My dad and I had a good relationship. We always had a laugh. We talked about the family and our jobs. He was always sure to ask me how my wife, Georgia, was. When he was sick, I didn't visit him as often as my sister and mother did. I visited him when he was at Sturdy on a Wednesday (March 13th). He had been taken by ambulance a couple days before. I took the day off from work because his illness had been takin it's toll on me mentally. I wasn't planning to visit him but I decided to. I went in mid afternoon and sat with him for an hour or so. He told me about his ailments and what had been happening to him. He was clearly worse off than I thought. He had been keeping a diary of how he was feeling and things that needed to be done when he was gone. I was thrown off by this. He was talking like he didn't have much time left. In hindsight, he knew what state his body was in and where he was going. We had a long talk about the state of the family and what it'd be like without him. I told him that I wasn't ready to be the head if the family. He said 'Why do you have to? Let your sister do it'. He also told me a story about when he and my mom went to see my grandfather on the night he died. he said that he went in to see him and my grandfather said 'Why are you here watching an old man die? Go out and do something'. My grandfather died later that night. I felt at peace with the fact that dad was dying (slowly, I thought). I shook his hand when I left. It was a great conversation an I thought I was ready for anything.
Dad was moved to a rehab facility soon after. My wife and I had visited and I visited one day by myself. On Easter I got up early and went to the gym. After I left, I went to see dad. He looked much worse now. He had been at rehab but was too weak and frail to do anything. He didn't want to even eat. It was as if he gave up. He had an oxygen mask in when I saw him. He spoke candidly to me about how bad he felt and how much he wanted to go home. He hasn't been home since early March. He told me that he wasn't going to sit there and die. He started to cry as he spoke to me. I never saw him cry before. We never really shared emotions as a family so I knew this was a big deal. I was floored by this. We spoke a bit longer then my mom came by as she was doing every day. All 3 of us talked and mom sat there and held dad's hand while we talked. It was a display that I had seen in the past but the gravity of it now was major. When I left that day, I was mentally drained. I wasn't prepared for all that.
I got a call from my mom saying there was going to be a meeting with all the doctors an our family to give us an update on everything. It was in Wednesday the 3rd of April. We had to wear coverings because dad had contracted a new thing and we had to cover our clothes and hands to avoid it. They were going to move him out of rehab and back to Sturdy because he wasn't rehabbing. He was too weak and his body had so many problems to address. Dad had said that he didn't think he'd be with us for the 4th if July. My sister was crying the whole time. I was quiet and in my 'silent brooding' mode. Dad asked the doctor if it was really bad and the doctor said it was but he could recover and it's be hard. After everyone left, me and my sister said our goodbyes to mom and dad. That was the last time I got to speak to my dad.
The next call I got was either Thursday or Friday. Mom said that since dad's kidneys were a mess that he'd have to have dialysis. She also said that since his body was so weak that they would have to put him under to do it. He didn't take the dialysis well and they kept him under each time they did it. He wasn't very 'with it' even when he wasn't under.
I was at work on Monday April 8th and I got a call from mom early in the afternoon asking me to come to the hospital. I knew it was bad.
When I got there. I found out that he had died an they brought him back. He was on an oxygen tube and hooked up to machines that were mostly keeping him alive. He looked terrible an was unconscious. He'd been this way since they brought him back. He had tied up all his loose ends except wether or not to bring him back if something happened. My mom said that if something happened again that we wouldn't bring him back. My wife eventually came to the hospital. The 4 of us stood by his bed all afternoon and into the night. My mom and my sister sobbed. My wife sobbed. I just stood there with red eyes and a lump in my throat. I didn't want to look weak to the rest if the family that I was obviously going to be the head of soon. We talked about what dad would want and the many ways this could potentially end. All the staff, including the doctor, said the same thing. People don't recover when they get to this stage. We told stories about dad and we talked. We had a family meeting in the waiting room. We all (mostly) decided that dad didn't want to live like this. It wasn't living. I asked mom why she thought that we might potentially leave him like this and she said that she'd be able to come and hold his hand tomorrow. We decided late that night that the right thing to do would be to take him off the machines. When the time came and the doctor asked if we had come to any type if decision my mom said that we had. She looked at me and asked a last time if we were doing the right thing. I told her we were. I didn't want to make the decision to let my father die. I think I did.
The nurses asked us to step out. They unhooked dad from all the machines. We went back in the room and he looked fairly peaceful. Everyone cried but me. I stood there with red eyes an a lump in my throat. He was just laying there. I kept hoping he'd wake up and that we'd all go home. He didn't. His body made a last gasp, literally. It was over. I never saw anyone die before.
He died with his closest family members around him. It's how he would have wanted it.
I didn't deal with it for days. We made arrangement. I was part of them. We had a service for him. I was there talking to people. So many people from his past an present showed up. It was amazing. There were so many stories about dad from so many people. He touched a lot of people. Usually when people die, they become saintly. Dad wasn't a saint. He was a good guy who helped people when he could. Dad's the one who introduced me to Star Wars when I was 5 or 6. When I was alone with dad's body before I left the funeral home, I told him that it's be cool if he came to me as a Force Ghost some day.
Now, it's been a month and a half since he died. We buried his remains on the 11th of May.
Then I became angry.
I'm not angry AT anything. That's how this sadness is manifesting itself. Things make me angry. I'm depressed. I'm overeating. I'm angry.
I started this blog to journal my anger.
