How to Release a Fish by Terah Van Dusen

Photo by Alberto Loyo

Two large seascape paintings hang on a wall outside a maternity ward. The paintings have been there for over thirty years. I was eight years old when my grandmother, the artist, donated them to the hospital in my hometown in northern California, where a leading cause of death is driving into a redwood tree. I’ve walked past the paintings dozens of times, but it wasn’t until Dad fell backwards off a ladder that I realized the paintings also hang outside of the Intensive Care Unit. 

I got there as quickly as possible. Drove down the 101 in a mad dash from Oregon. But not before carefully explaining the situation to my then fiancé, and our three-year-old daughter. “Grandpa Rob’s sick,” I said. “He needs me.” 

Upon arriving at the hospital, I was calm and composed. But after going inside, it felt like I was tearing in two. Cleaving. Something severed and split inside of me. It took everything to hold myself together. I began staring at the paintings to cope with the tragedy at hand: Dad on life support after a disastrous fall from a twenty-foot ladder. My dad. My person. The dad who raised me in a one-room cabin he’d built in the woods. The main character in my father-daughter story. The hero, now fallen. 

According to Wikihow, this is how to catch and release a fish: Reel it in until you can grab the fish with your hands. Be sure to keep the fish submerged in the water for as long as possible. Do not let it flop around wildly. Finally, land the fish quickly.* 

Dad was pretty much dead. His heart stopped beating for about fifty to sixty minutes after he fell off the ladder until he got to the hospital. Then, at the hospital, they stabilized him. If only the doctor knew how different this dad was than the one I’d known. My single, thrill-seeking father. A man everyone called “Robby” instead of Rob. My fierce, yet childlike, protector. A big kid in a grown man’s body. 

The artificial breath made Dad appear deceivingly alive and well. But his eyes were closed, and he was unusually quiet. All was not well. I immediately thought of the Netflix documentary I’d watched less than forty-eight hours ago, Extremis. It was about family members with loved ones hooked up to machines and relying on life support. Had I somehow caused it to happen? Why had I watched that film, of all films? What would have happened if I hadn’t?

The hospital staff told me all these things: It doesn’t look good. His pupils were fixed when he came in. His heart is beating, but his brain is dead. His blood pressure kept dropping but  we administered medications to keep it up. We recommend you think about what he would want for himself. Think about his lifestyle now and what it would be like if he woke up. They made sure to emphasize the if. 

I was Dad’s only child. He was single, no wife. That meant the decision to release him back into the wild ethers from which we all came fell on me. Even so, my Grandpa John, his wife, Jeanette, and my Aunt Marie were all there at the hospital too. Before I’d arrived, they pointed out all Dad’s previous mishaps to the doctor. Each scar or missing limb told a story. The two fingers and half a thumb he’d lost to a table saw. The big toe that got chewed up in a lawnmower. The gnarly scar on his left knee. Culprit: chainsaw. 

Then, of course, there was “the accident.”

The accident happened long before I was born. He was the boy who’d nearly drowned. During the accident, the heavens took Dad up and spit him back out a month later. “Miracle Boy,” the newspapers called him. Ever since that time, Dad was all hell-bent on God, so the family referred to the accident as a near-death experience even though he couldn’t remember what had happened, on this side or on that side. 

Miracle Boy was underwater for a full fifteen minutes, but he still loved water after all of that. He sought it out, even. He was like a fish out of water. Sometimes it felt like heaven was the water, and Dad couldn’t wait to go back. 

“Your daddy made it through that first accident. The drowning. The coma. He was a young boy then. Strong. He’s not a young boy anymore. He’s an old man. You understand?” My grandfather asked me, looking straight into my eyes. “His body can’t recover like it did back then.” 

Get a good grip on the fish so it can’t wriggle free. With one hand, grasp the fins below the gills and place your index finger under the chin to keep it from flopping around. If possible, place the fish into a fine mesh net containing water. Removing the hook will be much easier if the fish is relatively calm. 

After relieving my family members so they could get some rest, I sat quietly beside Dad. Seeing your loved one intubated is the strangest, most heartbreaking experience. Dad was there, but not. A few hours earlier, back in Oregon, I thought I still had a dad. It was mid-afternoon when I’d gotten the call. 

Dad had had an average morning, I imagined. I could picture him, reusable coffee mug in hand, waiting for the buddy he’d hitch a ride with to the jobsite. Small talk during their morning commute. Driving alongside the Smith River to the coast. Some big, fancy house. The owners wanted the whole thing painted white. They’d hired Dad and his friend cheap and unlicensed. Dad, technically disabled from a traumatic brain injury sustained in the accident, never should have been up on a twenty-foot ladder with a chainsaw. He shouldn’t have been asked to cut a branch that would then spring back and knock him off the ladder. An ache welled up in my throat thinking Dad might have been trying to earn a little extra cash to buy a gift for my upcoming wedding, which was weeks away. Relatives suggested that we might have a legal case against the people with the big, fancy house. It was all too much to think about. 

“We don’t sue people,” I spat. 

After a few hours, I stepped away from Dad’s bedside for a walk around the hospital. I studied my grandmother’s paintings in the hallway again. I noticed the bright turquoise blue and shades of green where the sunlight cut through the deep ocean water. She wouldn’t have been able to get that effect painting on a cloudy, overcast day. It must have been a sunny day when she painted it. I could picture her with her easel and acrylics, sitting on a chair overlooking the Pacific, back straight, set on getting the curl of the waves just right. 

It is important to catch and reel the fish in quickly. If pushed to the point of exhaustion, the fish is less likely to survive its trauma. If caught and released properly, it can recover within 24 hours, and will show no measurable effects from the experience.

A nurse, who I’m sure knew Dad would die soon, brought me a reclining chair. She positioned it right beside him. I didn’t know how I’d ever get to sleep. There we were again, me and Miracle Boy. Only this time we were in a hospital room not much smaller than the cabin I’d grown up in. And now, a rubber bag was hanging off his bedside, collecting the fluids excreting from his body. I wondered why I had to be on the same side as the bag. I tried, but failed, not to look at it. 

I was getting married in eighteen days. Dad was going to walk me down the aisle. Our soul connection was so strong, and always had been, that I felt I could communicate with Dad telepathically. Or that’s what I wanted to believe anyway.

It’s okay about the wedding, I conveyed to Dad. And…it’s okay about dying. You can go now if you haven’t already.

I read somewhere that saying things like that helps free the soul. I wanted to remain by Dad’s side throughout the night. It was a test of my endurance. Like all the nights we’d spent in the wilderness with bare minimums. Like how he’d always been there for me. Like when I got heat exhaustion at Golden Gate Park. Or a fat lip fighting on the playground at school.

I fished an unopened box of Nag Champa incense from my purse. Dad regularly bought me incense. It was one of our things. Logically, I knew I’d never be permitted to burn incense within the walls of the hospital, but I’d brought it just in case. Joan Didion’s “magical thinking.” As if Dad and I could burn some incense and strike up a conversation like none of this ever happened. As if it were all some big misunderstanding and we could get back to normal. 

To lessen the smell of dying in the room, I brought the blue box of Nag Champa up to my nose. I held it there for a few seconds, closed my eyes, and inhaled deeply. It smelled like the Hare Krishna temples we visited in Berkeley and Venice Beach. We’d slip off our shoes outside the entrance of the large worship room, just a father and daughter in search of some truth. The Nag smelled like our cabin by the river, where we’d sit and read books, rain pouring down outside, but inside we were warm, dry, and protected. 

I prayed over and over again for Dad’s soul to be okay. What else could I do? Then I thought of what Grandpa John told me, about Dad not being a young boy anymore, but an old man. Earlier, when I’d asked the doctor to explain all the options, he told me about a facility in Sacramento where families keep their loved ones still hooked up to their machines. Just waiting for them to wake up. 

I knew we wouldn’t be one of those families.

The smell of the incense and the solitude with Dad turned out to be just what my soul needed. I didn’t sleep that night, but remained reclined, clutching the box of incense to my nose, until the little hand on the clock reached five and the big hand reached twelve. Then I decided I could allow myself a cup of coffee. A new day had begun. It was likely to be the worst day of my life, but I was filled with a strange, inexplicable calm. 

If you plan to release the fish, it’s important to use a humane hook that is less likely to injure your catch. Consider buying soft-wire hooks that naturally unbend as you pull them from a fish. They may be worth it if you value a humane catch and release method.

Despite the emotional pain that day, I was overjoyed when so many loved ones came to be with Dad. The hospital requested people visit him in pairs. There were lots of cousins, nieces, and nephews. There were people unrelated to us, who said that Dad was like a father to them. My two best friends, both teachers, took the day off work. Few of us had been in the presence of anybody on life support. We all seemed to look around for cues on how to address Dad. I don’t know who did it first, but before long we were all speaking as if he were still in the room, as if he could not only hear, but understand us. 

I would say, “Dad, so-and-so is here to see you.”

And they would say, “Hi, Robby. It’s me. I am so sorry this happened to you. That sucks, man. I love you.”

There were no right or wrong things to say. We were just all there together, trying to figure it out. More friends and relatives started showing up to see Dad—and then I realized they weren’t just there for him, but for me, too. 

Then eventually, everybody left again. 

Being with Dad, I noticed that I didn’t feel alone, even if he couldn’t speak. I was getting messages that Dad’s spirit was no longer trapped inside his body. During a quiet meditation, just sitting there with my eyes closed, I had a vision of Dad dancing with God in heaven. He appeared the way he used to when dancing in the Hare Krishna temples. He was light on his feet, tears of joy were streaming down his face, and he was grinning ear to ear. That vision felt so real. When I opened my eyes and looked back at Dad’s body, I didn’t sense that’s where his spirit was anymore. His spirit was in the room. It was filling me with strength. But it wasn’t in that body. 

Unhooking a fish: Pacify the fish by holding it belly up for a moment. Then pull the hook strait out of the fish’s lip. Try not to tear the lip. Take your time, and pull the hook out the same way it went in. 

Grandpa John, Jeanette, and Aunt Marie returned. The nurse came in to speak with us. I held Dad’s hand, the one that hadn’t shattered in the fall. Even though we knew he couldn’t feel anything, we didn’t want to risk causing any more harm. After the decision was finally made to unhook Dad from the machines, I played “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison on my cellphone loud enough that the entire ICU could hear it. I didn’t care. I cried and wailed with the chorus. 

Then the nurse unplugged the machines that were doing all the breathing for Dad. She stopped the medications that were keeping his body stabilized. My grandfather held me, and Jeanette and Aunt Marie held each other. Other key family members who could not be there joined us on speakerphone. We watched Dad for several minutes. Studied his features. His face, unscathed. The perpetual farmer’s tan on his arms. His missing limbs and scars. We saw for the last time all the stories marked into his skin like petroglyphs. It didn’t take long before Dad’s body gracefully surrendered to the release. That was a blessing. A sign that we had made the right choice. Proof that his earthly body couldn’t hang on. That he couldn’t survive this one. 

Releasing a fish: Hold the fish firmly with both hands. Bring it as close as possible to the edge of the water before letting it wriggle free. If the fish doesn’t swim away, move it gently back and forth in the water. Always slip, do not throw a fish back into the water.

Although Dad’s official time of death was 10:25 a.m., I like to believe he was already dancing with the angels the moment he flew backwards off that ladder. Lately, I’ve been having this lucid dream where I can fly as high into the atmosphere as I desire. So I shoot straight up into the azure blue sky before suspending my arms out and floating back down to earth as if I’m a feather. Weightless, effortless. I hope that’s what dying felt like to Dad. What it feels like for everyone. Like sunlight cutting through water. Or a breeze just passing by. Euphoric. Destined. I hope it feels like going home. 

Terah Van Dusen writes personal essays and poetry. She aspires to publish a memoir about her upbringing off-grid in northern California. She resides with her daughter and husband on a farm outside of Eugene, Oregon.

*www.wikihow.com/unhook-a-fish

Image provided courtesy of GoDaddy.