just a warning to you all: this one is going to get wordy, it's going
to get sad, and it's going to get really hard to read... this is not a
happy cheery post...and it's about death and dying....
this morning i woke up to those
kind of body wracking, almost silent sobs... that i hadn't had in quite
awhile... i've actually been doing pretty good with the whole
crying/sadness thing for the most part. thankfully, my sammy j got right
up from his spot on the bed and was right there with big head butts and
mews and telling me he loved me which is exactly the reason i decided
to get another cat. more love! otis wasn't far behind, but he had been
in another room. in any case, it made me realize and want to write a
post about dad that i've avoided for a long time. to be honest, i've
only shared what life was really like to two, maybe three people... not
including the therapist i've been talking to.
i'm not
even sure who all reads this blog anymore... so i share it to those who
wish to read it and otherwise, it is for me... to remember the silly,
the fun, the sad and just life. the sad fact is, i know a lot of people
who belong to the "dead parent club". it's a shitty club, but it sadly
has many members. i don't think we ever think we'll become members... i
sure didn't... but here i am.
the night my dad died, it was a very early on a friday. thursday had barely been gone. it happened at 12:43am on may 18th. I say 12:43
without really knowing if that is the true time, but I looked at the
clock and it was right around there. My dad was always very precise with
his time and when asked he'd respond with the actual number and not
just a rounded "about 12:30". When asked "Hey dad, how long do I
microwave this for?" He'd say " ohhh, I'd say 37 seconds". Never 40 or
35 or a polished number such as that.
the night my dad died, he was so agitated and had been deteriorating so quickly
that week and throughout his entire ordeal. I still didn't think it
would happen so fast. It was and still is quite a shock. And while it
wasn't peaceful, it very much was at the same time. He had been up and
down all night long in the bed. Our night nurse, our sent from God night
nurse Nena, was the most wonderful woman and had been helping him to
sit up in bed with his legs over the side all night. He was too weak to
lift himself or his legs anymore without help and we (my brother, mom,
aunt - his baby sister) were all there to help.
usually he got very
tired and started to go to sleep for the evening around 11ish and that is
when we'd typically say goodnight. this is when he was getting his next round of pain killers... morphine, methadone, and a host of others. he was taking so many medicines that we literally kept check lists and sheets with times, dosages, amounts. and those medicines and narcotics were such high doses... they'd make him super sleepy.
But last night was different and he
was so awake and not sleepy - I think he must have known that the end
was close and he was fighting til the end. He didn't want to leave us
anymore than we wanted him to go. And so I think that is why he was so
up and down. He wanted to sit at first in his 'cancer' chair as we called it - the comfy leather recliner we bought him so he could maybe find a place somewhat comfortable to sit for awhile. and so we got him in his chair. and i happened to take some pictures with my ipad. i don't know why that night i did, but the camera was right there and it was so sweet watching my dad kiss my mom and see the love.
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| Nena and my brother preparing to help dad out of bed and to the chair. he had lost almost all of his hair by this point b/c he had tried one more hail mail as the doc called it, but that too had failed. |
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| nena and my brother stabilized and helped dad to the chair. he was just so weak and we were so worried he might fall and break something. |
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| this wasn't for the camera... i don't even think they knew i was taking pics with my ipad at this point. or maybe they did, i don't know. |
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| clearly, this was a pose for the camera! it was hard for dad to smile with his oxygen tubes and whatnot. his face was so shrunken and his old body was just bones. and he looks like he was 100 years old here, and he was 60. just 60. |
he was up and down about every 15 minutes that night... which was super unusual... he wanted to sit up, so we sat with him on the edge of the bed. he needed help getting his legs over the edge and support for his back. and then he'd need help lifting his legs back in to bed when he became too tired to sit any longer. mostly his voice was too weak to talk with any sort of voice and a lot of times it was too hard to hear him or understand what he was trying to say. but we tried. we tried so hard. sometimes he was quite clear.... at one point one of us thought to play some music which we usually hadn't done while dad had been at home... andrew found his play lists of music on his computer and we played that. andrew was surprised to find that dad liked abigail washburn and several other folks they both liked. i'd never even heard of abigail washburn, but my brother had. and they had a sort of chat about that... i only knew that dad had a penchant for female country singers... and as that list played on, oh my goodness, it was a lot of death and dying and depressing music and i just couldn't take it. it was actually pretty apropo for the moment, actually.
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| dad and nena on the edge of the bed. by the end, he was so uncomfortable. b/c in hospice you don't do more exams or tests, you have no idea where all the cancer has invaded or how big the tumors are. but dad's kidney mass was huge the last time it had been measured and as he got skinnier and the tumor got bigger, you could see the mass in his back. and it became so uncomfortable to lie down. or sit. or stand. or do much of one thing for too long. |
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Andrew sat and supported dad in the same way that nena was doing in the picture above a couple of times. and once, nena asked if i wanted to sit there with dad... and i was sitting in this chair that's just out of the picture to the right... watching and not able to explain but i didn't. i didn't want to go and support my dad. i was stuck in that chair, frozen. i just wanted to spectate. to be honest, i think i was scared and needed nena, the professional, to help dad. god, i wish i could take that back and just go put my arm around my dad. why?! why?! why couldn't i!? i have no idea what was stopping me but something was... and i can't explain it.
mom was in and out of the room. she was awfully tired, but she wasn't quite ready for bed. at one point she did go up to try and rest... she was exhausted. but she'd come back down and i don't know her thought process... but she was doing dishes and keeping busy. she could hear his rattle... his death rattle as they call it. i didn't know it was the death rattle meaning death was imminent. he'd had congestion in his throat and been spitting yuckiness in to cups for days. i suppose in hindsight, it was worse, and louder that particular night. but until then, i'd never heard an actually death rattle. just was told there was one....
andrew usually went home about the time we all went to bed. he was working and working a hard schedule. when you are a sound engineer in the small theater world that it is and especially in houston, when you have a commitment, you have to do it. they are counting on you. you control the sound for the entire play/musical. but he stayed. he saw and nena pleaded for him to stay as it was tiring the amount of times dad wanted up and down. and so he stayed. we all did. except for ellen.
ellen went upstairs after saying goodnight and i don't know at what point that was, but she went to bed.
and then, at one point, daddy said he wanted up. not just sit up, get up. He was too weak to
say many words, but he mouthed a lot and was able to sometimes say a few
words loud enough to be heard. He told us all many many times during
the days that he loved us. But, he was ready to get up. He liked to
stand sometimes.
And so, Nena asked me to get his walker to help support
him and I did. Before any of us had a chance to react, he was walking
with that walker, by himself with more energy and strength than I'd seen
in days, perhaps a week or two.
None of us knew where we was going but
he was heading to the french doors leading out to the backyard pond just
beyond his bed. He often would look out those windows. the blinds were
down and i pushed the button to raise them thinking maybe he just wanted
to look out. nena said she sometimes opened those blinds several times a night. dad liked to be able to look out and see if it was day or night.
by the time nena had caught up to him... it took her just a second or two... we were all just in shock that he had been able to move like that! she heard him gasp
and he fell in to her arms. her voice and tone changed and she told me
to get a chair which was next to me. i did and he collapsed in to it. nena was barking orders at all of us.... telling us to keep him back in bed, back in bed! now now now!!!! i'd never heard that tone and i was terrified, but i listened to her. and i remember saying, let's just give him a moment to rest here in the chair, he must be exhausted! and she told me no... bed right now. and she told my brother to help her carry the chair closer to the bed.
my
brother and nena carried him somehow in that chair back to the side of
the bed where they were somehow able to pick him up and lift him in to
bed as he was losing his battle and he was turning an awful shade of
bluish grey. she told us to talk to him and tell him we loved him and we
all complied. mom, me, andrew were all telling him as fast and as much as we could how much we loved him over and over. nena and andrew managed to lift him out of that chair and tuck him back in bed.
he was becoming more and more gray blue and nena went to grab the blood pressure moniter and in all the chaos i was realizing that he was gone, but couldn't fathom this and thus didn't want to believe... i just kept thinking no no no this is not the end, this can't be the end.... and no i'm not ready and with the i love yous, i hear my mom wailing "pllllllllease plllllllllllease oh god, please don't leave me. jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefffffffffffff don't leave me!!!!!!!!!" and i'll never forget those words, that sound that utter distress and panic and love all rolled in to her voice. and i knew mom had no idea she'd done that. she hadn't wanted to... she knew dad couldn't stay and she didn't want to make it harder for him... i didn't know if i should say anything or not. but i did - eventually - i'm not even sure when i told her. and she had had no idea that she'd said that. i don't know if i should have told her, but to be honest, i couldn't hold it inside myself. honestly it was just so beautiful and haunting and just another testament to the kind of love she and dad had.
and when nena went to take his blood
pressure, all i could see was "ee", error. and i knew. i knew. and she
tried a few times, but she knew too. and he had no pulse and no
heartbeat. we saw a few last breaths, but that was probably just air leaving his body. and just like that we all knew. and just like that, he was gone.
i stood there in shock, tears streaming. my brother started balling and fell to the ground. my mom yelled for ellen, but nena went to get her, i think. ellen came in and was completely stoic. she held together all of us. as did nena. nena just took charge and handled everything. she was amazing.
i'm so thankful nena told us what to do, in that moment we
were all shocked and a bit frozen and unsure of what to do and it all
just happened way too fast. and we think maybe he
was trying to outrun the impending, un-out-runnable. he was still
fighting. but we sent him with love and i know he knew that all along. later, nena told us she was pretty sure he'd thrown a bloodclot which is why he went so fast and the gasp that she had heard and felt. she also told us she'd been so adamant about getting him in bed quickly b/c you cannot move a body. it's against the law. even in situations such as this, it is against the law. you must leave the person right where they were when they passed. and she wanted for him to be comfortable in bed and to make it better and maybe less traumatic for us. there was no way she wanted to leave him on the floor.
all night long, he was doing face counts and checking the room all night long for all of us. he'd
whisper 'where's mom?", where's katie? where's andrew? and he'd look in
to each of our eyes. some people slip quietly in to the night and want
to do so alone or they wait til someone leaves the room to go.... but
daddy clearly wanted us all there and we were. every step of the way.
[this part i wrote just after he passed] it's hard to imagine going back to real life again. this has been real
life for the last 6 months. and really for the last almost 6 weeks, i've
been in houston to help... and now... now he isn't here to give
medicine to or take a nap on the couch next to or read in the room or
see him or sort of talk to him - he was so in and out and had trouble
talking in the last few weeks. conversations beyond "are you ok? cold?
thirsty? hungry? comfortable? i love you etc" were fewer, but they were
still there. and now, now... he is gone. and truly, i couldn't have
picked a better dad and i know how lucky i am to have had him. and how blessed i am to have been there right at the very end.
and i know memories are supposed to fade, and maybe they will... but i don't know that this one ever will. there are times when the whole night replays in my head and i see it as clearly as the night it happened. at 12:43am.
