The Choices We Make
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The Choices We Make

by Anneke Haku

My father finished planting that last day. As he walked through the house bragging to me, I laughed at his socks pulled up to the knee. Sunburn wrapped around his thighs, face as red as the beets he had just planted. That evening he walked mom and I through the garden, pointing out rows and rows of seeds. Left mostly to our imagination what would come from them buried there under the soil, it was a wonderful garden nevertheless. Complete with the promise of the beauty and nourishment to come. I remember that last night with my parents in the dusk, watching over what he had left buried there.

Two days later I was traveling from Nebraska to Minnesota for his funeral. My brother-in-law, Thad came along too. To offer support and to make me turkey sandwiches. We talked as we always had about little things, what I had been reading lately and what bands he had newly discovered. All the while, my father's ashes were in the trunk - and Thad was dying of bone cancer.

Thad's illness made sitting tough and, being a tall man, sitting in a small car all the way across Nebraska was nearly unbearable. Unable to stretch and unable to relax. Low on pain medication, still he seemed to truly want to be there.

Even surrounded with reminders of the end of our worlds, Thad succeeded in making me laugh. His way of pointing out that we were, for the moment anyway, still alive. We laughed and talked some more. Talk about music and movies, funerals and hospital food. Chemo therapy. Heart attacks.

My father was 47 years old when he died of a heart attack. It came suddenly, as I assume most heart attacks do. The hamburgers eaten and the cigarettes smoked being of no real warning, except of course in hindsight. No real warning for him to plan his goodbyes or spend his last days as best he could.

I noticed Thad had his socks pulled up to the knee. I asked why he did this and he mumbled how it helped with circulation and something about doctor's orders. As he spoke, I thought to myself, the last thing in the world a person close to death should chose to do is spend his last summer days stuffed in a hot car driving across Nebraska. I mean, what would my father have done with his last hours given the knowledge my friend had? What would I do? It seems the answers that come are always the same. Travel. Adventure. All the things we meant to do but never got around to. Yet in a letter I received from Thad a few weeks before he died, he wrote:

"It seems weird to admit this, but I actually miss my home. Maybe not the city itself (too small to have a Thai restaurant, too big to bike everywhere easily) , rather the feeling of safety, security and comfort it gives me. I guess that's home, isn't it?".

If this is any indication of what goes through the mind of a terminally ill person, then it should be safe to assume that Thad wanted to spend his last days at home. What about my father? Would he have chosen to do as Thad did, driving about the country talking with family about the books he's read, the garden he's planted? Make us all turkey sandwiches? I'll never know. I do find comfort in the idea that he was home with us, and Thad with his family. And we are left behind to make the best of things. Not unlike the garden of seedlings, it is yet to be seen what will come from what was planted here.

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