Monday, February 25, 2008

An entry about Dad


This entry is copied from a series of other things written by me about my father. It is important for me personally to keep these memories however difficult, alive somewhere. They might help someone else know they are not alone and it is theraputic to me in some odd way.


Written March 2007

This is Dad with the kids in August of 2004. We didn't know that this would be our last vacation together, that this would be the last time for so many things I cannot say. He died March 12 of 2005. At the time this photo was taken he was sick, but didn't know it.

When he died I was there. I had been there through the night. I sat by him and wandered in and out of waking and sleeping with my hand holding his and a tibetan rosary wrapping us together. In the morning a doctor came by with a load of interns all looking up at me from eyes with heads partially bent. They knew that he was dying. They were there to see what death looked like as it came closer. They asked me if he needed more pain meds, because they knew if they upped the dosage he would go faster. He was comfortable and I couldn't bear to hasten my father's death. I said no. I called my sister. I told her to get there. I knew he was going to leave soon. He waited for my Aunt to get there. They turned off the monitoring devices so we wouldn't focus on the breathing in and breathing out of lines on a graph. I was holding his hands and I could see the gradual leaving of his spirit. His body changed ever so slightly and then slightly again. I had my hand on his heart. I could feel it beating. I had my other hand holding his. The awful nurse said, "I'll call the doctor", and thankfully left and I said "I can still feel his heartbeating" and then it stopped and he didn't breathe anymore and he was gone. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone I cannot evoke the goneness. He was gone and he is gone and I will never ever have a heart that is whole again.

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I am adding these to this entry many months later. This is an entry from my other blog (trying to consolidate things and not lose them). As sad as things have been or are at times, these things remembered, oddly sometimes keep us whole. I wrote this one last year, which was 2 yrs after his death.