Father, daughter made most of his final days

Last fall, I knew I’d be back. Last week, I was back. Susan Sellers and I talked away most of a sunny morning. Her father’s presence filled the room.

Only this time, Jim Henton wasn’t there.

Henton, 71, died at his Camano Island home May 9, nine months after learning he had incurable colon cancer.

Sellers spilled tears, secrets, silly stories and details of her dad’s life learned only in those final months. It was time the two spent together, deliberately, lovingly.

"He never ate a corn dog," said Sellers, 42, half laughing and half crying. "He was so proud of that."

The Marysville woman knew I understood about the corn dog, about being the adult child of an aging parent, about the funny, urbane and now very much missed man I met before writing about them in October.

"Wasn’t he cool?" she asked.

Very cool. Jim Henton was one of those people who got old without getting grumpy. He seized life.

After losing his beloved wife, Rosemary, in 1999, he joined St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Stanwood. He made new friends. After learning he had just months to live, he talked his daughter into a madcap trip to England and Ireland.

"He evolved into that person," Sellers said. "He wasn’t always that way. He used to be in the rat race, going to work.

"He was amazing. I certainly didn’t think he was amazing when I was a kid," she said, sharing how her father used to bark about her messy room. "I thought he was just a basic dad, like everybody had."

A basic dad. Amazing.

She had said it without knowing. In talking out her grief, Sellers had put her finger on why I like their story so much.

"Maybe this is everybody’s story," she said.

It is. Or it could be, if only all the midlife kids and their older parents could spend the time and say the things to let each other know how amazing they are.

I work with a man whose father died this month. One friend crossed the Atlantic this spring to see her ailing father, maybe for the last time. Another friend will travel to the East Coast this month to visit his father, who is seriously ill. My dad will be here in June for his grandchild’s graduation, but I feel guilty I haven’t driven five hours to see him since Thanksgiving.

At midlife, those of us lucky to still have our parents are nevertheless staring loss in the face. We know it’s coming. We don’t know when.

Sellers was blessed by knowing.

Her dad was dying. In November, they flew to London and Dublin to fulfill one of his last wishes.

"Away we went, we were pretty good traveling companions," Henton told me by phone in December, after they got back. "My daughter will attest to the fact that I could outwalk her."

Sellers treasures her memories of the trip, although during the holidays it didn’t come at the easiest time for a mother of 6-year-old twins and a 7-year-old. It was all the time they had.

One night in London, they got dressed up and saw a production of "The King and I." They spent another night toasting life at a pub called the Prince Albert. Henton, who hadn’t smoked in 35 years, bummed a cigarette from three men at another table.

When she raised an eyebrow about the smoking, Sellers said her dad told her, "What’s it going to do?" and he wryly told the trio, "I have a little medical condition. I’m allowed to smoke, it’s not a problem."

She laughed at the memory of one of the last times her father felt well. "We knew we were lucky. We had ourselves a time."

This month she helped him die, with the aid of Providence Home Care &amp Hospice of Snohomish County.

It wasn’t easy. There was a hospital bed in the living room. He needed oxygen and pain medication. Sometimes, he called his daughter by her mother’s name, Rosemary.

"But honestly, he was prepared to go," Sellers said. "What I wanted was that he would get well. That wasn’t going to happen. His death was gentle, and good."

The Rev. Colm Stone, a Carmelite priest at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Stanwood, spent time with Henton in his final days.

"It’s a great gift to know your time is coming and you can prepare," Stone said. "Death is the ultimate reality in life, and to be fully open to life you have to be open to death."

One thing that struck Stone in the time he spent with Henton "is that he was getting calls from friends all over the country. And he said, ‘this is kind of fun.’ "

Sellers recalled the same thing.

"He said, ‘This is kind of fun,’ and I said, ‘For you, maybe.’ Really, though, it wasn’t a sadfest. We got to say everything."

She’ll miss her father forever, but she doesn’t have a single regret.

"You could say ‘I love you’ and he got it," Sellers said.

If only everybody’s story could end like that.

Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.