I think I’m a bit of a fickle blogger. Though less so with
my paid writing, with my personal writing, I really have to be all in on a
topic or I just can’t get it off the ground. That’s often the reason (or my rationalization,
hmm…) that I have such long delays
between blog posts—if I can’t muster the enthusiasm for the topic, I can’t fake
it.
That’s why I’ve started—but not finished—three or more
different blog posts, about clothes shopping in Italy—but I felt like I was
grousing too much, about a great archaeological site near Viterbo—and that one
I will finish!, and about male bonding, Italian style—that one was shaping up
pretty well.
And then, my dad up and died.
It was the moment I knew I’d have to face, and I knew how
much harder it would be after I moved abroad. When my sister and I waved
goodbye to my parents as they stood in front of their assisted living facility
in Florida, my pared-down possessions, including my beloved dog, Daisy, loaded
in a rental car for Phase 1 of my emigration to Italy, I knew that my parents’
deaths would be part of my experience as an expatriate. And I knew those
deaths, though imminent no matter where I lived, would be all the more painful
when I was so far away.
And I wasn’t wrong about that.
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A World War II veteran and a lifelong Democrat, my dad at an Obama rally, 2008. |
But when my sister called to tell me he’d been diagnosed
with sepsis, a blood-borne infection that is more often than not fatal in the
elderly, I thought for sure I needed to get on a plane. But then, he rallied.
He could pick up the phone in his hospital room when I called, and he was
mostly lucid when we spoke. I reminded him that the three of us already had our
plane tickets to come visit in May, and told him he needed to stick around so
we could drink a glass of wine or two together. “I’ll see you then,” he told me. Days
later, when I made him make the same promise, he told me, “I’m looking forward
to it.”
Another week passed, and there were mixed messages from the
hospital staff about when he would be released, whether he’d have to go to a
nursing facility for rehab, whether he’d come directly home to the ALF with my
mom, whether he’d have to maintain a catheter, etc. But all signs seemed to
point to him getting better, and getting out of the hospital. My sister was
providing regular updates, and on a Sunday morning two weeks ago, she called to
say he would probably be released to rehab that same day.
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My parents in 2010 at Heathrow Airport, en route to Italy for the second time. |
Hospice, where people go to die. This really was it.
My sister and I had a brief, tearful conversation, and then
I started looking for plane tickets. I found one for the next morning, Monday, but
I’d have to leave the house at the crack of dawn—earlier than that, actually—to
get the train to Rome to get another train to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, to
catch the first of three planes I’d need to take to get to Florida. I had to
kiss my sleeping baby goodbye—that was the hardest part of leaving—knowing that
I wouldn’t be there when she woke up and that she would be looking and calling
for me. I stoked her hair as she slept,
and I’m pretty sure that most of my tears landed on her blanket, instead of her
cheek.
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At my wedding, 2009. Photo by Phillippe Diederich. |
The next day, he was in and out of consciousness, but shook
his head yes when I asked if he knew who I was. We joked about how he might
like some pretzels and beer, and he muttered, “beer.” Other than my mother’s
name, which he repeated several times that evening as she held his hand, “beer”
would turn out to be one of his last words. I think he would be pleased
with that.
A little more than 48 hours later, he was gone. He passed
away peacefully at Hospice. All three of his children and his wife of 63 years
were with him in the hours before he died. I hope he knew so.
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Meeting his newest grandchild for the first time, 2012. |
His loss has made me reflect on the less “glamorous” aspects
of life as an expatriate, far from friends and family. I had to follow my heart
to move to Italy and roll the dice with Paolo. My parents waved me on and urged
me to drive away that day, with my dog and few important possessions in the car
with me. I took the same leap that many have taken before me when they’ve moved
abroad. But nothing really prepares you for the hole in your heart for the
things you leave behind, no matter how much you anticipate the pain.
I know everyone “of a certain age” who lives abroad has felt
the same fear and foreboding that I’ve felt these last four years in Italy. And
now that those chickens have come home to roost, and one of my parents is gone
and the other is so far away. Our lives and lifestyles—at least as they’re imagined
by others—may be envied by many. But we don’t leave behind one world and embark
on a great adventure living abroad without the daily knowledge that we’ve left
a piece of our hearts—and ourselves, behind.
My dad couldn’t stick around to drink that glass of wine
with me in May. And for that I will always mourn. But I’ll raise a glass in his honor anyway,
and maybe I’ll drink the whole damn bottle. I’m so sorry you won't be there to share
it with me, Daddy.
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Back home in Italy, where I belong. |