How to Support Your Elderly Father After Your Mother Dies: An Oldest Daughter’s Guide

Allow Your Dad Plenty of Time to Grieve While Also Encouraging Social Support

Listen without judgment when, two months after you mom’s death, he says it’s time to have a little fun.

Give him the benefit of the doubt. Assume he’s joking, maybe even relieved, that fifty-five years of their dueling infidelities, ultimatums, and shouting matches have finally ended.

Offer to call and visit more frequently when he says his suburban ranch house is too quiet. Don’t mention the big screen blaring in the background.

Encourage him to explore the park district’s Geri-Active offerings or the senior center’s breakfast club to make a few friends.

Tell him you understand when he refuses those suggestions. Don’t mention the irony when he says he doesn’t want to go because those places are full of old people.

Respect Personal Boundaries and Freedom of Choice

Gently remind him (again) that it’s dangerous to light up a Marlboro while the oxygen tube is in his nose.

Don’t imagine any of the details when he tells you that, oxygen tank at his side, he drove his ’98 Cadillac Seville to the Ponderosa Sun Club’s Nudes-a-Poppin’ Jamboree last weekend. Don’t take sides when he says he complained to the manager at the big box store because they wouldn’t print the photos. 

Decide how much information you’re willing to share with your fellow high school administrators as you tell them you’ll be taking occasional time off to help your dad get through—what, exactly? A bereavement? A crisis? Settle on calling it a rough patch and change the subject. 

Help with Transportation for Errands and Outings

Drive him to the airport on a Friday morning for the flight he booked to Jamaica. Don’t mention that a week earlier, when you googled the resort he chose, the images of nearly nude twentysomethings frolicking by the pool and menu of add-on fantasy exploration opportunities made you blush. Don’t mention that when you called your sister to tell her, even though you’re both in your late forties, you squealed like you were back in high school gossiping about the porn mustache gym teacher who took cheerleaders to the corner restaurant for lunch. But this isn’t the creepy gym teacher. And a clothing-optional resort doesn’t really seem out of character for your dad. 

Pull into Departures, flashers on, and steady his forearm as you help him out of the car. Double-check that he’s got his passport and the boarding pass you printed for him. Hug him and tell him to stay safe. Watch as he disappears into the terminal, trailing his suitcase and flight-approved oxygen. Convince yourself that you’re not taking it personally when he doesn’t turn around to wave goodbye. He’s never been good at saying goodbye.

At Arrivals on Monday, smile and wave when you recognize your octogenarian father slowly weaving through the crowd—all those “good” genes he inherited from the Scottish side of the family making up for a half-century of bad habits—his newly tanned face, still-dark hair combed back the way he’s always combed it, like when he was a teenage bad boy in the 1950s. Watch all six feet four inches of lean angles and stubborn shoulders, how he struggles not to slump as he tows his gear across the buffed airport floor.

Put his suitcase in the trunk and nestle the oxygen tank next to his leg as he gets comfortable in the passenger seat. Notice he’s more winded than usual, but don’t interrupt him to point it out. Let him tell the story about getting rolled by two prostitutes in the Negril hotel room. Stare straight ahead, willing the red light to change as he explains, “Evening amenities” is what they called it. Offer a weak smile when he brags, “Damn straight, I got my money back.”

Volunteer to Be a Health Advocate during Medical Appointments 

Put his doctor’s appointment on your work calendar. Before leaving campus for the day, promise your friend, the school principal, that you’ll make up the hours you miss the next day, even though she’s told you to take all the time you need. Thank the ever-cheerful secretary in the main office, the one who wears school spirit gear even on her days off, for rescheduling your teacher observation conference, the special education meeting, the one-on-one with the athletic director, and the lunchtime planning session with the junior prom committee.   

Help your father out of the car near the front door of the medical building. Urge him to sit on a bench near the entrance and wait for you to park, even though he’ll impatiently insist he doesn’t need to sit down. In the rearview mirror, watch as he sits down and lights up. 

Keep your facial expression neutral when he takes his shirt off for the exam, and you see bony edges of ribs straining under skin to protect inflamed, struggling lungs.

Silence the temptation to say no shit when the doctor tells him cigarettes are killing him. Resist telling her you’ll wager a hundred dollars that he lights up in the parking lot on the way home. Let your father lead the discussion. Watch his eyes shift down toward his old canvas slip-ons, stained with beige house paint, as she says his pulmonary disease symptoms are worsening. Notice the quick, well-practiced recovery from vulnerability when he looks up a second later and jokes about being as healthy as a horse and looking like one, too. Smile, even though you’ve heard him tell that joke hundreds of times since you were a kid—every time he was proud of never missing a day of work at the machine shop, every time his old army buddy up in Wisconsin called for a chat, every time your mother told him to quit smoking cold turkey, like she did. It’s willpower, she’d say. I’m healthy as a horse, he’d say. Willpower, she told him. And her children. And anyone else who listened. He has no backbone, she’d say. That’s why he doesn’t quit smoking, or ask for a raise, or stop chasing other women. And when the X-ray shadow showed up on her lung, your mother finally stopped talking about turkeys, and your father didn’t mention horses. But she’s been dead for nearly a year now. 

Watch the doctor’s face soften as she smiles at your father’s joke before turning her back on him to add notes to his chart.

Respect Personal Boundaries and Freedom of Choice

Don’t jump to conclusions when your dad’s new friend from Craigslist starts staying overnight or when she moves all her clothing into your sister’s old bedroom.

Don’t point out that he’s eighty-one, and she’s thirty-three.

Offer to Help Manage Household Finances 

When the check for the water bill bounces, log in to his account to find a string of ATM withdrawals and money leaking from savings.  

When you see orange envelopes in the pile of mail on his kitchen table, ask him, casually, if he’s been loaning his car to his new friend. Squint at blurry traffic camera images, hoping not to find your dad behind the wheel making an illegal right on a red. Going fifty in a thirty. Use Google Maps to search the camera locations and discover most are twenty miles from his home, near burned-out buildings and abandoned lots.

Keep your eyes on the bank statement when he says it must’ve been him who spent eighty-three dollars at the Qwik Stop out near the airport.

Respect Personal Boundaries and Freedom of Choice

Unclench your teeth when he tells you the syringes you found in his house are for her diabetes, and when he tells you he gives her a ride to pick up her insulin from the guy at the gas station. When he tells you that’s what friends do for each other. When he says she’s just accident-prone. That’s where her bruises and the black eye came from. When he tells you her teeth are falling out because of gum disease.

Listen without interrupting or jumping to conclusions when your brother says it’s elder abuse and your sister says he’s lonely. Suspect the three of you need him to be your father more than he needs you to be his children—and then realize, it’s always been this way.  

Swallow the stone in your throat when he calls her his girlfriend.

Be Willing to Have Difficult Conversations 

Tell yourself you’re doing it for his safety when everyone begins to arrive at your father’s house at five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon: You, your second husband, your newly divorced brother, his girlfriend, your single sister, and a twenty-three-year-old nephew who, after being in court-ordered rehab, insists he knows how these things work. 

Force yourself to make eye contact with your father as his smile evaporates when he realizes you’re all there for an intervention. When he realizes that you’ve arranged this. You, his eldest daughter. The one he trusts most. You’ve called everyone together.

Nod and tell him you respect his wishes when he says he’d like his girlfriend to stay while you’re all gathered there. He wants her to hear what you have to say.

Reconsider the word intervention as you shift uncomfortably in an armchair, wrestling with doubt while the voice in your head points out the only interventions you’ve seen are on reality TV. 

Sit in the pressboard-paneled family room where you used to open Christmas presents. Where your dead mother’s recliner still sits in a corner. When he’s there, his girlfriend’s there; you’re all there—siblings and a few adult grandchildren with rehearsed speeches about what you’ve convinced yourselves you’ve lost. Even if you suspect you might be lying. Because you know you never had the father you wanted. Tell him you’re all concerned about his safety. The smoking. The hissing risk of one leaky oxygen tank valve—one invisible threat meeting the spark of a cigarette lighter. Tell him about the call from the police. Prostitution. Reports of drug dealing out of his aluminum-sided, bay-windowed, sprinkler-on-the-front-lawn house. Angry neighbors. Drug sniffing dogs. No evidence. This time.

Be honest. Admit you’re not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish.

Ask yourself if you’re ready to voice the needs you’ve kept in the darkest, most unsteady part of yourself for years: The need to be seen by your father. The need to feel protected and safe with him. From him. You can’t find the words because you’re six again, staring at the Playboy centerfold he nailed to the wall above his toolbox, imagining you’ll look like her one day—blonde, glowing skin, breasts round and swollen, legs spread wide. You’re ten, sitting on shag carpet in the living room watching Wonder Woman on TV, when, from his perch on the couch, he says to no one, “Look at that ass.” You look at Wonder Woman’s ass, silently comparing it to yours. You’re eleven in the front seat of the Impala, trying not to notice his eyes tracking teenage girls in the crosswalk. You’re twelve when the babysitter’s mother calls your mother. When your sobbing mother packs your father’s suitcase and he leaves the family. When he returns the next night and mutual contempt hovers in the house like cigarette smoke for the next thirty-five years. When you learn to be afraid of anger—your mother’s, your father’s, your own—eventually deciding it’s safer to suppress it. Now, all these years later, you’re spending your off-work hours and weekends trying to save your father from himself, and you’re not even sure why you’re doing it, except your mom’s gone and your dad’s all that’s left of a sad childhood you never understood. Maybe it’s because he taught you to ride a two-wheeler, bandaged your bloody knee, and rode the Hurricane Megacoaster with you five times in a row. Maybe it’s the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting he baked from scratch on your thirtieth birthday. Hard as you try, you can’t figure out the calculus of loss, loyalty, and obligation. Maybe you’re hoping he’ll have a last-minute change of heart. A twelfth-hour plea for redemption. He’ll act like a parent, and you can act like a middle-aged child. He’ll say he’s proud of you. He’ll say he knows it wasn’t easy, but you’ve made a good life for yourself. He’ll say he wants to be the father you need before he dies. But, when it’s your turn to speak, you can’t say anything because you’re choking on all your needs and all the words you’re unwilling to say. They’re sparking and hissing, threatening. They’re capable of incinerating it all—the tired family room with its yellowed curtains, the cigarette-burned carpet, the sagging sofa, your mother’s chair, her souvenir spoon collection, the framed family photos where you all pretended to be happy—everyone, everything on fire—your family. They wait.

Close your eyes, swallow hard. And then, like always, pretend to recover. Quick. Well-practiced.

Notice you’re rambling, repeating yourself. Sputtering about his safety when it’s your safety you’re trying to protect because you’re a child role-playing an adult. 

Stop and nod when your dad, who never had much use for fathers taking advice from children, or sissy self-help movements, or goddam talk therapy, interrupts you to ask, “What’d you call this? An intervention?” 

Respect Personal Boundaries and Freedom of Choice

Watch and wait for a response as your father’s girlfriend looks down at her shaking tattooed hands, and he shifts his gaze from his family to a blank TV screen.

Wait as she lights her cigarette, and he lights his.

Listen when he says you’re all worried about nothing. When she says they keep each other company. When she says he’s giving her money for medication—saving up to get her teeth fixed. Yes. She likes men. Yes. She gets paid for sex. No. That’s not your business. They have an arrangement, she says. She’s helping him around the house. She cooks for him, goes with him to pick up prescriptions, does some laundry. Things you can’t or won’t do. It works. He’s an adult. What’s the problem?

Recognize you’ve asked yourself the same question for decades—long before your mother died

Consider the possibility that your father’s choices are his way of offering you permission to absolve yourselves—the green light to walk away without guilt.

Do the Math

Throw away the rotting vegetables in his refrigerator. Same with the stack of water bills, the traffic court summons, and the broken syringe you found under the bathroom sink. Pretend you never saw any of it.  

Weigh the cost of giving up your nights and weekends so you can care for a man who seemed burdened by the anchor of a depressed wife and three needy children for decades. Weigh the cost of trying to stop a dying man from having a little fun. Weigh the cost of all the years you’ve spent trying to get your father’s attention and a love that feels safe.

Don’t try to measure what you never had.

When a Crisis Arises, Tend to Physical and Emotional Needs

Accept that the hospice doctor, with all of her expertise, is probably right when she calls to say your father doesn’t have much time—could be days, could be a few weeks. These things follow their own course.  

Call the police and report his car stolen after his girlfriend leaves in the Cadillac in the middle of the night. Put a freeze on his credit cards and change the locks.

Work with your siblings to create a 24-hour continuous visitation schedule at the hospital. Text the school secretary and tell her you’ll be out again tomorrow. Feign sleep on the fold-out bed in his room.

Recognize that, on the rare nights you’re home, you’re opening a second bottle of wine after dinner. You’re shouting at your teenage daughter for forgetting to unload the dishwasher. You’re avoiding friends with healthy parents. You’re crying in the shower. 

Call your sister from your father’s bedside the morning before he dies as you watch a screen measuring the carbon dioxide filling his lungs. Balance your cell phone between your ear and shoulder to smooth the bleached sheet across his sputtering chest as he labors through a drug-induced sleep.

Don’t scare your sister. Tell her about the three pancakes in a soup of maple syrup, the side of bacon, and coffee with cream and sugar he finished that morning for breakfast. Tell her he’s rebounding like he always does. Tell her he’s just getting a little rest.

Inhale your sob when the doctor tells you it was the last push of steroids that made him hungry. He’s not rebounding. He’s not recovering this time.  

Respect Personal Boundaries and Freedom of Choice

Refrain from judging him when he says his last wish is for one final smoke. Tell him you’ll try to convince the hospice staff. Refrain from judging yourself when you don’t do it. 

Distract yourself by looking out the window into the parking lot while he flirts weakly with the nurse injecting his morphine. Listen as he slurs, telling her she should come home with him. 

A few hours later, release his hand after the same nurse checks the clock and whispers his time of death. 

Seek Help and Support as Necessary

Search Google to find online diagrams, stages, models, and timelines of grief.

Deny that any of it applies to you. 

Scoff at pop-psychology suggestions and harbor secret contempt toward people who send drugstore condolence cards in the mail. 

At the homecoming dance, the band concert, or the local school council parent meeting, assure yourself that working eleven hours a day two weeks after your father’s death helps you cope.

Pour more cabernet into your emptiness. 

Tell your friends and co-workers you accept your father’s choices. Tell your siblings the worst is over. Convince yourself you mean it. Tell yourself what your father gave you is enough. It’s enough.