Several years ago, when my dog, Parks, bolted up the steps of my parents’ house only to find my dad absent from bed, I wondered what this might look like for her one day.
Parks, doing as she’s done every morning since we adopted her in 2020, rummaged through the blankets. No Dad. She ran downstairs — maybe she missed Dad the first go-around — and didn’t find him either. He had gotten up early and was already out.
I turned to my mom and wondered aloud a thought that has eaten at me for years, ever since my dad was diagnosed with cancer a decade ago, when I was in high school. But I framed it through the lens of this dog — this lovable dog who has protected and cherished my dad for almost her entire existence.
“What is Parks going to do without Dad?” I asked.
“What are we going to do without your father?” my mom, Jeanine, retorted.
She was right. I had no answer; nor did she or my brother, Stephen. Parks was especially mute. We all knew someday this would be the outcome — every life is terminal, although some end sooner than others — but to get here?
None of us could have been prepared for the moment — about 8:30 in the morning on Monday — when Gregory Marvin Kostka took his last breath. He was 66.
Born in Algoma, Wisconsin, in 1958, Greg graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1984, and the next year he married my mom and soon they relocated to the D.C. area. The family grew from there, when Stephen and I arrived in 1994 and 1998. And up until Monday morning, Dad was our constant support system.
So this week, the rush of reality set in. We have to answer that question now. What will we do without Dad?
We’ll never be the same — that’s for sure. I talked to him about everything; he had read every article I’ve ever written until this one. His love of history and storytelling put me on the path to being a writer. So of course there’s a gaping, unfillable hole within me that screams of an absence from which I’ll never fully recover. But in my calmer moments, when my breath finally slows down and my eyes dry, I realize it’s less of a hole than it is the weight of a gift.
This hurts so much because my dad was an all-around amazing person — to his family and to strangers.
But I can’t help but feel how unfair this all is. Here is a good man, a man of faith and principle and love, and yet this is how he was repaid?
The most common consolation offered by well-wishers is to remark on my dad’s decade-long cancer journey, acting as if lasting that long is a huge success and the silver lining necessary to get over this. And of course, there’s some truth there — to have my dad live this long when impending doom seemed to approach several times over the years is a blessing.
But there’s another angrier side of me that sees the whole thing as unfair to the extreme. Those 10 years were a slow demise. They robbed my dad of every hobby he loved. Our last long hike came shortly before Christmas in 2021, when we bushwhacked our way from Blockhouse Point around to the C&O Canal and back, with Parks in the lead. Then 2022 came and I returned from Mississippi with a new job — a great opportunity — but with the fear that the end was nigh.
But no. He held on — and lost more of himself.
The walking was the hardest, because Dad walked everywhere. To and from the Metro for work. Around regional sports complexes as he waited for my baseball games to begin. To Carmen’s Italian Ice at the end of our street.
We often reminisced about how lucky we were to make a trip to England together in 2019. It would be our final big father-son venture, and we did it right: West Ham matches in London, Beatles tour in Liverpool, castles and pubs and meat pies.
By the end of his life, walking seemed a small loss; we’d grown accustomed to him simply shuffling along, trying to keep up. And he had lost so many other things: He couldn’t hold a book upright and resorted to me reading aloud “The Navigator’s Children” by Tad Williams (an irony, he remarked often; he used to read to me, and now here I was reading to him). The music he so loved lost his focus. The necessary pain medicines sapped his attention span. The last album we managed to listen to together was “Good Morning Seven.” At least it was a great one.
Of course, I’m grateful for the time we had. But I do sometimes envy the rapid decline and death offered to others if it had meant Dad still died at 66 and had been able to live a normal life for much of it. For 10 years, there were blood draws and bone scans and appointments and surgeries and radiation treatments and an underlying fear the whole time that this was the bad one — this was the end. He held on, and then until the next appointment, it almost felt normal, apart from the anxiety that gripped you, just under the surface, for a decade.
You’d think that would make you more ready for the actual end, but no. I was not ready. How can you be? Even when he entered hospice in December, the whiplash continued. A timeline was impossible to lock down, and the experience dragged on longer. Again, he lost some of himself. No longer able to be at home, Parks wasn’t there to constantly offer her support. The few visits we made with the dog to Dad’s hospice facility were the brightest moments as we waited for the end — and fought, through his long hours of silent diminishing, the final, swirling bursts of negativity that never leave you when a person you love fights for so long.
So, yes, cheers to 10 years.
Dad lived one hell of a life — and while he long shied away from calling it a battle with cancer because for the most part a patient lies back and hopes the procedures work, he changed his tune late. It was a battle, even if the battle was against a white flag. It was a battle to preserve sanity and enjoy the intermittent beauty life offered.
Somehow, through all of this, the one thing Dad never lost was his good cheer. I always felt it fitting that “gregarious” featured my dad’s name. He was isolated to his bed, mostly. He slept much of the time. But in those waking moments, Dad brought the same enthusiasm to conversations as always, even if those conversations didn’t last as long.
About a year ago, when we knew this journey was reaching its end stages, my brother worked on a project for us. He recorded my dad singing songs or saying greetings. For me, Dad sang John Lennon’s “Look at Me,” my favorite. And he recorded a greeting to me for perpetuity, using my forever nickname.
“Hey, Snuggles! It’s me, Dad. Love you!”
I haven’t listened to the recording yet. I’m not sure when I’ll ever have the strength to do so. But someday, when I feel up to it, I’ll listen to his words and hold his memory as close as I ever held him.
Dad, in his bodily form, is gone. But when considering that question — what will we possibly do without him? — his influence remains. The guiding light that made me who I am still cuts through the darkness. And in that sense, Dad isn’t gone — not really.
Comments
Welcome to The Banner's subscriber-only commenting community. Please review our community guidelines.