July 11^th was the day he called.  I remember him saying “they found something.”  All of those symptoms.  In the back of my mind I had anticipated that sentence so many times.  Yet, I had convinced myself that it would be nothing and in one short week we would be off to Spain as we had planned.  3 months is not a long time.  What can you do in three months really?  We should have taken that trip to Spain.  Should have turned down the radiation and chemo option and just spent the time together.  Perhaps then 3 months could have been more.  He didn’t want us to visit while he was doing the chemo.  So I only saw him two times after July 11^th. 

When Zoey was born, my dad called every day to check in.  As she got older, the calls became less frequent, but he still called at least three times a week.  After the diagnosis, things changed.  I called every day, sometimes twice.  I feel bad now that it seemed like such a chore to have the same conversation day after day.  He asked the same questions and I told the same stories day in, day out.  I feel guilty about how much of a pain in the ass I used to think setting up the webcam was so that he could see Zoey.  He never got to see her in person that one last time. 

We found out the chemo and radiation didn’t work on a Thursday.  So, I arrived in Minnesota on the following Thursday, right after my sister left.  It was the second time that my dad wasn’t waiting for me at the airport, perched near the bottom of the escalator, peering through the security glass and waving with a huge smile.  My sister told me to “be prepared.”  When I walked into the tiny apartment and saw him, all I wanted to do was cry.  Clearly, I wasn’t prepared.  His head burned by the radiation, sitting in a chair with a blanket covering his legs like an old man, I hardly recognized him; he had lost so much weight and hadn’t shaved in weeks.  I told him he looked great; he knew I was lying and smiled, telling me I was a terrible liar.  I prodded him to eat two grapes, a nearly impossible feat and then fifteen minutes after I arrived, he went to bed.  He awoke for about 20 minutes and sat with us to chat that day.  That was the last day he walked.  

On Friday, we called hospice to come and drop off a hospital bed to make things easier.  He hated being moved and the bed was so small that his feet hung off the end.  He kept sliding down on the plastic sheets and we would have to prop him back up.  Each time we moved him he shrieked.  Getting him to the bathroom was equally trying.  If he wasn’t dying, the scene would have been comedic- three of us trying to lift him and push his feet one after the other.  I, queen of inappropriate humor, thought of the “how many people does it take…” joke.  But, I soon rejected it because the 45 minute fiasco turned into a complete emotional breakdown.  I called my sister later that night, hysterical, telling her she needed to come as soon as possible.  She was on the plane home from Brazil.  When she hung up, I got a text message.  Illegally texting me from her crackberry while in the air.  At 10:00 that night we called for the morphine and the courier brought it around 1:00 AM.  That was the last day we got him out of bed.

Saturday was worse.  Rita and I said goodbye to him twice that day.  My sister arrived Saturday night, a little tipsy from her flight.  We said goodbye again that night, the three of us.  The vomit from the morphine was awful.  The smell of the room.  I can still smell that room. 

Sunday we said our goodbyes again.  And let him know it was okay to die and that we would all take care of one another.  He was slightly delusional.  Having conversations with us, but talking about things that didn’t really make sense.  He begged us to help him and later accused us of making him sick and trying to kill him.  We looked at pictures of Zoey from the Christmas photo album we got him last year.  I cried most of the day.  His sister called that day and we called my Grandma, not telling her this was the last conversation, but saying that things were “bad.”  The dry heaving started and continued through the night.  Every now and then he would pretend to die.  Then open his eyes and wink at us with that warm smile, half crooked from the paralyzed side of his face.  Still the bizarre sense of humor I had come to expect from my dad.  A few times he gave us the finger; he had to manually bend his right finger into the position with his left hand because he couldn’t do it himself. 

Monday morning we said goodbye again and turned away a visitor bearing a flan.  My dad loved flan.  We didn’t explain that we had stopped offering food and water on Friday.  He had never asked for any either.  The man from hospice came and said that it could be a week or two.  His vitals were strong and people can live a long time without food and water if they aren’t ready to let go.  So later, we allowed two visitors to say goodbye.  Monday night the death rattle began.  I had read the book that the hospice people left about “actively dying,” but I could not have anticipated that sound.  I was the first shift that night.  I sat on the couch in his room listening to that horrible sound.  It sounded like he was drowning, his lungs filling up with fluid;  it kept getting worse.  After about an hour I moved into the bathroom connected to his room and threw up.  We increased the morphine because he was moaning.  Two hours in, I had to go get Rita.  I went to sleep for a few hours.

It was October 11^th, a Tuesday, and when I woke up he was unconscious.  He died that morning at 8:00 am while I was blow-drying my hair.  I was blow drying my hair.  Before waking Rita, my sister and I went in.  He didn’t really look dead. He looked like he was sleeping, but his feet were purple.  The hospice nurse came and crossed his arms, emptied 28 bottles of pills into the toilet and filled out paperwork.  Rita removed his wedding ring. I left for the airport at 9:30. My flight left at 11:30 that morning.  The body was still in the bedroom. 

My dad always wanted to be struck by lightening.  Although we couldn’t arrange that, we tried to make it quick.  Dignified, not really, but we tried.  Everyone has told me how wonderful it was that I could be there to spend time with my dad near the end.  It is both my deepest regret and my greatest consolation that I was there.  Watching him die.