Life has been busy. I will start from where I left off.

That Thursday I got a call from my sister that my dad had gone to the hospital the night before because he was dehydrated. They took some x-rays, hooked him up the IV and then, let him go a couple hours later. The next day, my mother got a call saying they found a lump on his lung and that they wanted to admit him to the hospital. She told my father and he replied that he had to do payroll and then, he could go. After he did payroll, my mom took him to the hospital while I was running around my apartment sobbing and throwing everything together. I thought I had a couple more days to wait to pack to go back home.

When I went to get CSG at his house apartment, I put my glasses on top of the car so that he could wipe away my tears and be more comfortable. Well, you can guess what happened. He drove (amazing… I never let anyone else drive) and I was looking out the backseat when I saw something fall off the car. I turned to CSG and started to ask what was on top of the car when he realized we had left my glasses on top. I started laughing and laughing and he got my glasses. They were fine, but it was quite funny.

CSG and I arrived home, took our stuff into our respective houses and then met my sister at the hospital. My mother was there and told us that the doctors put him in queue for a whole chest scan. They put my father on fluids and pain medication. It was very awkward because he would just jump out of bed when he needed to pee, but he didn’t have underwear on… and then, we’d have to run out and get a nurse. CSG, my sister and I stayed the night and in the morning, CSG and I left my sister to go back home and sleep for a little bit. My mother went to visit him in the hospital in the daytime and we took the night shift. My sister never left the hospital.

They got the chest scan done and found that there were several lumps on his lungs. They wanted to take a brain scan because that is the next spot cancer spreads and if it was there, they wouldn’t do any surgery because the cancer would have spread everywhere. Saturday morning, when they decided to do the head scan, my sister and him woke up and my father had coffee and eggs and they talked about baseball and life in general. Then, he went for the cat scan. My mother called my father’s family (I had only met them maaaybe twice in my whole life) and some of his brothers and sisters came down and saw him. He didn’t wake up to see them, but he made some facial expressions so we knew he could hear us. CSG, my sister and I stayed the night again.

The next day he never woke up. The doctors explained that evening that his brain was loaded with cancer. My mother decided it would be best just to put him on comfort measures. They took him off his IV and just added morphine. Whenever we saw his forehead become wrinkly with pain, they would up the dose of morphine. We started the comfort measures on Saturday night or Sunday night. My mother decided to stay the whole rest of the time he was in the hospital. That night she had a dream that he died on 8/8/2008. All of us didn’t believe it would happen. He would have been going for four days without water or food, just morphine. We waited four days and he was still alive. We left the room at midnight and came back in five minutes and he was still breathing. He was all the way up to 10 on his morphine drip. Generally, people’s systems shut down with 10 drips of morphine. Goes to show how much of a trooper he was. Anyway, we went to sleep after we left on 8/8/08 and at 3:21 we woke up to his morphine drip beeping because it was low- it wasn’t supposed to be low though. We found he had died while we were sleeping on 8/8/08. I think it was his way of showing my mom that he loved her and will always love her.

The last three weeks have been difficult. My mother is all alone in this huge house, my house became infested with fleas, we had to clean the whole houses for guests to sleep, I have gone back to school, I started a new job at my sister’s work and we have all been trying to deal with my father’s death. Sometimes it is very hard, like when my car broke down and I had a question and no one knew the answer. Even though my dad probably wouldn’t have known the answer, I still would have called him just to hear what he had to say. That was very hard. I saved this email that he sent me right before my birthday, right before he started feeling pain.

“Hi Ms. Maebee* . I was just sitting outside watching airplanes (difficult when it is raining outside!) but I had this sudden thought that I needed to let Maebee* know that I love her!! So what are you doing this beautiful day? I hope everything is going all right and you are being the same beautiful Maebee* with everything. When do we see you again? There is only one (1) more week until you are __ years old!! Can you believe that! Well I shall see you at some point. Love Dad”

*my name has been changed, obviously.

I miss him a lot more than I thought I would. I knew that I would be sad and that it would hurt sometimes, but you would be glad he wasn’t in pain anymore. And although we never really had deep discussion, he always made me laugh and when my mother was being annoying or overbearing, I could go out and just do my own thing while he read the paper or watched TV. He never really bugged me about anything (except checking my oil). He would just tell me silly or interesting things and I would listen and laugh or we would talk about the weather.

I miss his laugh the very, very most. The last time he laughed with me was in the hospital. I had gone to check in on him when he was sleeping only to find he was awake. He didn’t seem groggy or anything, he seemed to be very clear headed (ironic because of the massive brain tumors he had) and I told him CSG, my sister and I were down the hall and we didn’t want him to feel like no one was here. I asked if he was in pain and he said a little and I said I would call a nurse. I must have said something else too, but I don’t remember, but I remember he laughed and I also remember how awesome that was because I hadn’t heard him laugh in so long. He had been in so much pain, he rarely even smiled anymore. I would try and make him laugh and it just broke my heart because he just couldn’t.

So, sorry for not updating sooner, but I have been running around and really, quite honestly, I have been dreading this entry for a long while. Here it is.