*Please consider recommending The Incompatibility of Being Alive if you like my work. Also consider becoming a paid subscriber for only $30/year ($2.50/month). Spread the word!
**I posted a little note on my other stack, Sincere American Writing, and added a link there to a piece on my Dad from six weeks back. Check it out if interested. CLICK THIS LINK HERE.
###
I had a decent yet wakeful sleep last night. I kept remembering that Dad is dead, and seeing his face in my mind’s eye, his mouth wide open, eyes blank, skin pale blue getting quickly colder as the minutes went by after he passed. He passed yesterday, Friday, June 2nd at precisely 4PM. I was downstairs writing my last post—I’d been in the room until maybe 25 minutes before—and Mom called my name and I came in and she said he was gone.
We walked down the hall and there was Dad. For the first time his chest did not rise. He looked dead as dead can be. Mom and I cried, holding his hands. I placed my hand on his head. He was so cold, his cheeks sunken and blue with no more blood. It was totally expected and yet absolutely surreal and shocking. It felt so goddamn real. There was my father, now just a corpse; his body looked and felt like a rubber mannequin; it was clear his soul had fled. There was no more Dad here anymore; there was only the flesh-shell of a former person. It felt like I was high on Mushrooms or acid. It had a trippy, blurry feel to it.
Mom said she’d been sitting in her usual big white cushioned chair, six feet from Dad, looking down at her pad of paper and noting when she’d given him his last dose of Morphine, and, randomly, she casually looked up and Dad’s chest was unmoving. She watched for a minute, to be sure, and then got up and walked through the kitchen and onto the deck and called my name below.
Yesterday was a long day. Very emotional. After crying and gathering ourselves, we sat in the room for a good lone while. Mom had a beer. The dogs came in. They seemed confused. Romey—Mom’s German Shepard/Husky mix—has been Dad’s guard dog for the past two years of his cancer journey; she was licking the hardwood floor and sniffing Dad on the bed. She knew something was wrong. Animals always do.
Around 4:30 Mom had called our hospice nurse/case manager and left a voicemail. She followed that with a text. No response. Time ticked away. Mom called and texted another hospice nurse. Nada. By now it was after office hours, post-5PM. Finally, around 6PM, I called the hospice after-hours number and got a nurse on the line. I told her what was going on and she took down some information and said they’d send a nurse asap.
Around 7PM a nurse finally came. Mom and I’d cried some more, holding Dad’s hands and talking about his final days. Mom heated up the chicken and mashed potatoes her good friend had dropped off for us days ago. We ate in silence. The nurse was very thoughtful and kind. She was an older woman in her sixties, very experienced and a former hospital RN before being a hospice nurse. She declared the official death as 7:15PM. She gave us the lowdown on how everything would work. Mom was crying on and off and was fairly agitated; she talked the nurse’s ear off. Selfishly, part of me kept thinking, Mom, leave the poor woman alone; she deals with this stuff all the time; this isn’t grief counseling! But I of course kept my mouth shut. Let Mom talk. She needed it. And the nurse was kind, a good listener, and very compassionate; she seemed to know exactly what to say.
Sometime around 7:45PM or so the nurse finally called the Funeral Home we’d chosen; Mom had been wise enough and smart enough to get all the documents filled out and signed weeks ago in anticipation. The nurse was on the phone with them for probably 20, 25 minutes. She told them the stairs were “tricky” and to bring two men. We were also approaching darkness which would add to the trickiness. Mom said she didn’t want to be there when they came for the body. As for myself: I hadn’t decided yet. Mom had volunteered me for strong help if they needed assistance getting the body down. I didn’t mind. Wasn’t this the ultimate loving act?