That Sunday happened to be Mother’s Day, and it was difficult not having Alex home with me and the kids. I knew he was right where he needed to be, however. I just wasn’t expecting the phone call I received from him Sunday night. Alex was told that Dad’s heart had stopped beating, but they resuscitated him. Unfortunately, it seemed that his organs were generally starting to shut down. And it was apparent that I needed to get up to Massachusetts right away.
Moments after that phone call, my sister-in-law, Mandy, came in the house. She brought with her a painting she had completed over the weekend, and she gave it to me. The timing sent chills up my spine.
“God did not promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, nor sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way.”
The next day, my mother and I planned an airport switch. She flew into Atlanta to come take care of the girls while I handed off my car to her and flew into Boston. We headed straight for Mass General Hospital, where we arrived at 1:11am on Tuesday morning, May 12th.
We made our way to Dad’s room only to be greeted by a doctor and nurse telling us that Dad hadn’t woken back up since his heart stopped on Sunday night. He was now on a ventilator, and the biopsy had confirmed pancreatic cancer. The doctor said they were trying to keep him as comfortable as they could, but there was nothing more to do. A family meeting was scheduled for later that day to decide what to do next.
After a restless night’s sleep, Alex and I returned to the hospital and greeted my brother Tony and his wife Angela. We sat and talked at Dad’s bedside for awhile and caught up. We commiserated over Dad’s lack of urgency to get treatment; I even raised my voice and called Dad his favorite expletive: “Bastard!” hoping Dad would wake up and argue with me. He didn’t. (Although our ICU neighbors knocked on the wall to tell us to keep it down. Oh well.)
Soon after Uncle Richard arrived, we followed the doctor into a meeting room down the hall from Dad’s ICU room. The doctor reiterated what he had explained to me already, that Dad’s organs were shutting down and that they were keeping him comfortable as best they could. Tony and I were in agreement to take Dad off of life support, that he’d want it to be that way. We felt he has ready to be free of his failing corporeal presence.
The hospital chaplain joined us all in Dad’s room and said a few prayers according to Dad’s Episcopal background. As he spoke, I rested my hand on Dad’s, suddenly realizing that our hands looked the same, something I had never noticed before. I had often compared my hands to my mother’s, although she has long piano fingers that I never did. I was comforted, now, to come across a commonality with Dad that had escaped me. One last connection, I thought. A different way of saying goodbye since I was too late to do so before he…fell asleep. That last phone conversation would have to serve otherwise.
When the chaplain was finished, we stepped aside while the nurses removed the tubes and wires from Dad. Tony and I each stood beside his bed. I decided to play a song on my phone, which had been Dad’s ringtone whenever he called me—“Hold Me, Jesus,” by Rich Mullins:
Well, sometimes my life just don’t make sense at all
When the mountains look so big,
And my faith just seems so small
So hold me Jesus,
Cause I’m shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won’t You be my Prince of Peace
Surrender don’t come natural to me
I’d rather fight you for something
I don’t really want
Than to take what you give that I need
And I’ve beat my head against so many walls
Now I’m falling down, I’m falling on my knees
God, please
As it played, I watched Dad take his final breath. At the same exact time, a single tear fell down his left cheek where I stood. He was taking that first step into heaven and letting go of the world now behind him. And I had to smile. And cry too. It was 3:00pm.
The Art of Choosing True Life 