My father’s death was the start of my life
It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It also taught me everything I needed to live.
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The writer's father did not have a peaceful death, but his life was precious and he clung to it as well as he could.
PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO
Megan K. Stack
My father died on a hospice cot in the living room, surrounded by his family, his books and records, and the chair where he’d read the newspaper every morning I could remember.
It was not a peaceful death. My father was just 58 and he was furious. When the nurse first dabbed a morphine-soaked sponge against his lips, he croaked: “You don’t have to drug me.” That memory doesn’t chill me any more. Now I marvel that even a tortured life was so precious that he clung to it, and that my father fulfilled the poet’s ideal by raging against the dying of the light.
