I don't want to forget

I want to write this so that I will remember every detail about my Dad's last day and his funeral.

As I said in an earlier blog, Donny got to the Hospice House on Fri., 2/22/08, about 3 AM. I had been asleep since 10:30 the night before in Dad's room on the chair that pulls out into a bed. I got up when Donny got there and we drank coffee, I updated my blog, and just kind of hung out for a while there at the Hospice House. We prayed, Donny played music in the chapel and sang for me while we cried. He told me that some people feel they have a special number, and his is 222 (today's date). He felt like Dad would go today.

I arranged for Alison (my daughter) to come and sit with Dad at 10:15 a.m. so that Donny and I could go to the funeral home and florist and make the final arrangements. Chuck would take Mom to dialysis and relieve Alison at 12:30. Donny and I did our errands and went to eat a sandwich about 2. We left the restaurant around 3 - he went back to Hospice and I went to pick Mom up from dialysis and take her home. I took her a hot dog from where we ate lunch, which she ate on the way home, and she just planned to rest after she got home. As soon as I left her house, in fact I had just stepped out onto the back porch, my cell phone rang and it was Donny saying that Dad was getting much worse and I needed to get back to Hospice quick. So I called Alison to get her to go with me. She was at work, I stopped and picked her up. Todd came up right after we got there, then Ed came up. He was torn up when he saw Dad. I think he was crying for his own Dad, who died up there on Christmas Day. He left about 6 PM, and Alison and Todd left too at the same time, so it was Donny, Chuck and me there with Dad. We prayed and sang and played gospel music on the CD, all the while Dad was getting worse. I need to say at this time that I felt that Dad's spirit had already left. It seemed like it was not really Dad laying there breathing that rattly breath and with his eyes rolled back in his head. His feet and hands had started to get cool. The nurses were saying it would probably not be long now. We were on pins and needles and finally at about 7:15, my brothers said it seemed like he was getting even worse. I ran to the Nurse's Station and asked the nurse that had just come on duty, Heather, to come and check my Dad. She came right away and tried to get a pulse on his wrist and couldn't get one. Then she felt his carotid artery and took his pulse there and also took his temperature in his ear. She said his pulse was 120 and his temp was 102. Did we want to talk there or out in the hall? We said let's go out in the hall. She told us she didn't think it would be much longer because his heart couldn't take much more of that. Donny asked if she thought he was in pain. She said that she could probably stand him on his head at this point and he wouldn't know it - he doesn't know he's in the world. But she would give him pain med if it would make us feel better. At this point, she peeked around the corner of the door and we all walked back in the room. He had stopped breathing. We all stood stone still. He took a breath, then stopped for a couple of seconds, took another breath, and stopped completely. He was gone. I cannot say how horrible it was to go through this, but I would do it all in a minute for my Dad. I could not bear the thought of his dying by himself, and I was so glad my brothers and I were there for him.

Of course, we all three cried and told him goodbye and then gathered up our belongings and went to tell Mom that he had passed. She knew as soon as we walked through the door together. I said, "Mom, he's gone." And we all cried together.

The next few days are a blur. Most of the arrangements had been made, thankfully. I had even written the obituary, leaving out the date and place of death. Family came in over the weekend - my brother Donny's family, then Chuck's kids from out of town, then Pam and Timmy on Monday. The visitation was at the Leonard Johnson Funeral Home in Marmet on Monday evening. We all went together. Dad looked so good. He didn't look sick like he had been at the Hospice House and hospital. It was great to see so many long-lost cousins and family members. The casket and flowers were just beautiful. There were so many flowers, I think about 35 people had sent them. The funeral service was on Tuesday at 2 PM. Donny had left all the details of the service up to me. It was good to be busy with getting everything organized - the music, the tone of the message, etc. The minister for my church did the service, it was absolutely perfect. The songs were: Wind Beneath My Wings at the beginning, then a song called "From His Window" about a Dad with Alzheimer's in a nursing home, then Alison sang "Let It Be Me" (Dad sang this for her and Adam at their wedding), accompanied by Ron Sowell on guitar, then "I Believe", a song Donny wrote performed by Diamond Reo, and finally as the visitors went by the casket one last time "Go Rest High on that Mountain" by Vince Gill. We went to the cemetery for the burial rites, then Chuck's church had a dinner for us in their activity room. A bunch of us went to Mom's after we got back and it was so good just to be together, remembering Dad and his life.