Decisions

Observing grief

It's estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day.

I feel like my daily quota for the last few months has been around 350,000 and in the last 3 weeks it has been about 3,500,000 per day.

And some of the decisions I have been making, or been a part of making, are some of the most consequential decisions I’ve ever had to make.

Some of them have been literal life and death decisions.

And mostly death.

If you have read anything I’ve ever written you have probably recognized that I am a big fan of autonomy and agency, which are not the same, but similar. I place a high value on individuals and groups being empowered to make decisions for themselves rather than having decisions made for them.

Particularly, decisions made for them that directly affect them.

This value on agency and autonomy is an expression of my faith and my best understanding of the story we find ourselves in and the nature of God and love.

And it’s all been well and good when there have been a handful of consequential decisions to be made. It’s been lovely when I’m deciding where I’m eating lunch or what workshop I’ll attend or where I want to go on my holiday.

It has been miserable when the decisions I am making involve the end of the life of my Dad.

I’m not a Mover, I’m not an 8 on the enneagram. I’m a Contemplator, I’m a 5 on the enneagram. I process things internally. I think through the 10,000 possible outcomes of a decision before I make one. I gather information. I think and think and think some more and then I do.

And then I feel.

Over the last month, maybe a little longer, Dad has been fading faster than he had been before. His body and mind were playing tricks on him and letting him down. His frustration with both body and mind was growing. He was barely able to walk ten feet with his rollator without stopping and taking a break. He had to think about how badly he needed to go ten feet to the washroom or 20 feet to get to the dining room table the way I would contemplate taking a 10 mile hike. Every little thing was becoming harder for him. Some things felt too hard to get up and move for.

But there were still decisions to be made and Dad would ask me, “What do you think I should do?” completely expecting me to answer him right then and right there.

I can’t tell you how many times over the course of my life I had asked my Dad that very question. And suddenly he is asking me daily, or several times a day, “What do you think I should do?”

Of course, if he didn’t like my answer, he would turn and ask someone else, and that took some pressure off my answers. But in the last month he was with us, he had stopped asking others so much and my answers felt much heavier. Much harder to give.

And there have been so many more decisions. More than I thought were possible to make or needed to be made.

Today, we begin a journey back to my dad’s home. Back to where Dad came from. Back to the place where he grew up. That was the big decision he made for us, and it has been waiting out ahead of us in time. We will take him to a rural cemetery and lay his body to rest beside the grave of his mom and dad.

It’s a beautiful spot and honestly, I’m grateful that I don’t have to make this decision but if I’d had to, and it had been presented to me as a possibility, it’s exactly where I would want to lay his body down this one last time.

I think the hardest thing about the decisions I’m making now is that I can’t turn to dad and ask him what he thinks, ask him what he would do. He’s been there my whole life and while I hardly ever took his advice (being the little, independent cuss that I am), I sought his advice and I always knew he was there, the net under my high wire act, willing to catch me even though he’d warned me not to climb up so high.

I love agency and having decisions to make. I loathe having to make them right now.

“I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed