Dad

January 15th is a hard day for me. My Dad died today, 17 years ago. My mom called me at the hospital I was working in and said that he had done great in surgery, woke up for a short while but than the doctor told her he had a 'setback' and had not re-awakened since. Trying to deal with doctors long distance was not easy, so I drove the 7 hours back to my parents to see what was going on. My father had had a massive global stroke. The doctor tried to give me as much information as he could.... I was in shock the moment he showed me the MRI. I knew it was bad. I tried talking to my mother about choices we'd have to make and problems that we would have to deal with, but she just kept saying he was just tired and needed to sleep. My sisters agreed with my mother, they wanted to give him time. 

That gave me lots of time to think about my Dad.... he and I having swim races in our pool, him teaching me to ride a bike, then later driving his riding lawn mower backwards all through our yard because I told him I was afraid to drive in reverse. Vacations we'd taken with our family, then the feeling of us growing apart when I hit my teen years. My Dad struggled in school and could not understand why I would want to go to college. He liked to play and work hard and did not understand how I could be content simply reading a book. I didn't really understand him either. He drank too much, took dumb risks and counted on the lottery for his retirement (and my college) funds. 

One of the most interesting things about him was how good he was at reading the people around him. He knew I loved Pepper before I did. My sister got that gift too. He could say or do one thing that could make a person feel like they were the only person in the world that mattered or he could say something that made them feel like pure crap. He had lots and lots of friends. Everyone knew and loved my Dad. At his funeral the procession of cars was unbelievable... 

So there I was at his bedside, watching machines breathe for him... knowing how much he would hate being kept alive when he was so helpless. It was sinking in to the rest of my family that we were never getting Dad back. I always held his hand while I was in his hospital room. As I drove back to my parents house I could smell my Dad's scent on my hand.  Until the fourth day, on the way home it did not smell like him anymore. I knew that it didn't matter if the rest of my family was ready... we were losing him. He died alone. A snow storm hit the area and Mom refused to let us go back to the hospital. We were all sitting around the kitchen table when we got the call. We were all together, Dad's four girls. Talking and remembering all the things we loved and would miss about Dad. We lost him way to young. He was only 49.