he's gone

[verushka70]

By last Sunday, everyone who had come to see my stepdad after he came home from in-patient hospice, and everyone who'd come for my younger sister's baby shower, had gone. Monday he was still talking to us. Tuesday morning he could barely walk; we think he'd had a stroke over night. He grew agitated and his pain wasn't being helped by the usual dose of morphine so the hospice nurse said to double the dose. By Wednesday night he was no longer really conscious.

Last night, Thursday night at 5:50pm I told him I had to leave for work and that he shouldn't worry about my mom, that we would take care of her and make sure that she was okay. And I told him not to wait for her, that she would meet him there.

When I was walking into the elevator in the parking garage 55 minutes later, my mother called my cell phone to tell me he was gone.

They sent me home from work because I couldn't keep my shit together. I was probably a liability issue at that point.

I wish he'd been my real father.

Comments

[callumvixen.livejournal.com]

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying....

((((((((((((((((((((((verushka))))))))))))))))))))))))

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for these beautiful words.

[callumvixen.livejournal.com]

:wub: :hug:

[grey853.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry. From what you said, I know he went through so much. My deepest sympathy to you and your family.

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Yes, for him, faster was better, though not for us.

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

{{{big GIANT hugs}}}

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

Thanks. So MUCH.

[songfire3.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry - I hoped he would have been able to hold on a bit longer, so you could have more time together. {{HUGS}} How are you holding up?

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm holding up as well as can be expected. I hoped we could have more time together, too -- but swifter was better for him, it being metastatic and all. Sigh.

[dementedelement.livejournal.com]

I'm very sorry. My thoughts are with you.

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

Thanks.