A lonely end for a popular girl

This is my debonair dad and his lady friend at his 85th birthday 6 years ago. Adie was one of those women who had a thousand friends, was always on the phone, never spent a night alone. She was also one of the lucky ones who always had a man.

Three weeks ago she passed, alone in her penthouse bedroom, full of morphine. Last year at my dad's 90th her cancer had spread and her decline was evident, but until last month when she couldn't get out of bed, she dressed to the nines, hair and nails perfect, and never talked about her illness or impending death. Instead, she would draw out the life story of the person in front of her, and would remember every detail.

When I first met Adie, I pigeonholed her as a gossipy socialite. As we sat over shrimp cocktails and elder portions of salmon and asparagus at the upscale retirement home where she and my dad met, Adie regaled us with complete life stories of friends and acquaintances. She had grown up in the Oakland Hills and spent early married life in San Francisco's Pacific Heights. Her tales revolved around sorority days at Berkeley, high end dinners, far flung vacations, and the people she had met at the Peninsula Regent where they now lived.

My mother, whose death from pancreatic cancer precipitated my father's move, was a dedicated liberal who hiked with the Women's University Club, dressed in high rise jeans, let her hair go grey, and never had a manicure in her life. Despite her bright and curious mind, I mostly did not get along with my mother. Her ambitious, over the top personality attracted some, but my sister and I never felt particularly nurtured.

Adie, another entertaining social organizer, wanted to know everything about you and actually listened. Unlike my casual mother, Adie was, as my sister called her, "a dame." She was also a Republican. She and my father were caricatures spouting Fox vs. USNBC rhetoric, clearly disgusted with the other's politics, but in love all the same. My father often said this was the real thing, whereas his marriage to my mother had not been what he had hoped.

On my last visit we brought Mexican take out to Adie's bedside. She greedily gobbled chips and guacamole after having no appetite all day. At this dinner Adie told us the life story of her Tunisian caregiver, a single woman who had moved to the U.S. from Dubai in hopes of obtaining an American passport. She also drilled me about my love life, asking a million questions about my new boyfriend.

I realized that Adie - though cloaked in trappings of monied conservatism - loved my dad despite their disparate political beliefs and financial statuses. Her love was full of curiosity and she was a good judge of character. Unfortunately, her family was not so kind. They seemed to think my father an interloper who wanted Adie for her money, and at the end they distanced themselves not only from him, discounting his medical advice, but from their mother, leaving her to die alone in her room on an overdose of morphine.

The family erased Adie's time at the Regent and with my father, not mentioning either in the obituary. They forbade the Regent from holding a memorial, and invited my wheelchair-bound father only to the ceremony at Adie's gravesite where she was buried alongside her husband. My father did not attend.

He called me today, and is managing his loneliness with games of bridge and poker and lunches with acquaintances. Last night, with no dinner date planned, he ate cheese and crackers in his condo. I listen to his struggles and sincere attempts at connection. I share stories of my life which seem to cheer him. At least I know our little family will make every effort to be there when it is his time.