'Bye to Dad

(Originally published on my now-defunct MySpace page, spring of 2008)

My Dad died this morning.

Mom had called the whole family in to Memorial Hospital in Belleville on Sunday afternoon. That was scary enough in itself, because while she was always quick to call me in for moral support, she was ever-hesitant to trouble the grandparents with what would likely be a false alarm.

Not this time, though. Which, you know, baffled me. Because when I got to the hospital and looked at him lying there, breathing a bit heavily but otherwise totally responsive, I thought, "Shit, he looks fine. Sick, sure, but he’ll be alright."

That was the first time I was wrong that day.

The second time came when Lindsey and I were leaving. Dad was incapable of verbal responses by then, so I took his hand and told him I was going home to get some sleep, and that he should squeeze my hand if he understood. He squeezed. And kept squeezing. And he wouldn’t let go. I leaned down next to his ear and I said, "You stay here. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll see you then. Stay here. Okay?"

He nodded -- the first visible reaction to a spoken word that anyone had seen from him in quite some time. I didn’t see it, but Lindsey and Mom did, and they were visibly shocked, and took it as a sign that maybe he was still going to recover. Myself? I was still shocked at the firmness of that grip.

It was remarkable. Later, in the car, I told Lindsey that he’d never before given me such an honest and earnest expression of ... love? Connection? I don’t know. Something. At any rate, I had been a rock all day, immovable. To my sister, I said, "I’ve been prepared for this for years. I’m fine." And I was. Right up to the point that I got to the parking lot. Then the strength and the pleading, earnest desperation of that last grip from my father turned me into a complete shuddering, drooling, growling mass of wracking sobs.

I took a sleeping pill at 9:30, and went to bed. At 4:30 in the morning, a St. Louis Police officer woke me at my front door to tell me that Memorial had been trying to reach me. ’Nuff said, right?

When I got to the hospital, Mom gave me a few minutes alone with him. I apologized for not making it in time. I apologized for not staying. I’m sure that’s what he was asking me to do. I should have stayed. Everyone dies alone. That’s what they say anyway.

But fuck that. No one should die without their family with them.

Enough.

Funeral arrangements are underway. It’s looking like it will be at Dean-Toberman funeral home in Coffeen. The visitation will likely be on Wednesday from 6-8 p.m., with a service the following morning and burial at Camp Butler in Springfield.

That’s all I have time for now.