Mourning The One Who Saw You Best

Today, my daughter-in-law, Rachel takes us through the intimate, complicated journey of losing her father to COVID and finding unexpected grace in hospice care. Along the way, Rachel names the ache of anticipatory grief, the way traditions become flashpoints, and how a single sentence from a nurse can rearrange your world.

What sets this story apart is the quiet courage in the details. Rachel’s father, a man who prized his intellect, drifts in and out of lucidity while she becomes his advocate and historian, translating his life for overworked staff. When a facility outbreak pushes him past the point of return, the decision to choose comfort over intervention becomes an act of love. A hospice worker asks for stories, hears about a grandmother’s gentle ear tug, and carries that ritual into the room so he doesn’t die as an anonymous patient—but as a father, a son, and a whole person. It’s a small gesture that turns a lonely goodbye into a sacred passage.

We reflect on how grief compounds over time, why losing the person who sees you best reshapes identity, and the practical steps that help families navigate chaos: insist on clear updates, prepare for abrupt transfers, and use simple rituals to anchor meaning when you can’t be at the bedside. If you’ve ever carried a phone under your pillow, saved a plate at the table, or wondered how to say goodbye when you can’t hold a hand, this conversation offers honesty, tools, and tenderness. 

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE

UPCOMING WORKSHOP ON  SOULFUL LISTENING:  https://events.scu.edu/markey-center/event/359741-soulful-listening-workshops-on-the-ministry-of

Art:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and  https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

Music and sound effects today by:   via Pixabay

Chapters

• 0:38 Welcome And Framing Rachel’s Story
• 1:16 Early Confusion And Safety Scares
• 3:39 Fall, ER Decisions, And System Strain
• 7:18 The Midnight Call And A Positive Test
• 10:58 Thanksgiving Traditions And Anticipatory Grief
• 13:31 Facility Outbreak And Rapid Decline
• 16:23 Hospice Choice And A Peaceful Farewell
• 18:38 Closing Blessing And Support Resources
• 19:05 Aftermath And The Weight Of Compounded Grief

Transcript

Candee: 0:37

Welcome to Solace: Soul + Grief. I'm glad you're here. My name is Candee Lucas. I'm a grief chaplain and spiritual director. I was trained by the Jesuits in Santa Clara County, both at Santa Clara University and El Retiro Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos. The loss of a loved one is such a profound event in our lives. And all of us react in our own unique way. Our grief, and depending upon who we lost, is as individual as a fingerprint. Today we continue with my daughter-in-law, Rachel's story of losing her father during COVID. She's gained a lot of perspective from that loss. And as you'll hear in the following excerpt, still feels it profoundly. So let's see what we can learn from Rachel's story and her profound loss.

Rachel: 1:50

He called. He called and he was very confused. He had been since once COVID had started and he was isolated and all these incidents were happening, he was starting to kind of really begin to lose his mind and kind of not in a crazy-making way, but just in a way that he wasn't he would sort of slip into these places and you know, and I don't know that it was dementia, maybe it was some element of that.

Rachel: 2:21

I would just sort of go on whatever adventure he was on that day. So wherever he was, I just sort of went with him. But he called me and he was in one of those states. And then he would go back into his, you know, sort of a more more conscious, kind of more himself state, and it would scare him because as he said to me, you know, my my brain, my um my intellect has always been my and he couldn't come up with a word. And so the word he came up with was --my calling card--, but I knew what he meant, and I said, Dad, I know what you're talking about. And he said, in in this really jovial way, of course I know you do, you're just like me, honey.

Rachel: 2:58

Essentially, what happened was that he said something was he said, something is really wrong. And I said, Well, what was it? And he said, Didn't you hear me? I told you I I set a fire in my apartment. And I had him repeat the story. And it turns out he had left a kettle on, his tea kettle, and never went to turn off the the stove. And at that point it melted and started a fire, and so this obviously was quite an issue. I was we were trying to figure out what the next steps would be. I was in touch with the facility. I was also in touch with the dialysis center, trying to figure out if that was what the best step would be to bring him in. So I got in the car, I was on my way to take him to the dialysis center. A s soon as I was pulling into the residential area where he was living, I got a call from them saying, 'Your father fell again'. He still had a broken neck. I said, 'Okay, I'm right here'. They brought him out and he did not look well. It was clear that he had really suffered some kind of trauma to his head. I looked at him and I said, 'Daddy, did you did you hit your head?' And he said, 'Yes, but I don't want to be late to dialysis. Let's go'. And I said, 'We're not going anywhere. I want you to sit down'. And so I had him sit down and we're gonna call 911. And then he said, 'Oh, we don't have to do that'. And I said, 'No, I'm not letting you go anywhere. I need you to get checked out'.

Rachel: 4:27

What I didn't know in this moment, and I think this is something true of grief, is you never know when that's the last moment. It's hard because do you want the last moment to be the moment when you are when you might say something that you regret, or maybe before, or in this case, sort of trying to, you know, my dad started with his eyes kind of looking bleary, having having just fallen again, and and sort of the last conversation really being about whether or not he should be going to the hospital.

Rachel: 4:56

My father very rarely ever, if ever wanted to go to the hospital when he needed to, all the way to the very end. So they they came and they, after a conversation with the first responders, he was brought back to the hospital. And so here we were, sort of repeating the cycle. And again, because of COVID, now things were even worse. The hospital was very overrun. So they very quickly released him back to the rehab center. And then it was just days. I wouldn't see him again.

Rachel: 5:29

The one morning I kept my phone at this time because I was always ready for anybody to call, or I was making the phone calls. So I would sleep with my phone under my pillow so that I could answer it at any time of day or night. I didn't want sleep to be a barrier. It may have been two or three in the morning, and I received a phone call from a nurse at the hospital when I knew he was in rehab. And she said, 'Oh, or you know, your father was brought to the hospital today to have dialysis. They had to shut down the dialysis unit in his rehab facility due to COVID. And so he was brought here, and I just wanted to talk to you about him'.

Rachel: 6:07

And that was all. She wanted to kind of get a sense of where he was, and we talked for a while about where he was mentally and how he would slip into these states of confusion and sort of these really vivid places that he would kind of go. Sometimes he was at a bar and other times he was watching me play football. So anyway, we, you know, we chatted for a while and I felt good, thinking that now she had the information she needed to know about my dad. And then she said, as we were about to sign off, she said, 'Okay, well, great. We'll take really good care of your father here on the COVID unit'. And I said, 'wait a second, can you please just repeat what you just told me?' And she said, 'Well, he's we'll keep him here on the COVID unit.' And I said, 'I need you to, what do you mean he's in the COVID unit?' And she said, 'Oh, you didn't know your father when he came in. He tested positive for COVID.' And at that moment, I knew my father would not survive COVID. He didn't have to be bad off in that moment, but we knew that, and I what I didn't want him to die a COVID death. When she said that to me, I just fell to the floor and broke down in tears. Actually, by the time I was done, she was also in tears. What she did say to me when we hung up was, well, at least, 'you know, just so you know, your father is doing the best on my floor right now. He's his oxygen levels are okay and he's he's really doing okay.'

Rachel: 7:43

Again, because of the lack of resources, they sent him back to the rehab facility, where in the re that rehab facility they actually did have a floor for COVID patients that was supposed to be separated from everyone else. And then it was Thanksgiving. My father was a central part of my Thanksgiving tradition from for forever. When we were little, we had big family dinners. As we got older and all of us grew up and went in different places, my parents separated, and so we, you know, had our own Thanksgiving in various places. But I always had my Thanksgiving with my father. It didn't matter where we were. And obviously, while he was in Tucson living near us, and I was his primary caretaker, he was with us for every single Thanksgiving. This would be the first Thanksgiving he wasn't with us, and I was just that grief. I think there's another grief too that we don't always talk about the sort of anticipatory grief and the other kinds of losses that you experience in the grief journey and in the loss is when you know you're going to lose somebody. And in that moment, I was mourning him already because he wasn't with us at that Thanksgiving. The only thing that gave me hope was they had just announced that they were going to be releasing the very first of the COVID vaccines for seniors. He fell in that category, and seniors specifically in these senior facilities and rehab facilities. And so I kept thinking, well, at least by Thanksgiving of next year he'll be back at the table with us.

Rachel: 9:21

And I would not know at the time that that would never be true because the Thanksgiving in 2019 was the last Thanksgiving I would share with my father. But my husband, who's fantastic and very thoughtful, and had been supportive of, is always supportive of me and and my family members, and had helped my father as much as I did in taking care of him. You know, if I couldn't be there at because I was at work or somewhere else, he was there in my stead. So there was always somebody caring for him. And my husband loves to cook and he always makes a really fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. So he had made things, made a dinner, and he made sure to save a plate for my dad. So he put together all the things, parts of the meal, and packaged it up so that I could bring it over to the rehab facility, and my father would still have a Thanksgiving dinner. So I brought that over to him. Again, couldn't see him, but went just to the desk where I was allowed. And I kept thinking, well, it seems like they're doing a good job of, you know, keeping people out. And little did I know that while they were keeping out the public, their own staff members weren't really following protocols. So over Thanksgiving, I guess someone who worked in the facility went home and got COVID and came back to work with it and brought COVID to 46 patients in the rehab facility. And of course, for me, one of those was my dad. And that is that is why my dad ended up with COVID.

Rachel: 10:56

So after that time when he was returned back to the facility, it wasn't very many days. I was always calling and trying to get information. Every time he was there, it was terrible trying to get to talk to him or get to talk to anybody who knew what was going on with his case. So I called this, you know, in the morning and they said, ' we can't speak to you right now. There's an emergency here. Don't worry, it's not for you'. And I got off the phone and I just had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that it was my father. And it wouldn't make, it would make sense that my that my father, who was older and on dialysis and had COVID, wouldn't be doing well. And I knew even when I was first told he had COVID, that he would and at some point take a turn for the worse.

Rachel: 11:43

So ultimately, that's what happened. He was found unconscious. He had his oxygen levels were under 60. They put him on a rebreather. They did get him back to consciousness in the hospital, but that was when we made the decision that we wanted to take him off of dialysis so that he wouldn't have to suffer. He had all of the things that COVID-19 brings, the COVID-19 pneumonia. He had blood clots in his lungs. He had all the things. And so I just didn't want him to suffer. So we put him in hospice. The hospice was fantastic. I can't think of a better hospice is sort of like an angelic angels on earth, I suppose, because they really do the best that they can in really making sure that the person you love has a peaceful journey into the next, into wherever they people go next, whether that's sort of an energetic, just a disembodied form.

Rachel: 12:43

And that's what happened. Unfortunately, because of all of this, my father had to die alone in a room in a hospice center with no family, because of, you know, with all of the COVID restrictions and his having COVID. They did tell me that I could come and they would suit me up in all sorts of ways, but I knew that that's not what my father would have wanted. He was terribly afraid of he would rather have COVID and die than have anything happen to us. So I wanted to honor his wishes in that way. I was really fortunate because as much as I hated the fact that he died alone, what he did have a really wonderful hospice worker that day who had called me, who had just called me. I was actually on the phone with her at the time. She said, 'you know, I'm new to your father, but I'm not new to this work. Your father's in the COVID unit isolated, so it's very quiet. And even though he's unconscious, he can still hear. And I kind of want him to know that he's not alone and that he's not just a body on a bed. So I was hoping you could share some stories with me so I could talk to him and interact with him a little bit.'

Rachel: 13:55

Sort of just like now, I just sort of unloaded all these various stories with really no thought as to what would kind of come out. And I don't know why, but it was almost like it was meant to be. I ended up sharing a story with her about how my father lost his mother when he was young, he was 15. He didn't have recollection of his mom wasn't one of that was full of physical affection and things of that nature, but there was a at some point something happened that made him recall that that his mother would sort of gently tug on his ear and and that was and sort of say, I don't know, she said, I love you, but that was that was a sign of affection from her. So I shared that story with her. And then for some reason, we got the phone got disconnected. So she went back in to see my dad, and she gently tugged on his earlobe, and she said, It's okay, Jack, you can come home. And then my dad just peacefully transitioned. She called me back and said, 'I'm so sorry that we lost the connection, and I hope you're not upset with me, but your father has passed, and I want you to know what happened.' So she shared that story. And I wasn't upset with her. It was the most beautiful thing that she could have done. Because it felt to me like my dad was gonna get finally go home and be with his parents and his mom again. He had spent so much of his life without her. So, if he was alone, at least, he was gonna be back with his parents. That part of the story is so beautiful that it's also the most, in a weird way, the most painful part.

Rachel: 15:54

Obviously, because I lost him, but it's a really hard story to share. That was that capped off this year of loss and grief in a way that I don't think I would ever have really understood because I now felt grief in a way that was sort of tenfold what it had been in the previous losses. And I learned a couple things, too, is that each grief is not just a grief for the person you're grieving, but every grief that preceded. So each they sort of get mixed up and and the loss feels so much heavier each time, or heavier depending on the relationship that you shared. And my father, he was really --outside of my husband and my children--. He was my person, he was my rock, he was my I spoke to him daily, sometimes twice daily. We laughed together, we enjoyed each other, we, you know, we really understood each other, we we grew together in our relationship, which hadn't been easy always, but when I became an adult, we sort of learned to work together and we had a really good conversation. And from that time on, my father was very interested in in growing with me, and even to the point where he would ask me questions about things that I had that had happened, wanting to really know my opinions and where I what I felt had gone wrong or right. And he truly wanted to know. He wasn't afraid of my answers. He just was wanted to wanted to learn and wanted to grow and wanted to be close to me. And I think that was a really defining feature of our relationship. So losing my dad was sort of like-- It was losing a rock, it was losing my friend, it was losing my the person I went to for advice. It was losing the person in my family who saw me for who I was and wasn't stuck in old narratives of who I who my family thought I was, whether it was true or not. He he was the only one who was able to actually truly see me for me in my in my immediate family of origin. And I when he died, I lost that. There wasn't anybody then who could see me the way that he did.

Candee: 18:38

That concludes another episode. A new one drops every Friday morning. I'm Candee Lucas, your host. If you're in need of grief support or spiritual direction, you can find my contact information in the show notes. Remember, travel with God always at your side. Be gentle with yourself and with others. Vaya con Dios.