My husband’s father died last month after a long and painful battle with something called Lewy body dementia. He had been ill for five or so years and in steep decline for two.
When he could no longer eat or watch television, he was admitted to a nursing home. Six weeks later he died peacefully, in the small hours of the morning, with his wife and his sister at his side. He was 78.
My husband was prepared for his father’s death. He had done much of the work of grieving ahead of time, as many people do who lose a parent to dementia years before they lose them to death. It wasn’t until after the visitation, the funeral, the many ensuing days and meals and conversations with family and friends that, standing alone at the gravesite of his father just prior to returning to Chattanooga, my husband felt the immensity of his death.
Next to his father’s grave were those of his grandfather and great-grandfather: a trifecta of Thetfords whose name, because we are childless, comes to an end with us. Of course, my husband had always known he was ending the line, but here an unexpected sense of finality spoke to him in the language of graves.
My father-in-law died 28 years almost to the month after my father died. I recall the sense of finality as well, standing graveside as my mother, brother and sister threw clods of red clay on the coffin before the machinery moved in to finish. Nearby lay my just-deceased uncle’s grave.