It’s three years to the day since my father died. Interestingly our society manages death by calling it something else. Years ago people ‘died’, more recently they are said to have ‘passed away’, but these days they just ‘passed’. Does denial make it easier? Perhaps in the short term; but giving it a different name may only prolong the grieving process.
Even though it is three years since the actual day of my father’s death, he really began declining ten years earlier and a few years after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Over a period of 10 years the disease robbed him of some of his character and personality and presence. He spoke less, engaged less, slept more, shuffled around, fell over a few times and was eventually hospitalised and entered full time nursing care where he remained for three and a half years.
Before the diagnosis you knew my father was there. He had a story for most occasions, but that story-telling diminished in the latter few years, and almost ceased after he enter nursing home care. He was hard to visit because he spoke so softly, and because he zoned out, and because there were few comfortable places to sit in his room. He was still there, but shrinking and shrouded behind old age, failing faculties, and a disease that robbed or hid parts of his character.
So I lost my Dad three years ago, but it began a decade before that and his diminution was gradual. I miss him, but my loss (and others’) was made a little easier because it came in stages over a period of years.