Good Riddance October

I’m glad October is over. It was awful. It was so bad that I’m not going to recap my goals because just surviving the month was an achievement.

It began with discovering that my grandpa was in acute kidney failure. He was hospitalized and given dialysis but decided that he did not want to do that and opted to go home and live out the rest of his days. He’s 90 years old, I totally get that and understand that. My grandma, his wife, has Alzheimer’s and he has is her primary caregiver. These are my mom’s parents.

But everything fell apart on Sunday, October 9. I’m going to describe some pretty tough stuff below dealing with an individual’s last days so if such things trouble you I would advise you to move on. I’m doing this mainly for myself.

I knew my dad was slipping downhill but my mom texted me around 8 am on that Sunday morning and told me they had a bad, bad night and she thought she was going to call Hospice and could I call her. So I immediately hopped up and gave her a call. She told me my dad had been up and down all night and at one point he had gotten up without waking her up and he had fallen. When she did wake up she found him on the bathroom floor. She and my brother managed to get him up and back into bed but my dad was weakened significantly.

She told me she was going to call Hospice and that I should go to church but maybe come out afterwards. I thought about it and decided I needed to be out there so I dropped off what I needed to at church and headed out to their house. I found my dad to be somewhat responsive but not very. He was coughing a lot and there was congestion happening. We also decided that even though Dad didn’t want it, we needed a hospital bed.

Time becomes the strangest thing when you are on the death watch. It feels like to takes forever but gallops by in great leaps and bounds. My mom and I maintained a vigilant watch of making sure Dad has what he needed and kept the pain medication going to keep him comfortable and relaxed. I spent Sunday night there, helping through the night. The hospital bed was a blessing as Dad stayed in it through the night and mom and I were able to get some rest.

Monday he was unresponsive. Love and support poured in from calls to food to helping with my kids. I saw my kids for a little bit on Monday, made sure they both knew the end was close for Grandpa but I did not let them see him. I did not want their last memories to be him like this. I wanted them to be the hugs and I love yous and sitting in the chair eating a doughnut and drinking cider (which he had done on Saturday).

Monday evening my mom finally had the courage to give him permission to go. We sat with him for a couple of hours, sharing our memories, crying, laughing, and telling him it was okay to go, that he didn’t have to fight anymore. After a bit, I suggested we leave the room. I knew that sometimes people waited for their loved ones to be gone before letting go and I wanted to give him that chance.

We went out into the other room, my brother went to bed, and my mom and I reminisced some more. We told each other stories about the wonderful man my dad was. The loving, supportive husband and partner he made for my mom. The fantastic present and attentive father he was to me. It was time to give him more meds so we went back in and he was still hanging on.

We gave him his medicine and I said to my mom that his head looked uncomfortable. It was kind of sideways so we moved around pillows and adjusted his head. And we had just adjusted it when he finally let go. At around 12:40 am, on Tuesday, October 11, my dad passed away with my mom and I beside his bed.

There is nothing that can prepare you for this moment. You can think you will feel some relief because their suffering is over, you can think that it will be hard. But it was so much harder than I thought. There are no words for what I felt, still feel, other than agonizing pain.

My dad was my rock, my constant, the one person I knew I could always turn to, and now, he’s gone. My grandpa is still hanging on but soon he will be gone too. I am feeling a lot of anger and resentment. I feel as if I’m losing the good men in my life and I’m being left with nothing. I wanted a man who was my dad. A partner, who put me before himself as I put him before myself. A man who would support me, hold me up, just as I did the same for him. A man who would be loving, positive father. Who respects women as equals but cherishes their partner as something precious. I realize I love like my dad loved, through actions and sacrifice. And I know that I need to be loved the same way in return. I have failed miserably in that and in so many ways I feel as if I have failed him. I miss him so much.