My childhood was filled with consistencies. My parents were always married to one another, we lived on Belmont Avenue, my mom and dad went to work everyday at the same job, and I went to one elementary and one middle/high school. I experienced some minor cosmetic changes – a painted room, new furniture, different hairstyles, etc. but all throughout ages zero – twenty very little changed in my life. We did experience the deaths of my grandfather and grandmother, but for both I was little and only have vague memories of them or the time. I got married at twenty and my consistent life changed a little bit by moving into Shawn’s apartment, having a child, and a year later moving again to Oakbrook Terrace. It was new and exciting and don’t remember it causing me any stress. At age twenty-two we decided to buy a house so we moved to Highland where we’ve been for the past twenty-three years. Things were pretty much the same. I knew what to expect and what each day would look like.
A couple of weeks before Christmas in 2002, I went to my parent’s house to help my mom wrap presents. As soon as I entered the back door I felt the tension in the house. My dad looked at my mom and said, “You have to tell her.” My mom took me into their bathroom and said, “Your dad has cancer and is going to have surgery in three days.” This was my first rodeo with cancer so I was completely optimistic that this surgery would cure him and my consistent life would continue. My mom was too emotional to wrap presents so I went back home being truly confused about why she was so upset. The morning of the surgery they called my dad and told him not to come. His PET scan showed that the cancer had drastically spread and surgery wasn’t the best course of action. That started him on a journey of “healing” that really was just a prolonging of death. All throughout his treatment I was sure he was going to be healed and my life would continue undisturbed with my strong father being strong. We spent 2002-2005 with new normals – my dad having good days and then bad days, driving him to treatments, being excited when a new trial seemed to be working, and being discouraged when it stopped. We still lived life and really it was during that time when my dad and I became the closest because we spent a lot of time just talking. The constant activity that my dad was driven by was forced to slow down and eventually stop.
My dad spent a lot of time in the hospital in 2005, as the cancer moved to his spine and he was in tremendous amounts of pain that had to be managed by IV morphine. All throughout his treatment, hospital stays, nausea, and ghostly shadow of his former self I truly thought it would come to end and he would be his former self. It was in October that my dad went, by himself without telling anyone, to the funeral home to plan and pay for his funeral. A couple of weeks after he completed that morbid task he sat me down while my mom was at work to tell me. He gave me the folder that contained all of the details. He then walked me through his financials and elaborate bookkeeping system. He asked me to promise him some things regarding taking care of my mom. (My mom was an old-school woman who’d never paid a bill in her life. She was very much used to being taken care of by my dad.) He gave me pages and pages of things I had to take care of “in case something happened to him.” And, and even then, I had NO IDEA that he was going to die.
At the beginning of December, 2005 my dad had to go to the hospital for pain management. This wasn’t something that was new and we all just shifted our lives to be there for him. I took the day shift while my mom was at work and she would come after work and I would go home to Shawn and the kids. I could have done this forever. Other than finding babysitting for the kids and then feeling mom guilt for not being with them, I loved my time with dad in the hospital. We solved a lot of the world’s problems and we talked about things that had never been talked about. My dad and I were two peas in a pod and there will never be anyone in my life who understands me like my dad did – because we were the same! One day during my shift at the hospital I was called to a special room by one of the doctors. I naively went. Once I was seated and the door was closed a team of people let me know that my dad’s cancer had progressed to a point where there was no hope and it was time to let him go. I’m sure there were fancy words and sympathies but I only remember his main cancer doctor, a man we’d all come to trust greatly, telling me it was time. I told this man that it wasn’t up to me — it was up to my dad. He told me that my dad said he’d fight the cancer as long as we wanted him to. Oh… My dad knew he was going to die. It wasn’t a secret only told in the special room.
I went back into my dad’s room and he was sitting up in the bed waiting. This was a planned event. I asked my dad if he wanted to die and he said that it was time. He couldn’t fight any more. Oh… That was the moment it entered my heart – my dad was going to die. We spent an hour or so saying things to one another that we’d never said. It was the realest time I’ve ever spent with my dad. I told him I love him after that conversation (not something generally communicated by our family) and he told me that he never felt he deserved love because he was such a horrible person. To anyone who knew my dad they would be flabbergasted at this statement! My dad was awesome who regularly, happily sacrificed himself to help someone in need. However, I think that was the rub – he felt like he needed to earn everyone’s love. That moment in the hospital I assured him that I loved him very much. Right before I was going to walk down the aisle and marry Shawn my dad told me for the first time that he loved me. He communicated it in a million ways before that time but never the words. For the second time, in that cancer hospital room, my dad said, “I love you, Amee.”
Once it was decided to enter end of life care, things seemed to move at lightning speed. It was my job to call my mom, at work, and tell her she needed to come right then to the hospital. While I was doing that my dad signed a DNR and began making arrangements for hospice care. And by evening he was transported back home … to die. To people looking into our lives it came as no surprise to hear that hospice was now the course of action, but to me, it was a shock. We spent a week and a half home with him doing much that we did while in the hospital – talking, laughing, and reminiscing. He was on the good drugs so he wasn’t in any pain but he became weaker and weaker. The last couple of days my sister and I stayed at my parent’s house 24 hours a day. The last day my dad was conscious I had to help him use the toilet. I saw the light in his eyes disappear in that moment and I knew it was the end. My dad fell into a coma and after being awake for close to 24 hours my sister and I fell asleep on the floor and my mom on the couch. In the early moments of December 15, 2005, my mom woke up for his last breaths while my sister and I slept. My mom woke us up when she was ready and said, “Larry P. Wiggins has just been accepted into Heaven.” In a rare moment of weakness, I had to leave the room while the funeral home took him out of the house but my mom stayed. She saw him safely out the door. I called the people that wanted to know right away. We spent the day with my mom doing funeral things and I started on my pages of the list then it was time to go home. I stood at the back door of my forever childhood home looking at my mom and asked, “So, I just go home?” This woman was the one my father had spent a lifetime taking care of. I had made some hefty promises to my dad in October of how/when to take care of my mom. Do I leave her to fend for herself at this moment? My mother gave me two big gifts in life – this was the first one – she said, “Amee, go home.” And I went.
My life then became before my dad died and after my dad died. I didn’t healthily grieve his death until 2012 when my mom died. I think during those years I was so focused on fulfilling my promise to take care of my mom that I couldn’t let my guard down to feel what needed to be felt.
Now, I know something that most people already know – life isn’t constant. And I’m okay.
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