FULL-SPECTRUM COLOR

Today, August 16, 2017, is the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. I remember this day one year ago, each hour of it, with painful clarity. I was nearly 3,000 miles away in my home in Oakland, California as my father was passing from life to death in a hospital room in Annapolis, Maryland, too far a distance for me to arrive in time for his final hour to say goodbye. But we had said our goodbyes just weeks before and many times before that. And so I awaited word from my siblings until that final hour came. When he breathed his last, I felt the pain of his long illness lift away, just the way the summer fog lifted that morning, the sun stretching its arms through grey puffs of clouds. Away he drifted, taking with him a lifetime of love and labor, memories and moments that would never become again.

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016, my father, Theodore “Ted” Wazenski made his transition from this life to the next. He was 83 years old. Son of Polish immigrants, he grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania and later made his home in north Baltimore, where he and my mother (also Polish) raised three children — a elder daughter, a son, and me the youngest daughter. He died in Annapolis, Maryland, where he and my mother had settled in the later years of their lives to be closer to their son and his family and to receive care and support from their local senior care residence.