My Father is Dead

“He’s gone,” my sister Julie’s words came from the phone, and in that second, on that night, it struck me: April is the cruelest month.

I looked at Angela, and I cried.

Since that night, April 12, I’ve attempted to keep my mind and heart silent and still about my father. This was — is — a reflex, an unconscious reaction, because it seems I am not able to bear thinking of him in his hospice-room bed, unable to move, or smile, or talk. I’ve not been fully successful in keeping my mind, or heart, still.

I last spoke to my father about a week before he died. He was unable to form the words he wanted to communicate, and that tore.

My father was a singer of songs. If he was awake, he was humming or whistling or singing. Some of my earliest memories are of those sounds. He had a beautiful voice.

For the past several years his songs have been silent to others, in his head only. I am certain he was singing there. That’s one thing he never stopped.

The final time I sang with my father was several years ago, shortly before he entered a nursing facility. I was helping him get to the bedroom he shared with my mother, so she could undress him and prepare him for sleep. He was using a walker then, and it was necessary for someone to accompany him. He was always in a hurry and would move so fast that the walker would roll too far in front of him, and he would fall. As I was helping him we began belting out “I Got You (I Feel Good”) as loudly as we could. His voice was weak, faltering, but the rhythm was still there, and the happiness singing always gave him was vibrantly alive in his eyes and on his face.

Knowing I’ll never again hear his beautiful voice or see the smile in his eyes makes me sad. It’s the hardest part.

My father, James Brock, Sr., was a good man. He was actually a good man. I never heard anyone — friend, colleague, relative — say anything bad about him. All of my childhood friends thought he was cool. He was cool.

There is so much more I want to write about him and his life and what he meant to so many, and I will write it, all of it, about the way he loved his wife — June 30 would have been the 60th anniversary of their wedding — and his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and how he cut a record for his mother’s birthday when he was a teenager, how he took us to Alaska and Germany and so many other places and opened the world to me … I’ll write all of it.

I wish you could have met him.

Bye, dad. I love you.

5 Comments

  1. Michele McMyler

    Oh Jim, I am so very sorry. I’m sure he was a wonderful man, please share regards with your mother and sister. It’s tough, when Bill passed we had already been without mom for so long, my son Andrew was 5, just five, like 2 days before and when we got home he said Mom, now you are an Adult /Adult , I said what? And he said you don’t have a mom
    Or dad to do things for you anymore…so wise, we don’t even realize what we have. Sending you love and peace and hoping your memories bring you joy 🙏💐
    Love,
    Michele, Matt and Abby and Andrew

  2. Kiran Verma

    Beautiful writing!
    We have gone through same situation and I understand your love loneliness and struggle.
    Thanks for sharing.
    I just forwarded to my friends daughter who lost her dad and is struggling the same way.
    Hope she finds peace after reading your writing.
    Hope you find peace in knowing how much you loved him!!
    Kiran

  3. Diane Boyette

    He was a good man. ❤️ He was loved. I enjoyed our times filled with good conversation, nieces and nephews flocking to him and cornbread with buttermilk. ❤️

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