Lost Relationships Story No. 9, Part One
“My dad died when I was sixteen weeks pregnant with Lily [my oldest daughter]. He died October 15, 2013. He knew I was pregnant, so that was really cool. We'd been trying to get pregnant for almost three years, so it was really exciting to get to be pregnant.
He had a pretty severe stroke in February of '13 and that had definitely impacted his ability....He definitely had changed a lot....There was still a lot of himself. I think that he knew. I think he was in a lot of pain. I think he hid a lot of that. His brain, that was such a huge part of him....And I think that he kind of put on a brave face for all of us. But I think it was really scary and frustrating. My mom would call me sometimes crying, and be like, 'He was mean to me today.' And that was like not my dad at all. It was hard, too, because I wasn't there. He couldn't drive, so my mom had to drive him all over. It was just really hard.
That day [before my dad died], I had been doing yoga, and I felt Lily kick for the first time. I called my family, and I was so excited. And they were at a restaurant eating lunch. And so I talked to my Mom, and then I talked to my sister, and then I was going to talk to my dad, but I was like, oh, they're eating, I'll just call them later...And then I didn't ever talk to him later. That was really hard for awhile.
I remember because we'd tried so hard [to get pregnant], I was really careful...I was really scared of losing Lily, and I was scared of being too connected with her. I just didn't know. I was scared. People were like, you should talk to your baby. I felt really weird, talking to my stomach. I wasn't showing yet.
That morning [the day before my dad died], when I had felt Lily kick, I wanted to start to try and connect with her. So I had taken my iPad out and recorded it, and was like talking to her. It's weird because five hours later my life changed. It's so cool to have that moment where I talked about my dad to her....It's just kind of neat to have that 'me' to share with my girls, before I lost him.
That day, I had a migraine, too. I would get migraines during my pregnancy, and I would lose a lot of my vision, like I couldn't see. So I had to just kind of chill. I remember going to bed around ten and just being glad to go to bed. And then my phone rang. It was a number I didn't recognize. I could hardly see. It was like 10:30. My phone rang again. And then [my partner] Kevan's phone rang, and it was somebody from my dad's church to tell us....
[My dad had] gotten a stomach ache and it had gotten really bad. My mom was at work, so my sister, I took him to Instacare. And when he got there, part of his intestine had started to die. I loved the way the doctors handled it. They were amazing. When my mom got there, they were like, 'This is life and death....We can replace heart, we can replace kidneys, we can replace lungs, but we can't replace an intestine. If the intestine dies, you die.' And so the doctors were very honest, but compassionately honest, like, 'You need to understand this is life and death.' And he just kept saying that so she was very aware that he might not live.
So they were going to do a surgery....We get there, found out they had done the surgery, it had taken like twenty minutes, it was pretty successful...They were going to do another surgery... The doctor came out two or three hours into the [surgery] and asked my mom, 'Was he an alcoholic?' And my mom was like, 'He was a minister. He was teetotaler. He didn't touch alcohol.' And he was like, 'Well his liver's like completely shot.' It was just like organs were failing. It was time to die, I guess.
He was on a ventilator...My biggest concern was that some of my family wouldn't be ready to take him off life support. And I know there are worse things than death—because I've seen it. Just like when families can't get on the same page. I feel like the person they love suffers because they're not ready to say goodbye....I felt like there might be some resistance. But I feel like my mom spent those eight months kind of preparing for his death. And she really surprised me.
I'd read an article on hospice and it talked about making sure you communicate with the person you love and asking them, 'What is enough for you to want to continue to live?' Like, what do you absolutely need to be able to do or can't do, and that's when we know we stop trying. Thankfully my mom had talked to my dad, and he'd wanted to still be a pastor.
All the organs are failing, he'd already been struggling, maybe silently, I don't know...I asked the doctor when he came out, 'At what point is it not worth continuing? At what point does he not have any type of quality of life?' The doctor said, 'Well, if he were my loved one, I would stop now.' I loved how he handled it, too; I thought that was so beautiful. My mom was just like, 'If he can't do this, if he can't love on people, and be a pastor, and be a part of their lives that way, I know he wouldn't want to continue to live.' I feel like it was pretty clear.
So we decided to take him off life support. The doctor said it would probably take like five hours for him to die. And it was really cool, because when we were saying goodbye, my brother laid his hand on my father's head and blessed him like my father used to do to us at bedtime. I leaned over and whispered in his ear, 'We'll take care of Mom.' Because I was just like, if there's any part of him that's still there, that would probably be his fear, I think. So they took him off life support and he died in fifteen minutes.
A friend of mine had said this to me: 'You are the evidence of how wonderful your father was.' At my dad's funeral I spoke. I had written this thing on Facebook the next day. I wrote about how hard that day was. But I said, we handled it: my mother and my sister and my partner and my uncle, my friends. These people, we went through a really, really hard day, and we did it with grace and compassion and empathy and love. And that is the evidence of how wonderful my dad was. The people who love him, the people who did this, who went through this process, helped us, who will help us, and have helped us—you all are the evidence of how wonderful he was.
I don't really know how much more successful as a parent you can be. I still know that my dad loves me and I know he's proud of me and I know that I delight him. I don't really think you can do better than that.”
