AFTERSHOCKS
ALM 92, August 2026
ESSAYS
Tobacco smoke aroused me as I sipped wine on my dad’s front porch. I turned toward it, hoping to see my chain-smoking eighty-something father. Instead, a scrawny zit-faced teen boy with shoulder-length greasy hair and sagging pants slouched down the sidewalk. The For Sale sign in the front yard blurred as I swallowed the lump in my throat. Selling his house was so final. “Having a drink with Dad” minus Dad would not happen anymore.
Although my dad has been gone for four years, my nose still stings when I see a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. He consumed this golden elixir daily, barring hospitalization or the flu. I react similarly to a pack of nonfiltered Camel cigarettes resting on the rack behind a store counter. He smoked those cancer sticks from sunup to sundown for as long as I can remember.
His death was like an earthquake to me. It shook me up, but the aftershocks, not the main event, were what unhinged me. Just when I thought I’d survived the final tremor, another emerged to prolong my trauma.
My dad was the pillar of strength to me. He was strong, quiet, a bit grumpy, and there if I needed him. He was my rock. He was the one person who utterly understood how my mom’s and brother’s penchant for drama could drive a person crazy and cause an aversion to conflict.
#
By spring of 2022, my father’s fifteen-year war with bladder cancer had whittled his six-foot-two, 200-pound frame into a five-foot-ten, 125-pound skeleton. It was clear he wasn’t winning this battle, which was a fact I didn’t want to face. Although he’d beaten septic shock six months earlier, death was close — and he was ready for it. I was not, however. So, he prepared me for his absence in the only way he knew: a stoic and pragmatic approach peppered with some anger. He did not tell me that he loved me, nor did he leave me with soulful insights. Instead, he lay back in his recliner, folded his hands across his stomach, and gruffly instructed me on how to manage his affairs when he was gone. I listened as if he were telling me how to water his prized tomato plants while he went on vacation.
"Don’t you dare give one penny of my money to your mother. She got plenty in the divorce,” he said as he pointed at me and stabbed the air with his finger.
I nodded. She received the family home and contents, fifteen-unit apartment rental, and two years of spousal maintenance due to a well-timed nervous breakdown. She also received the never-ending job of supporting my lazy, entitled brother.
“Or your brother,” he added.
“Okay.”
“Anyone who can turn a million dollars into nothing in a few short years doesn't deserve more money,” Dad added. He was referring to how my brother had managed the financial settlement he’d won from a lawsuit thirty-some years ago.
I nodded again.
Dad and Scott never really jelled. He’s like Mom and I’m like Dad. We choose peace over chaos; they prefer the opposite. Local law enforcement knows them by name due to their history of domestic upheavals. She kicks him out of her house, requests a protection order, then cancels the order so he can move back to her home. Wash, rinse, repeat. My father and I would only call 911 to report a burglar, the neighbor’s house on fire, or request a coroner.
Dad asked that I bury his ashes in the family plot with Emily’s, his life partner. For ten years, he had stored her remains in a purple box adorned with shells they gathered on beach trips.
“No problem,” I said.
“Well, you’ll need her kids’ approval.”
Say what? He prepaid for his cremation, added me to his checking and savings accounts, created a will naming me as his executor, power of attorney, and sole heir. Why did he save such a personal task for me? Because asking Emily’s kids made him vulnerable. I mean, he seriously had difficulty asking me to feed the stray cats while he was in the hospital.
In early July, Dad’s doctor informed me that he was severely anemic and would only make his annual — and final — fishing trip to Canada if he received a blood transfusion at once. After waiting ninety minutes for Dad to be admitted and enduring several explosions from him about hospital inefficiencies, a nurse ushered us into an ER room. We soon learned his blood transfusions would involve an overnight stay, which resulted in another outburst from him. I promptly thanked the nurse for all he did, said goodbye to Dad, and escaped to a dental appointment. We both avoided hospitals whenever possible. He didn’t trust most doctors or the medical system. I get butterflies whenever I step foot in a hospital, which can be attributed to my mom’s four-month stay after a disfiguring car accident when we were kids.
On day two of Dad’s hospital stay, the staff discussed hospice care with us. He didn’t hear much of that conversation because the hospital had lost his hearing aids the previous day. Plus, the masks required for COVID made lip reading impossible. It didn’t matter anyway: he refused the care.
On day three of his hospital stay and two blood transfusions later, Dad’s nurse called.
“Your father’s doctor recommends a third transfusion. John refused and insisted that he go home today. Can you convince him to stay?”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
His weary nurse greeted me. "He pulled out all the IVs before I could stop him," she whispered. Dad was slouched over the edge of the bed with his back to me. I walked in front of him so he could read my lips. His hands were folded in his lap. He wore a lightweight black jacket and white tube socks – nothing else. Jesus! I focused my eyes on his face. I did not want to look at this skinny old man with his junk hanging out. What happened to my virile formidable father? He reminded me of my grandfather in his final years.
“Dad, why won’t you do what the doctor suggests? Just get one more transfusion so you feel better during your trip. I’ll still bring you home today.”
“Maybe I will feel better, Michelle. I’ve been here long enough. Where is my underwear? You were supposed to bring them."
“I was?” Surely the hospital stocked Depends.
He looked around the room, then threw up his arms. “Well, they’ve lost my pants too! I’ll just have to leave without them.” I imagined him shuffling down the hall adorned in jacket and socks only. He was like a toddler who had missed his nap.
Once settled in the car, I tried small talk. “How was your breakfast?” The day before, he’d labored over his meal choices as if they were Sudoku puzzles.
“Horrible. I didn’t think it was possible to fuck up French Toast, but they managed it.”
I sighed. I’d given up preparing meals for him weeks ago.
As we drove the two-mile stretch to his house, he commented on the numerous boarded-up businesses. “I suppose they exceeded their usefulness,” he surmised as he looked out the window. “Kind of like me.”
My nostrils flared as I looked out my window. It was a difficult adjustment for me also. Until recently, he had been mentally sharp and capable of managing his daily tasks – showering, driving, grocery shopping, getting the mail, and paying the bills. He still managed to pay his bills, but paid them late, which wasn’t typical.
As we pulled in the driveway, he sighed. "Looks like a nice place. I think I'll buy it." I deposited him inside with Cathy, his live-in housekeeper and caregiver, then left skid marks in the gravel as I ran from his inevitable death as much as his foul mood.
A few weeks later, Dad returned from his Canada fishing trip - still complaining. I thought he might return in a body bag. Truthfully, I hoped for it. Completing the fishing trip was the last thing on his bucket list. What could be more poetic than him dying on a boat while fishing with his best friends?
Shortly thereafter, he stopped eating entirely and retired to his bedroom to court death. He had silently passed the baton to me and trusted that I would water his tomatoes. After two weeks of coming by daily to help Cathy change soiled sheets and urge Dad into the shower as he bleated like a lamb going to slaughter, I realized I could do nothing to relieve his pain or hasten his death. So, I planned his funeral, wrote his eulogy, and sobbed alone.
In late August, two hours after I’d left Dad’s house for the day, Cathy texted me. She was moving out that evening and wanted her last paycheck for caregiving. The chickenshit waited until I was clear across town to tell me this over a text. My husband, Gregg, and I return to Dad’s house at dusk with our dog, Sally. I was three glasses of wine in and ready to fight.
“Where have you been?” she snarled. “I need help changing your dad.”
“That’s what I pay you for,” I hissed as I followed her down the hall to his bedroom. “I’m so pissed at you right now; I could strangle you. After all he’s done for you, you can’t even stay with him until the end.” She looked pale, so I kept on her. “He chose you because he didn’t want his daughter to deal with this alone.”
“I can’t do this any longer,” she said. “I didn’t think he would hold on this long.”
Cathy promptly left with her final check. We discovered later she also left with some of Dad’s tools, yard equipment, and several portions of frozen salmon.
I returned to his room still fuming. “Cathy split. She can’t watch you die any longer,” I told him. He blinked. “You put your eggs in the wrong basket with her, Dad. I wish you would have let me hire a dependable caregiver.” He stared at the ceiling. It was mean to rub his face in it at this point, but I resented not having qualified help to guide me through the dying process. It was my first time, and it was my father dying. I felt as if he’d thrown me to the wolves.
“Doctor Bateman says they can give you a morphine patch to stop the itching. Do you want that?” He’d complained of itchy skin for eight months. Lately he needed constant back scratches, which I hated. I feared his skin would tear off. His will said he wanted medication to provide comfort if he was terminally ill, but he shook his head.
“Why not? It will reduce your pain.”
He stared at the ceiling, then slowly moved his head from side to side clinging to whatever control of his life he had left.
“Jesus! You’re the most stubborn person I know. You’re making this so hard on yourself and the rest of us,” I huffed.
I moved on to tell him that I’d followed his wishes. “Emily’s kids gave their permission for the two of you to be buried together.” I paused to swallow the lump in my throat. “You will have a graveside funeral. Then we’ll barbeque the seafood from your fishing trip in the backyard.” The funeral and barbeque were my executive decisions. I was not asking for permission; I needed them. I looked at his emaciated face and body, trying to remember the man in the blue pinstripe suit who walked me down the aisle at my wedding.
“Can you still hear me?” Dad blinked and nodded.
I told him his grandson and wife would live in his house while they built their new home up the street. He nodded his approval.
“I love you, Dad. I’ll be on the back patio drinking up your red wine if you need me,” I said as I pulled the covers around him. I kissed him on the forehead; he blinked in acknowledgement, then I went to the kitchen. He needed me to leave the room as much as I did, I told myself as I filled my glass. I continued to tell myself this as I drained the bottle while sitting on the stool next to his ashtray on the back patio. Gregg and Sally napped inside.
#
At dawn, I peeled myself off the living room floor and entered Dad’s room. He lay sideways across the bed, uncovered, wearing only disposable diapers. Although my head was thick from the one and a half bottles of wine I’d consumed the previous evening, I remembered his head was on the pillow and the blankets up to his chin when I left the room at 2:30 a.m. after coaxing his weak, gangly legs into a clean diaper.
Inching forward two steps, I leaned toward him. "Dad?" No answer. His hearing aids were on the nightstand. I took two more steps, stretching out my neck to see his face. His mouth was agape, his body rigid, his fingers and toes blue. He stared at the ceiling as he had done many times over the past three weeks. "Dad?"
Gregg stood in the doorway.
“He’s gone, I think. I don’t know,” I whispered. I took two more steps, touched his forehead, and then recoiled. “He’s cold.”
“He’s gone, Shel.”
Sally sniffed the rug, making her way toward his body.
“Outside, Sally,” Gregg said as he motioned down the hall with his arm.
Alone, I did not take Dad’s pulse, close his eyes, cover him, or touch him in any way. That corpse was not my father. I left the room and closed the door, then plopped on the couch with my head in my hands. Why had I left his bedside? I should have been right next to him when he took his last breaths, not passed out on the living room floor. Yet, I believe he would have done the same, rationalizing that he could do nothing to change the outcome.
I shuddered and thought “Thank God this is over.”
#
If Dad expected me to quickly move on from his death, I’ve failed him. I’ve drank too much, kept too many of his belongings, and mentioned him too often. I want the young him back so I can appreciate him more and we can make more memories. But there are no do-overs, so I worked through my grief by clearing the rubble. Each set of tasks in closing his estate rippled like an aftershock, forcing me to accept that my father was gone and the terrain changed forever.
My voice caught, my eyes watered, and my nose ran as I began the communications to halt his social security and pension checks, request refunds for his prepaid auto and medical insurance, cancel his Elks and AARP memberships, and transfer his money, bills, and home into my name. It felt like I was erasing his existence as if he had never been here.
Emptying Dad’s home was not something I could postpone until I felt up to it. Our son and daughter-in-law were moving in by Halloween. I dismantled the shrine I’d built in the living room: the slippers, books, and junk mail around his recliner; his civil engineering stamps, certificates, and tools laid out on the desk. I removed his cigarettes, lighter, ashtray, and stool from the back patio. I held onto the fifty extra copies of his funeral program, although they had exceeded their usefulness.
I felt as if I were invading his privacy as I sifted through the contents in his spare room. I guess we never fully know anyone, but I certainly learned a lot as I examined the artifacts of his life. Dad’s bank statements and investment reports were no surprise. They only confirmed he had plenty of money and spent little of it – especially on himself.
However, the piles of Christmas, Father’s Day, birthday, and thank-you cards dating back twenty years caught me off guard. He always seemed so unsentimental. The Father’s Day photo album I’d made him forty years ago was there, stuffed in the bookcase. The folder of my published articles appeared unopened and unread, but at least not thrown away.
The boxes of fishing photos and handfuls of hunting photos were telling. I had always known Dad to be an avid hunter and fisher. Of course, my only knowledge of his escapades came from the dead birds and fish I saw dumped in the sink when he returned home, and from the big fish and game stories that my dad, brothers, and grandfather repeated at every family gathering. The fish were always huge and vigorous fighters and the stalking of game always exhilarating. My youngest uncle clarified that Dad loved walking in the woods and being the campground cook, but he did not have the stomach to pull the trigger on Bambi, which explained why his freezer was full of fish, not deer or elk. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He loved mammals more than he would admit. The family puppy he said we didn’t need was the first one he checked on when he entered the house late at night after returning from night school. Later in life he said he didn’t want a dog but allowed a stray to camp out in his backyard, nursed it back to health, and grieved after it disappeared one day. He even bought high-end food for the stray cats in the neighborhood.
As I sorted through Dad’s travel memories, I found extensive research for excursions to Alaska, Mexico, and Ecuador. His preparation didn’t surprise me, but the photos of him and Emily on vacation revealed a side of him I didn’t know. I had never seen him smile like that on family vacations. I wished that I had. He and Emily had a special bond that took me too long to recognize, which caused a distance between us. She enjoyed him, let him be himself, and made him feel needed. They smoked, drank, watched football and baseball games, entertained, and traveled together. He cooked because she was awful at it. He was the primary breadwinner; she’d started work late in life after raising four children and divorcing her husband.
Deciding which of Dad’s possessions to keep and which to throw out was challenging. I felt like I was discarding pieces of him with each item I scrapped. Gregg captured the sentiment perfectly during our first dump run, “I feel like we’re throwing away a man’s life.” The truck was filled with sagging couches, rusted clam shovels, and broken patio furniture, but I tearfully agreed. I took solace in regifting his books to used bookstores, his fishing gear to his one remaining brother, his Western belt buckle and hunting gear to our son, his flannel shirts to my uncle and husband, and his two custom-made pin-striped suits to my husband and son. Their continued existence gives me comfort. I tucked his famous blue cheese dressing recipe into my recipe box, kept my grandmother’s coffee and end tables that he painstakingly refinished, and placed his “It’s five o’clock somewhere” sign our front door. When I miss him, I cuddle into his blue and black plaid flannel shirt with the worn collar.
I felt another aftershock when Dad’s green Lincoln Town Car left our driveway with its new owner. It was his divorce car and the newest, most expensive vehicle he ever owned. It was a year old when he bought it; he drove it for twenty-six years. Gregg and I were often amused as Dad came down our driveway, window cracked, smoking his cigarette. “Do you think he’ll get that boat parked without running over my grass or hitting the fence?” Gregg would say. He did and then stepped out of his vehicle with a smirk.
Selling Dad’s house (previously owned by my grandparents) added to my mourning. It was the only place I could go and still feel his presence. While I spread the last of his ashes in the flower beds and buried his pack of Camels and matching lighter under a tree in the backyard, I relived Christmas Eve and Sunday family dinners, backyard barbecues, and blueberry pies made from the free berries across the street. I hoped this home’s new family would build similar memories.
Like tectonic plates settling into their unfamiliar places after earthquakes, the tremors of my grief have decreased in frequency and size as my life settles into its new reality. I can tell someone my dad passed away without blowing my nose in another room now. I smile more than I cry when I remove containers of food labeled with Dad’s handwriting from our freezer. Strawberry Jam September 2021, Sauerkraut Balls December 2021, Vegetable Beef Soup March 2022, Shrimp May 2022, Salmon July 2022. I think he’d be impressed that I finally mastered pie crusts – a culinary art passed down from Grandma to him and him to me.
Grief is not linear though. Being downwind of cigarette smoke on a warm day still makes my nose run and my eyes water. And just the other day while canning tomato sauce, I wanted to call Dad for advice on adding lemon juice – and to tell him his prized tomatoes lived on because Gregg saved their seeds. I doubt that was my last aftershock, but I do know the tremor will be smaller and I will survive it.
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