On the Death of my Father

April 6, 2016; 5:38 pm, Pacific Time; Sequoia hospital; Redwood City, California.  That is the date, time, and place of my father’s death.  Two years ago.  I've already written about his life.  Now, I will share my experience of his death.  Humans have drawn a veil around death, masking it with platitudes like "so and so is in a better place now", or avoiding discussion of it altogether.  It has been depicted in fiction, seldom realistically.  I hope that by posting this, I can bring comfort, or at least knowledge, to those who are facing the death of a loved one, or even their own mortality.  

I first learned that my father had been taken ill around 9:00 am Eastern Time the previous day.  In a cruel stroke of irony, April 5 was my father’s and step-mother’s 36^th wedding anniversary.  He’d collapsed late in the evening of April 4^th.   When I arrived at the hospital from the airport, it was around 2:00 am local time on the 6^th.  My oldest sister had been there for several hours.  In reality, everything that defined our father, all but the basest autonomic reflexes, was essentially gone.  His eyes were closed, the pupils unresponsive to light.  He needed a ventilator to help him breathe, obscuring his face, and there were tubes everywhere.  What was left of my father’s once magnificent body, now shriveled from 18 months of declining health, was kept going at my step-mother's  request so as many family members as possible could gather and gain closure by being with him in his final moments.

The attending staff at Sequoia checked regularly on my father’s status – making him as comfortable as possible.  He was shifted and his limbs moved on a regular basis.  When he began reflexively chewing on the respirator tube, cutting off his air flow, they inserted a hard plastic brace to keep his mouth open.  I noticed his thinning hair was askew, so I asked for a comb and fixed his hair – attending to it from time to time.

By mid-afternoon, all family members who were able to be there were gathered: my step-mother and her brother, my oldest sister, my brother and his girlfriend, myself.  Shortly after 4:00 pm we jointly gave our consent for Dad to be removed from the ventilator. We left the room while the nursing staff prepared my father for his last moments.  Then we returned to the room around 4:20, expecting Dad to last about 15 minutes - he hung on for over an hour.  With the breathing apparatus removed from my father’s face, he looked like himself again – even with the effects of age and ill-health, he retained his essential handsomeness.  My father looked like he was sleeping, breathing slower with each passing minute, slightly snoring when he  inhaled, sometimes exhaling with a soft sigh – as he did when sleeping.  My step-mother sat on my father’s right side, stroking his hair and holding his hand; my brother was opposite, caressing my father’s left bicep – once proudly muscular, now shrunken – with his left hand, while cradling his head in the other; my sister was at his left foot; I was at his right – my hand on his ankle where I could feel his fading pulse.  As my father’s breathing became shallower, my step-mother moved her right hand and began stroking his right cheek, while murmuring into his ear; I took my father’s right hand in my left hand.  As the end drew near, I was flooded with memories that seemed to go backward in time, until I reached one of my earliest memories which was vivid, tangible, undimmed by time:  my father would lay on the family room floor in front of the TV, and I would lay cuddled with him, my head on his chest, and listen to his powerful heartbeat.  Remembering that perfect moment, I placed my right hand gently on his chest.  A few seconds later, my father drew his last breath. 

Almost exactly 49 years prior to that day, my father observed my birth – the first time he’d seen one of his children being born – and saw me take my first breath.  It was a privilege to stand by my father’s side during his final moments – albeit a sad one.