Three Years
Jul. 26th, 2011 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jadedmusingsThis was both easy and difficult to write. The words flowed, but I cried a little during it and probably will cry again later tonight. Skip over this if you don't want to read about the end of someone's life and the grief associated with losing a parent.
On May 14, 2008, my father entered hospice care after spending several weeks in three different hospitals without any sort of improvement. He did fairly well in hospice, so well that we thought he'd be around all the way until Christmas. Still, in July he finished getting many of his financial affairs in order and signed his will.
Less than a week after that, two of his best friends went out of town and I arranged for a day off from sitting with him to go to the movies with my ex while my mother watched the kiddo. I visited Dad the day before, talked to him and made sure he was fine that I'd be out of town. He was a little lethargic that day, but he said it was fine and he'd see me later. The hospice nurses had all said his vitals were good and his sitters said he was in good spirits. I hugged him and I remember once more reflecting on how frail he seemed. He was so thin by that point that I could feel his shoulder bones poking me when I put my hand on his shoulder. He hadn't had a real meal in months, all his nutrition coming by his feeding tube by that point, and even that would leave him feeling nauseous and sick.
It was my first time away from Dad in weeks, the first time apart from a week he spent in a nursing home, I didn't sit with him. I had a good time in spite of the company (my ex and I had already decided to end things before Dad was diagnosed with cancer, but couldn't officially separate until things settled with him), and after driving the hour-long trip back to my hometown to collect the kiddo from Mom's, I went home. Not five minutes after I walked in the door, I got a phone call from the night sitter telling me Dad wasn't responding and she called paramedics. I told her to call the 24-hour hospice number and jumped in my truck.
I didn't think he was gone. He'd had an incident before when he wasn't responsive due to his sleep meds being a little too strong. I got there to see an ambulance in the yard and when I walked in, I asked the paramedics if he was sleeping too deep again.
That was when I saw the heart monitor out and the flat line. That was when she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry...he's passed."
I broke down for several minutes and then had to call my mother, Dad's friends, and...I called LJ to leave a message for someone to tell Sam to call me without saying what happened (though I think a few friends on IRC had guessed since I'd left in such a hurry).
After the wait for the funeral home and making plans to meet to discuss arrangements the next morning, I began learning how it happened. Dad had been a little out of it during the day, lethargic, but he was reponsive and able to talk. When it was bed time, he got up from the recliner and walked the two feet to his hospital bed, and laid down. He got his night meds and said good night. Ten minutes later, the sitter said she noticed something was wrong. He was just...gone. Peaceful.
Just like he said he wanted to go.
Remember when I mentioned weeks before we'd had an incident where he wasn't responding? Well, hospice came by that day and I had to run into town to get another round of prescriptions. I got a phone call saying he was awake and when I got back, Dad just threw his arms around me and said he'd been scared. Then he made me promise that if he fell asleep like that again, to let him go. He'd been on a ventilator a year before after nearly dying after surgery on his neck (in fact, his heart stopped twice and he had something of a near death experience, which is why he wasn't afraid to die, just afraid to leave everyone behind) and he never wanted to experience that again.
He also sat with me and told me that he wanted to go in his sleep. He just wanted to lie down and never wake up. And he was so at peace with what was happening that he was able to do that on the night of July 26, 2008, two months shy of his sixtieth birthday.
So much happened after that. I got away from the ex finally with the kiddo, but there was still the hassle of inheritance and figuring out how life was going to be without my father around. And then the ex moved away and the kiddo started Kindergarten and I had to struggle with putting him in private school. Plus I was driving once a month to visit Sam and our relationship was growing. Last year I was trying to find a place to move to here, and I did at the last minute. This is the first year I've had a chance to really sit and reflect on Dad's passing, and along with all those emotions is the sense of feeling overwhelmed by it all. I never really allowed myself to think about that night and what came after, to really come to terms with today's date.
Then again, maybe it's taken me three years to really feel I was able to write this.
My father won't get to see my son grow up. He'll never get to meet Sam and tease him about having served in the Navy (Dad was an ex-Marine), and he'd never get to see me happy with someone else, someone I think he would have approved of in the long run.
But today I'm not feeling very happy. Today I just want to grieve a little because in spite of all our differences, he was still my father and I still loved him.
On May 14, 2008, my father entered hospice care after spending several weeks in three different hospitals without any sort of improvement. He did fairly well in hospice, so well that we thought he'd be around all the way until Christmas. Still, in July he finished getting many of his financial affairs in order and signed his will.
Less than a week after that, two of his best friends went out of town and I arranged for a day off from sitting with him to go to the movies with my ex while my mother watched the kiddo. I visited Dad the day before, talked to him and made sure he was fine that I'd be out of town. He was a little lethargic that day, but he said it was fine and he'd see me later. The hospice nurses had all said his vitals were good and his sitters said he was in good spirits. I hugged him and I remember once more reflecting on how frail he seemed. He was so thin by that point that I could feel his shoulder bones poking me when I put my hand on his shoulder. He hadn't had a real meal in months, all his nutrition coming by his feeding tube by that point, and even that would leave him feeling nauseous and sick.
It was my first time away from Dad in weeks, the first time apart from a week he spent in a nursing home, I didn't sit with him. I had a good time in spite of the company (my ex and I had already decided to end things before Dad was diagnosed with cancer, but couldn't officially separate until things settled with him), and after driving the hour-long trip back to my hometown to collect the kiddo from Mom's, I went home. Not five minutes after I walked in the door, I got a phone call from the night sitter telling me Dad wasn't responding and she called paramedics. I told her to call the 24-hour hospice number and jumped in my truck.
I didn't think he was gone. He'd had an incident before when he wasn't responsive due to his sleep meds being a little too strong. I got there to see an ambulance in the yard and when I walked in, I asked the paramedics if he was sleeping too deep again.
That was when I saw the heart monitor out and the flat line. That was when she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry...he's passed."
I broke down for several minutes and then had to call my mother, Dad's friends, and...I called LJ to leave a message for someone to tell Sam to call me without saying what happened (though I think a few friends on IRC had guessed since I'd left in such a hurry).
After the wait for the funeral home and making plans to meet to discuss arrangements the next morning, I began learning how it happened. Dad had been a little out of it during the day, lethargic, but he was reponsive and able to talk. When it was bed time, he got up from the recliner and walked the two feet to his hospital bed, and laid down. He got his night meds and said good night. Ten minutes later, the sitter said she noticed something was wrong. He was just...gone. Peaceful.
Just like he said he wanted to go.
Remember when I mentioned weeks before we'd had an incident where he wasn't responding? Well, hospice came by that day and I had to run into town to get another round of prescriptions. I got a phone call saying he was awake and when I got back, Dad just threw his arms around me and said he'd been scared. Then he made me promise that if he fell asleep like that again, to let him go. He'd been on a ventilator a year before after nearly dying after surgery on his neck (in fact, his heart stopped twice and he had something of a near death experience, which is why he wasn't afraid to die, just afraid to leave everyone behind) and he never wanted to experience that again.
He also sat with me and told me that he wanted to go in his sleep. He just wanted to lie down and never wake up. And he was so at peace with what was happening that he was able to do that on the night of July 26, 2008, two months shy of his sixtieth birthday.
So much happened after that. I got away from the ex finally with the kiddo, but there was still the hassle of inheritance and figuring out how life was going to be without my father around. And then the ex moved away and the kiddo started Kindergarten and I had to struggle with putting him in private school. Plus I was driving once a month to visit Sam and our relationship was growing. Last year I was trying to find a place to move to here, and I did at the last minute. This is the first year I've had a chance to really sit and reflect on Dad's passing, and along with all those emotions is the sense of feeling overwhelmed by it all. I never really allowed myself to think about that night and what came after, to really come to terms with today's date.
Then again, maybe it's taken me three years to really feel I was able to write this.
My father won't get to see my son grow up. He'll never get to meet Sam and tease him about having served in the Navy (Dad was an ex-Marine), and he'd never get to see me happy with someone else, someone I think he would have approved of in the long run.
But today I'm not feeling very happy. Today I just want to grieve a little because in spite of all our differences, he was still my father and I still loved him.
