15 years ago...

... today my father died from pancreatic cancer. I remember it like it was yesterday. His one wish was that he would die at home so we rented a hospital bed and all the other equipment he would need and took him out of the hospital. He was home about 5 days before he passed away. Everything from that time is crystal clear in my head. We decided to put up our Christmas tree early that year so he could enjoy it. I remember his laughter as me and my sister tried to get the lights on the tree, going back to the store to buy a new string of lights and then back out again because the string we bought didn't fit with the others we had. I remember showing him a caricature we had done of my brothers and how he laughed so hard he had tears streaming down his face. I also remember his cries when he was hallucinating. Early in the morning on Dec 16th 1993 the Hospice nurse showed up because he had ripped his IV from the morphine pump out of his arm. She told my mom that we should celebrate Christmas early as my dad wouldn't make it to the 25th. I knew at that point that my dad would die that same day. I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper and making goofy comments on the articles to my dad. He wasn't able to read the paper so I would sit with him and tell him about all the funny things. I was mid sentence when I realized his breath was rattling. I sat and stared at his chest and realized there was a long gap between his breaths. I yelled up to my mom in a panic and she came running downstairs. My sister and two brothers also came into the room. I told my mom that he was taking his last breaths. He died with us surrounding him. I had to make the phone calls to Hospice and then I called my gramma who rushed home from work to be there with us. When the nurse got to the house she pronounced him and turned off the oxygen. We hadn't turned it off as it would have made it so final, no turning back after the O2 is off. Now it just seems silly but at the time as long as the O2 was running he wasn't really dead.The funeral home came to pick up his body but my uncles wanted to see him first so they left the body at our house for about an hour longer. Going to the funeral home to finalize arrangements was surreal. I was 23 yo and picking out a casket for my father who was only 42 yo. Our family has never been the same since my dad's death 15 years ago. We are closer than ever but also have also drifted apart. We all grieved in our own ways, we did what we had to do at the time to survive, we didn't always make smart choices but we came through what I consider to be one of the most defining moments of our lives together as a family.










My dad and my brothers...
Jesh (middle) and Zack