The Last Homesteader: An Audio Story

In remembrance of my father on his birthday

Today my father would have been 94 years old. He died three years ago of old age, or if you prefer, congestive heart failure as his overall diagnosis with kidney failure his exit pass and cause of death. He was cancer free when he passed, and he would be sure to highlight in conversation his survivorship of bladder cancer, diagnosed at 85 and opting for chemotherapy and major surgery to remove his cancerous bladder. They built him a new one out of 22 inches of his small intestine, cut and spliced in a precise pattern and sewn together in a Charlie Brown football shape, reinserted into his abdomen and hooked up to his ureters so urine could drip from his kidneys and fill the internal reservoir (they called it an “Indiana Pouch”). He emptied his IP by inserting a lubricated catheter into his belly button (an umbilical stoma) through a short channel fashioned from his appendix and sewn to the IP so he could have access via a catheter to drain his urine into the toilet. This he had to do every 4 hours around the clock. He could have opted for an abdomen stoma with an external bag — a urostomy — that he could empty by twisting the valve on the bottom of the bag. He could have hooked it up to an extended tube at night that would drain into a bag hooked to the side of the bed allowing him a good night sleep. He told his surgeon he would rather have the IP so he could be “mobile and global”, unhindered by external medical devices on his quest to live fully like his father did into his hundreth year. This decision and the nine hour surgery took courage. I know. I had the same surgery, but at a much younger age.

When my dad was hospitalized and he was made aware that his kidneys were shutting down, he was genuinely surprised that this was the end. He thought he had more time. As he slipped in and out of consciousness with his children around him — visiting one at a time during Covid — he became aware, just enough, to talk to his treating physician: “I need a little more time. I have a few things to wrap up.” His doctor said it’s very unusual but he could order dialysis over a period of three days. “It may give you enough energy to complete whatever it is you need to do” he said. “It might give you a solid day of clarity but no more.”

That’s all my dad needed to hear. By the third day we was sitting up in bed completely normal. He finalized some legal documents with my brothers, returned some important emails, made his last phone calls, had some quality time with my sister, and then I came in to visit him. “I have a few more stories to tell,” he told me. I laid my iPhone on his chest and hit record and off he went, firing off stories with a clarity and strength of mind and memory, his childhood, University days, meeting my mother, his career in the military as if it all happened yesterday. Knowing his stories might die with him he elevated to another plane, his words floating from his mouth as if carried by butterflies, conveyed in a way that could only be told in truth hours before one’s death, and only with the help of his couragous spirit that would soon transcend this temporal plane.

Here I include one of the stories he told me on his deathbed in audio format. It was hard to listen to and hear his voice for at least a year after his death. Now, I feel it’s comforting, a bedtime story, my head on the down pillow and warm under the Norwegian down comforter over my body. My dad coming to me after my mom sang a Norwegian lullaby, to craft a spontaneous story and send me into sleep, my imagination ignited, yet my body exhausted from creative play all day and ready for slumber.

It’s just over five minutes long and worth a listen. It’s called “The Last Homesteader.” It takes place circa 1944 in Towner, North Dakota. Listen…