He's gone.

My dad is dead.  He'd checked into the hospital in the beginning of November.  One thing after another.  He died about a week before Christmas.  I'm heart broken.

After 30 minutes of resuscitation efforts they put him on life support.  He stayed that way till I was able to get there.  12 hours of airports, flights, and lay overs.  He looked so different laying in that bed.  My superman dad looked frail.  His hair was now white. .  After spending 7 weeks in the hospital barely able to walk his muscle tone was gone.  He still had blood on his hand and some in his hairline, presumably from his fall early the previous morning.  His chest was rising and falling as the machine breathed for him.  This was not supposed to be.  I had just talked to him..  He sounded terrific.  He sounded like my dad again.  Strong and determined.  It had been a long battle to get to this point, that's why this was so unbelievable.  Why had he been up in the wee hours of the morning?  Why wasn't there someone to help him?  Would he have got up on his own?  He knew better.

We had plans.  We were trying to move closer.  So that his trips to his farm could have a lay over at my home.  He was going to teach my son to drive a tractor.   He was going to let my daughter learn to drive in the open spaces of his farm.  We were gonna have family dinners together at my house.  Gonna gonna gonna.  Not anymore.  His divorce was nearly final.  Matter of fact had he signed the papers on Thursday before he died it would have been done.  Something kept him from it.  He had plans to do the things he'd been putting off.  Motorcycle trips and retiring to his farm.  Gonna gonna gonna.  Not anymore.

I held his hand.  I ignored all the beeping and whirring of the machines.  I sobbed.  Soul shaking sobs.  Somewhere from deep within me.  His hands looked so old.  Not like the hands I had rubbed ointment into the year before.  The nails were longer.  His once deep dark skin was so pale.  I rubbed and rubbed at the dried blood on his hand.  It wouldn't come off.  I begged him to come back to me.  I ordered him to come back to me.  I chastised him for taking this hoax on for far to long.  Nothing worked.  Then.  I felt his fingers move.  It was more like a twitch.  My heart leapt!  Could it be?  Was he hearing me?  Was he coming back?  NO.  The nurse came in to attend to all the beeping the pulse ox thing was making.  They had put him on 100% oxygen and yet the pulse ox was able to detect it anymore.  He was fading.

My dad died in the early morning hours of December 18th.  I have this gaping suck hole of pain in my heart.  I can't see it going away anytime soon.  He's gone.  He's really gone.