my journey toward him. My brow furrows, my head tilts to one side. My mouth opens and then shuts, unable to find the right words, while my mind tries its best to make sense of the scenario. This isnt him. I dont recognize this person. Mum has made a mistake and shown me the wrong room. I am aware of my mother walking away toward the waiting area, unaware of her mistake, leaving me alone to spend the remainder of the visiting hour with this stranger. I desperately want to call my mother back, to demand an explanation, but the wordsshouting at me, creating an uproar in my headfind no voice.

As is expected of me, I walk slowly toward the bed, each foot feeling unnaturally heavy, hindering my progress as if in tune with my minds refusal to accept the circumstances, joining in my hesitancy to approach the man. I grip the handles of my handbag tight, feeling comfort in something tangible and known versus this intangible surrealism I find myself surrounded by. My eyes remain fixed on my destination, relying on the overbroad smile fixed to my face to belie the disorder in my mind. Above all and regardless of the situation, I must not exhibit my distress.

With each step I take, I mentally interrogate myself. This cannot be him. Surely not! This is not what I had expected. I had planned for something other than this. I had rehearsed this meeting over and over. It was supposed to be exuberant, signs of happiness to see each other again. There were things I was supposed to say. This is all wrong.

Sensing my presence, he slowly turns to watch me approach. His blue eyes gaze intently into my own as if drawing me closer. Standing beside the bed, I stare into the blue eyes. I know those eyes. Their familiarity saddens me, and my spirit deflates. There is no mistake.

This is my father.

My gaze scans the bed, looking down at my fathers frame, diminished and hidden under the bedding innocuously covering the disease that is winning its battle against him. My fathers arms, once muscular and strong from years of labor, now lie above the bedding, bloated and useless from the illness. I reach down and gently take his hand in my own, wanting to feel something human in this sterile environment. I look at his hand and compare his yellowed, discolored, swollen skin to the paleness of my own. I am afraid to hurt him, yet need to touch him. I look at his face, his eyes, not daring to breathe, hoping if I can just hold my breath, I can also hold back my tears. His mouth is drawn tight, silently speaking his pain. His eyes explain his understanding of the inevitable.

Ah wuvoo.

I barely understand what he is saying to me. His false teeth have been removed, and he has difficulty speaking without them. Without his teeth, his jaw droops awkwardly, distorting his face and making him barely recognizable. His hair is brushed all wrong.

Ah wuvoo.

Carefully I sit down on the edge of the bed, clasping his hand a little tighter and smiling at him, tears falling from my own blue eyes.

I love you too, Dad.

It is late afternoon. I am exhausted and overwhelmed. The already long journey from the States had been lengthened with delays both before my departure from Las Vegas and through an emergency landing for a sick passenger in Canada. Now finally here in England, my confused mind cannot take in the circumstances. My father is far worse than I expected, and somewhere in the back of my mind I am angry. My mother and sister had not prepared me for this. I had known my father was in the hospital, but the telephone calls in recent weeks were optimistic. Mum had told me that Dad was talking; he was his ever-feisty self, wanting to leave the hospital and go home. My mother and sister had seen his decline but chose not to share that information with me, and now I cant help feeling resentful, cheated. Seeing my fathers poor condition today is an unexpected and unfair surprise.

It was only three days ago that Mum had called to say that Dad probably would not leave the hospital any time soon, and perhaps I might want to come over to England and see him sometime. That call was the first time I sensed the urgency in my mothers voice, and it alarmed me. For the first time, I understood that Dads time was limited. I immediately made arrangements for myself and my son, Mark, to fly to England, not wanting to miss a moment with Dad. Still, I thought there would be more time than this. I thought we would have a couple of weeks or longer together. I thought we would have time to talk; time for me to say those things I had always wanted to say to my father; time for us to have those conversations people always plan on having sometime; time for me to tell my dad how much I love him and respect him, how much I appreciate everything he has done for me; time for Dad to tell me he is proud of all I have achieved. I desperately need to hear that, to know I have earned his approval, his respect.

I see now, and all too late, that I have got it wrong. I had been given fifty years with my father. Fifty years to talk to him, to spend time with him, to share moments and achievements with him, to tell him I love him. I see now that I have spent my life doing what I want to do, traveling the world, rarely visiting with my family, thinking there would always be time at some later date; but now the time we had been given together has passed. The time for those most important of conversations is gone. My heart breaks as I now recognize all I have regrettably lost.

There is a movement behind me as Mark enters the room. Without looking away from my fathers face, I sense Marks presence as he stands on the other side of the bed. I study my fathers face intently, trying to read his expression, to get some sense of how he is doing, how he is feeling. His surprise and delight at seeing me and then Mark is expressed by a toothless grin, an incongruous ray of sunshine piercing through the shadow of the moment. He hadnt been told that we were coming. The sheer joy in his eyes as he looks at Mark, then at me, and then back at Mark again is moving. Tears well up in his blue eyes. My heart breaks at the sight of this man who had been so strong and reassuring as a father, but who is now physically diminished, lying weak and helpless in this hospital cot like a needy child.