Saying Goodbye

It was always a weird feeling I got, down in the pit of my stomach, when we would walk through the automatic sliding doors and that first smell of hospital antiseptic hit the nose. Most times I would have to stifle a gag reflex, hidden behind my hand so my step mom wouldn’t see. I would push Katie, my younger half-sister in her stroller down the hall to the elevator. This was how the weekend would start.

Dad was in a room on the 4th floor – back then it was for cancer and mental patients. Offhandedly I always wondered why they would group two way separate types of ailments on the same floor, and came to conclusion because no one wanted to visit either kind of patient. I would get the chance to see Dad for a short while, and then be told to go play in the waiting room until I was sent for. I did a lot of reading back then, heck I had time for nothing else it seemed.

One Saturday, I remember it was in February, we did the normal trip to visit Dad. We walked into his room and he was asleep. My step mom tried to wake him up a couple times, just as a nurse came into the room. Immediately I was told to go to the waiting room. My sister had stayed at home with my step mom’s mother, and I had no book, so I spent what seemed a very long time waiting. Finally, the nurse came in and said I was wanted back in the room. I slowly walked down the hall, wondering what was going on. Things felt different. People were being different.

As I entered the room, my step mom looked up from Dad’s bedside, and I could tell she had been crying. She handed me her calling card, and told me to go call my grandparents (who lived about 2 hours or so from the hospital), and then also gave me some money and told me to wait in the cafeteria until they arrived. Dutifully I did as was asked, and spent the time in the cafeteria. I knew something was wrong, but no one would tell me.

When my grandparents arrived, we went back to the room and that is when we were told. Dad had not awakened that morning, and the doctors said he was in a coma. There was no chance of him reviving out of it, and they could not begin to guess how long he may live. ‘How could this be?’ I was asking myself. Dad was only in here for a blood clot on his knee. ‘What kind of hospital was this?’

Just over a year before, Dad had been in a major operation for a brain tumor. Doctors had estimated the cancer growth to be the size of a grapefruit in his front left temple area. After several hours of surgery, the diagnosis was they had removed what they felt was most of it, but tendrils of cancer were in too deep into healthy brain areas to remove completely. They said he would be lucky to live 6 months, and his speech and mannerisms would be affected. At first, the signs never showed up. Eventually there were some speech issues, and within 6 months, he was paralyzed right side arm & leg. From that point on it was Chemo & radiation treatments that literally would leave him green colored and wiped out. Handful of pills morning and night, 24 hour care needed (which we did in shifts).

Back to that day. Late in the afternoon I was given some time alone with Dad. As a kid, I knew nothing else to do but say I am sorry for all the wrong things I knowingly did and wasn’t caught at; to apologize for anyway I would have let him down; to beg him to just wake up and get better. And lastly that I loved him – something he and I never much said to each other over the years.

My grandparents took me briefly out to dinner – I can’t even remember where. I know between them and my step mom, there were phone calls made that they were trying to keep from my attention. I really didn’t care at that point. I know one call was to my mom, to let her know what was going on and that it didn’t look good. Preparing to get flights for my sister and brother from Phoenix. Everything is mostly gray to my memory right now of how most of the evening went.

I know it was late, past 11:00pm when I started keeping track of the time between breaths. About every 10-15 seconds, there would be a longer gap of time between intakes, until finally he didn’t breathe in again. I remember sitting there, and the tears falling down my face thinking ‘I am so glad he didn’t go hard.’ I don’t think I could have taken it if with that last breath had he gone into seizures, or whatnot.

The few weeks after that are blank. I know there was a funeral, where many of the people Dad had known were there, and talking to me, but I couldn’t tell you more than maybe five of them. Most of them I had never known, or didn’t care to know. My siblings were flown in of course, but I don’t remember spending time with them offhand. It took several weeks before the VA finally got his tombstone in place. Then I was down there at least once a week. The following year I left Frankfort, and have only been back a handful of times. I hope to be back soon to visit again.