I remember kissing him on the forehead after they had given him a room on Saturday, I told him I needed to go home and check on the kids. That I would stop by his house afterwards and get him a change of clothes for the next day, when he would be coming home and his toiletries for him to shower and shave in the morning. I picked out the outfit that he would never wear and I still have his overnight toiletry bag intact down to the 23 dollars that were in his wallet secure in my top drawer.
Fast forward to Wednesday -his blood pressure skyrocketed only a little over four days since I started this nightmare with him. I firmly believe that someone overdosed him on meds and his subsequent rapid decline was due to that.
They ran every test they could to look for viruses etc that might cause his pain, and now by Wednesday his organs began to struggle.
When I sought the doc out to discuss my dads blood pressure he decided to move him to ICU due to his condition worsening and my crazed screaming about 'no one watching him"
They wheeled him up to icu where the next 24 hours were a blurr. The doctors telling me to call my brother in from San Diego because he wasn't going to make it. I remember dialing that phone and my brothers burdened conscious being audible over the phone, I did not feel less alone for it. It was my dad and I like our life had played out and it seems would so until the very end.
On Friday afternoon I brought the kids to the icu. My dad was no longer lucid. But I knew it was more than the medications and the 24x7 environment of intensive care. It was my dad teetering somewhere between this world and the next.
I told the kids who were as close to him as they were to each other that grandpa was very sick and needed us. I didn't know if he would be alright but we should visit him and tell him how we feel incase we couldn't do it later. They were 8 and 9 at the time. He had been their caretaker often while I worked since they started school.
The whole day before I brought them up they colored pictures for him and posters that said "I wuv u" while he was back at the hospital building something. I knew his hand gestures as well as my own and he was moving his hands like when he was on a job site giving direction and showing measurements. It worried me that the kids would be freaked out but there was no time to wait, they had to see him I knew it might be the last night.
While they stood there next to their grandfather who had cared for them and always stood for love and strength and stability; he could no longer hear them or see them - he was in his own world now.
When I took the kids out of the room my son paused and held my hand tight, he could sense that the pain was overwhelming me. "Mom, grandpa is building a staircase. I watched him and that is what he was explaining to the angels. He is building a big oak staircase to heaven"
And he was right.
During the night sometime around 3 am they staff came and got me from the waiting room where I had set up my camp. I ran to his bed in the ICU and since he had a DNR I knew there would be no reprieve. I held his arm like a small child that was about to get lost in a crowd. I held on tight and cried "please don't leave me I need you" over and over until my voice was hoarse and the ICU staff was crying along with me.
He gave up the struggle at dawn. I was nearly comatose myself and scarecly remember being taken to the room with the odd name "Details Room" This is where I was told when where and how to pick up my fathers body. It was sureal, and I was so out of it every blink took 5 minutes.
Today I don't mourn for losing him but rejoice for growing to accept that my loss was the beginning of the afterlife he believed in. The one where he would reunite with my mother, his parents and his siblings who had gone before him. It took so many years for me to accept his passing. To stop weeping and start rejoicing with him again.
It does happen, in the midst of the sorrow a seed has been planted for your recovery from grief- that seed is love. When you wake up on one spring day like this one for me, that seed will have taken off and showed its first bloom like a crocus does... it might be through the snow but it is still proof that the spring has arrived and so has the healing.
L
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