Day 1 of 3
The last weekend:
The last few days of my fathers life on earth were so unbearable, they dragged by, though that’s not a bad thing, I remember thinking how’s it going to be after, when is it going to happen. Before my father passed he was in and out of the hospital getting checked for the fluid that just appeared in his lungs. His regular doctor was away, another doctor took my fathers case over and diagnosed him with phenomena. WRONG. His lungs and whole body were getting taken over by cancer. It was finally starting to win, though I still had to be his 2%. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on to myself though.
The three days started with my father getting out of the car in our driveway and looking at my brother and I, and in his still optimistic self with that smirk on his face that could still trick me into thinking things would be OK he said….
Third round and the gloves are off
Even when things looked at there most grim and his real doctor gave him six weeks he still did not get down and made at least me feel better hearing my father still being himself. That night in fact he would sit up with my mother, I remember I was out with my friends and I called to see how he was doing. He was up watching TV and I remember thinking at that time that he might just keep pulling rabbits out of his hat and beat this cancer. I was wrong.
Day 1
It was a Friday, my mother had gone to work and I stayed home to be with my father. This was the first day that he did not get up for work. He tried, all he did was try. The time between the night before and Friday morning was unreal, the pain of the cancer spreading had set it.
I was upstairs for sometime and I would hear my father try to stand. The agonizing screams that he would make trying to stand made me wish I was deaf so I did not have to hear the crippling yells and grunts coming from my father. I mean, here is a man who I have never even seen cry and now he is not even able to stand. I felt so useless. He could not even get his pants on because he could not bend at the mid section because if he did, it would be more pain and hard breathing and hyper ventilating and crying and suffering and discomfort.
The funny thing about the day was how determined he was to get to work. My brother was at a job site, doing some stone work for my dad, and my dad was going to get to work, hell or high water. It may have taken him two hours to get dressed because he was not able to, but before the sun set he was going to work.
When he was ready to leave I parked my car with the passenger door holding open my side door, I was basically parked on the stairs. My father found his strength and climbs the stairs, resting every couple of steps.
We made it to work, my dad sat with the car seat all the way up and his feet on the dashboard, making him into a ‘V’ shape, I guess that eased the pain in the car. He took a digital camera and had my brother take pictures of what he was doing.
He actually made me go to dunkin dounuts to get a Tropicana Orange Juice Coolatta, he loved them. I remember he had three that day. He would not drink them all, but he loved having a fresh one around. Driving was such sooo stressful. Every bump I hit that day would make him moan and ‘Ahh.’
When I got home I could not take watching him be in such pain, I called my mom at work and she came home to take care of him.
The only other thing I remember was my mother coming upstairs into my bedroom, she just sat on my bed crying, balling her eyes out. That was the first time we truly had no control over this scenario anymore.
