Elvis Has Left the Building. Goodbye Dad.

It took nearly 63 years but as I stared into the cloudy blue eyes of my 85 year old Father and asked him who I was he said quietly he didn’t know. I knew right then my Father had left this world in spirit. I showed him a picture of my Mother and he in younger days he recognized himself but didn’t know who the woman was who stood by his side thick or thin for one day short of 50 years of marriage.  His body still occupies space and he still enjoys every morsel of food but other than that Elvis has left the building.  

When I played “The Summer Wind” and told him the singer was Frank Sinatra, Old Blue Eyes (His favorite crooner) he said: It doesn’t sound like Sinatra.  I was nonplussed. There was no need for self-recrimination because I had said everything I needed to tell him some 4 years earlier when he had some cognitive function left.  When your loved one doesn’t know they don’t know the only thing left are prayers. I petition my Mother gone some 14 years now to please take our Dad back to her side.  

 My beloved sister took care of him in her home for nearly a year and for the life of me I don’t know how she mustered the strength to do it. She had a little help from my “Solid Like a Rock” brother in law but even still the Herculean task was a rock not many could budge. My sister is an angel incarnate on earth but even her loving care was no match for Father Time. 

At Christmas dinner after he had downed an exquisite meal my younger sister had prepared he then  asked the young man next to him that had picked him up from the Nursing Home if he might take him back if it was convenient. That young man was his Grandson but he had no idea who he was either.

Time heals all wounds and now it's time to say goodbye.

Epilogue

I hesitated writing in this blog again because after all my stint as a Step Dad is over but there are residual hurts that plague me now and then. This is by no means an indictment of my former stepchildren because after all they have families of their own now and although I am persona non grata I hope one day they remember a couple of things. One is that I tried to give them the best life I could when their own biological father was in absentia and was just the man that sired them that’s all. 

Second I hope that my stepson remembers that his own son was sired under my roof and that his lovely Chinese wife would not have entered the country had I not rendered my backing financially because they had no visible means of support. Hell his father told him to send his then fiancé back to Mainland China and forget this whole marriage idea. Now he has a grandson courtesy of yours truly.  He is a beautiful child by the way. 

My former charges also forget that I didn’t marry them I married their mother and as they threw me under the bus they continue to pay homage to a man that never held one responsibility as they grew up. And I hope that they realize that it was their mother alone that raised them not their figure of fun daddy.  Okay I better stop writing now I know this will get me in trouble but the cats are quite literally out of the bag now.    

I know what I did and what I didn’t do and nothing my former make believe family can say will change that. My wife was not make believe. 

Oh and that picture above was me. I was a figurehead with no judicial powers.