pavlovsdog

He hated the thought that people were missing out on things because of him. He was ready, and it was time. I like to think it was quick. I like to think it was simple, precise, and graceful, more graceful than anything he did in his life. He liked simplicity. He liked precision. He liked keeping to himself, and not rocking the boat. I think he managed to do it. He was always very methodical about things. He would get sick, he would vomit, and then he was better. He did it numerous times. Sadly his last years of sickness wasnt so easy to get over. His final day was like that. He expelled life like he would his stomach. I think he's better off now. I just hope he wasn't scared. I hope he had piece of mind.
I wasn't there when my father died. I was working. I think he would have rather had me keep working anyway. So I don't know if it was any of those aforementioned things. It was sudden, that is true. Well as sudden as anything you've been expecting for a year and a half can be anyway. My dad had been on a steady decline for almost two years now. We had to put him in a nursing home after he suffered a fall in August 2007. My mom wasn't able to take care of him. At first there was hope he'd pull through, that he'd be the same jovial fellow he was before. As the months passed by it grew more obvious that he wasn't making progress. We all came to the realization that he'd never leave that place alive. It was just a matter of when. Wednesday they told us to bring Hospice in to help his quality of life in those final months. Thursday, before they even had a chance to begin helping him, he expired. His final meal as it would turn out was ice cream his favorite. Because of his diabetes he hadnt had that for a long time. Im happy when I think of it.
You could tell he didn't like it at the nursing home. He would try to put on a personable mask for you. Try to make you think he was okay there, but underneath the outward face, somewhere behind those big kind brown eyes you could see the pain, and depression. He was sinking into a sea of immobility and dementia. He could barely hold a conversation towards the end. You'd ask him a question and maybe after a few labored minutes you might get a semi-lucid answer. Most of the time however youd either get a half complete sentence, or lingering silence. Seeing him confined to either his wheelchair or bed foe the last months was the hardest part. His muscles contracted and became as stiff as wood. He couldn't move anything. They had to get a lift to move him from his bed to his wheelchair. It devastated me every time he asked for help to get him to the bathroom, knowing there was no way I could do it, having to tell him that he had to go in his undergarment. It must have been so hard for someone who had been so independent for a long time.
I guess that's why seeing him there in the bed, relaxed and motionless, was easier that I thought it would be. He was the most relaxed I've seen him in a long time. He looked good, not great, but better than he had. He looked very similar to the way he would sleep, relaxed, peaceful, and with his mouth partially opened. Strangely it was comforting. I always thought that would be the hardest thing to take. I remember as a kid watching him sleep, and thinking about the day when I'd see there before me but without the snoring, without the wisp of air in and out, without the warmth, without life. Actually seeing him there in that state while surreal strangely wasn't that difficult to take.
My dad was the first one I ran to when I discovered my own mortality. I remember it well. I was watching the 1984 summer Olympics, I must have been about ten. I think I was watching the high dive, when all of a sudden that overwhelming sensation washed over me; someday I was not going to be here, someday I was going to die. I had what I realize now was an anxiety attack. I couldn't breathe, and I was terrified. I ran screaming outside to my Dad who was working on the yard. I kept saying, "I'm going to die. I'm going to die." He finally calmed me down and said that it wasn't going to happen for a very long time. He told me to focus on the right now, and assured me that people in my family live a very long life. Well not long enough. My dad never made it to the advanced age of my grandparents, but 72 years is nothing to be sad about. It was a long life filled with many stories, jokes, and adventures.
Secretly I actually had wished for a while that this day would come. I know it sounds harsh, but I couldn't stand seeing him like that. As much as I loved him, every wish, thought, prayer I had was about how I wish his pain would end. When they actually came true, painful as it was, it was more comforting than anything.
The visitation is tonight, the service is tomorrow. Here is the obituary. I know someday down the road it will hit me. A great wave of anxiety, fear and sorrow, may wash over me like that wave of 1984, and I will have to face it alone this time, but for now I'm okay.