Jaci Dawn

Some decisions are harder to make than others. I don’t expect anyone’s advice to sway me either direction (mostly because I have already thought out nearly every scenario possible); I just want to write about how difficult this decision is to make.

I have the week of the 11th-15th off. Originally (before Harvey) I was going to go camping with Don while he went bird hunting in Eastern Oregon (chukar, specifically, but a grouse would not be looked down on). But now I have Harvey and the logistics have changed: he is not trained to hunt, we don’t even know if he is gun shy, and he would just stand in camp and bark because Murphy is gone. It wouldn’t be much fun.

Then I thought I might drive down to Nevada to see my dad, but the more I looked at my finances, the less I thought I could afford the trip at the same time Don is traveling across Oregon. The possibility of an emergency happening and the traveler needing extra cash looms and I wouldn’t want to tie up that money with both of us traveling different directions. And I would have to board Harvey.

I decided I should stay home and winterize. My dad was in favor of this plan, by the way. I could pull my garden out, dead-head all the dying flowers, dig up the bulbs that need to be dug, and clean all the nooks and crannies in the house that need to be cleaned before winter hits and we’re all stuck inside while it pours cold rain outside.

THEN my youngest mentioned how much she would like to go to Ely to see her grandfather and her oldest brother and she thought we could pool our money and go. Two can travel cheaper than one sometimes. We’d drive to Reno, pick up my brother and drive to Ely, then back again – jiggity jog.

So I called my dad and tried the new plan out on him. He’s 82, ill, dying slowly of COPD (I guess it’s COPD – no one has given me the exact terminology of his various illnesses, but he’s on oxygen all the time) and he’s grouchy. He wasn’t exactly open to the idea of the pair of us making a trip to see him. In fact, he sounded downright upset at the idea and said some not-so-very nice things. He aimed especially at the younger generation under some old man’s misguided impression that a young woman did not really want to see him – but would only be coming down to see her older brother.

To which I wanted to say, “So what? He is her brother and she’s seen you more over the years than she’s seen him and you weren’t exactly nice to her the last time she saw you…” But I didn’t because I was raised to respect my elders even when they don’t exactly respect you.

Chrystal seems to think the trip is urgent and her urgency is fueled by notes she gets from her older brother who lives part of the time with my dad. John is afraid he’ll wake up one morning and have to deal with Dad’s death – a valid concern. Dad pretty much raised Johnny: my parents had custody of him for several years of his younger childhood and when he was an adult, my dad’s house was always open to him. John is more like a son than a grandson in some ways.

My brother wasn’t sure it was so urgent. He advised me that I might want to err on the side of saving money and plan to come down in the Spring. But there’s a long winter ahead and I don’t really know how ill my dad is. Terry said he’d talk to dad and feel out the issue. But my dad is ignoring Terry’s telephone calls.

Bottom line is: I am leaning toward disappointing Chrystal and John. I think we should go in the Spring.

What if Dad dies in the interim? Well, I’m not so certain that’s a likelihood but I keep falling back to something someone told me last week. She didn’t know I was struggling with this decision, she was just telling me about losing her own parents and how her father chose who came to see him before he died. He let one daughter know but not the other because he felt the other could not deal with his dying. He didn’t let either daughter know in time to see him before he passed, choosing to be alone rather than to have them see him in a weakened state.

It put me in mind of my mother’s death. My mom did not want my sister there. My brother called me or I would not have been there. And while we waited for Mom to go, my dad kept insisting we go for walks or drives because he could not sit beside the bed and watch my mom die. He said they had agreed there would be no death-watch. And so it was that we were away from the hospital when my mom breathed her last. She knew we were away and she knew why we were away. I fully believe she chose the time to let go as much as the time chose her.

So. I have decided to wait until Spring unless something comes up in the next few days to radically change my mind. The hard part will be informing Chrystal that I have made this decision and knowing that she will, in turn, relay the decision to John. I’ll look like the bad guy.

But I’m not so sure I am the bad guy. I think my dad doesn’t want us to come down. I think he prefers it that way.

Doesn’t make it any easier.