Living through the death of a loved one is probably one of the hardest things you will go through in your entire lifetime. At least that’s how it felt for me all the way through my father’s battle against cancer.
It’s been a really heartbreaking experience. Especially because the year it happened was the year when I wanted to shift my focus more towards my friends and family. I had been wanting to host my father at my home for a while, and it was about to become a reality.
It was also a great year because my sister was going to give birth for the first time, and family bonds were stronger than ever.
It was at the baby shower that we realized he wasn’t quite well.
We were so concerned when we saw him that we rushed him to go to the hospital. It shocked me because I hadn’t noticed how his health had declined when I visited him in the previous months.
After a bit of convincing, he finally decided to go to the hospital to get checked but none of us could’ve anticipated the nightmare that followed.
My father was admitted to a hospital in our hometown, about 30 minutes from where we lived. However, we couldn’t visit him due to covid restrictions, so all we could do was call him and wait. We didn’t have much information about his state but it still seemed stable.
He was then transported to another hospital where things rapidly started going downhill. We got the news of Metastatic Cancer, and that our father’s condition was critical. Complication after complication, day after day, his state was so uncertain that it felt like anything could happen at any time.
Every phone call made us feel like bad news was coming. We never knew if he would make it to the next day, week or month.
And my father was in such bad shape from all the trauma, that he was in a state of delirium for a couple of weeks.
Seeing him in this state for the first time was a shock, and whenever his state degraded was another shock.
I remember crying so much when I was able to first see him at the hospital. He wasn’t very present anymore but he still seemed like himself, with all his little quirks and personality.
He couldn’t really make sense of what was going on. The TV was confusing him and he was hallucinating. He was remembering things as if they had just happened, when they had happened months or years before.
There were still a few beautiful moments, like this one time when I started the radio and he started to snap his fingers to the music.
It was such a wonderful moment because it made me realize he was still there somehow inside this confused body, and that he could still enjoy some things, despite everything he was going through.
After a couple of weeks, we made the decision to take him back to our hometown’s hospital. He couldn’t be healed anymore, and all that was left was to take care of him until he passed. Him being closer to home allowed us to visit him more often, and his family could now visit him too.
I decided that I wanted to have one last night with my father, to allow me to say goodbye. It was a very rough night and he was really high on painkillers and had a lot of difficulty staying awake.
He kept remembering things from his past, but as if he was living those moments for the first time and talking to me as if I was someone else from another time. It was a weird experience, but I recognized all of him throughout those memories.
Weirdly enough, he woke up very energetic the next morning and we had breakfast together. It was such a wonderful moment and then he kicked me out because he wanted to rest, but that bit of clarity was more than enough. It was hard for me to leave knowing it would be the last time I saw him, but I grabbed all my courage, said my last goodbye and left.
A couple of nights later, I woke up to a wonderful dream of my father and family being reunited outside of the care center. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I remember the joy we all felt, my father, my brother, my sister and I, together enjoying the sun.
That same morning, we received a phone call that my father had passed. I somehow feel like my dream was connected to his passing, and it filled me with some kind of inner peace.
I was relieved that his suffering was finally over, but I was still very sad from losing him, never being able to talk to him ever again.
Later that day we went to see him one last time with some extended family and it was very odd. We all felt sad, but kind of happy at the same time and people were telling jokes, trying to alleviate the pain I guess. It was a weird moment, but I’m happy that we went through it as a family.
It did strike me how everything happened so fast. When my father was lucid, we talked and he confessed that he did not understand how fast things were going. In between the few conscious moments that he had and all the complications that happened, it all happened so fast, way too fast for him or me to process.
I also had a lot of regrets, and felt like part of his death was my fault. Mainly because I had urged him to stop working when Covid hit. I was telling myself that maybe someone could’ve told him to go to the hospital earlier if he hadn’t been confined at home. But then again, we never know, and even if it would’ve helped, it might not have saved him anyways.
I did move on, but it was hard to accept. I found a bit of comfort in faith, reading The Bible and learning about various faiths. I felt like I had a connection with God through all of this experience, and it did help me get through it.
At the time of writing this, it’s been a whole year since my father passed, and it seems like everything is back to normal. Our family is now closer together and I can see that we have much more love and respect for each other. I am grateful that his passing brought Good to us, and hope for a better future.
I truly miss him, but may he rest in peace.
Photo by Krivec Ales: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-analog-clock-displaying-at-10-36-552774/
