Memorial Monday: Saying Goodbye

 

Normally Mondays on the blog are all about the things we’ve eaten the week before. Honestly, I’m not even sure what all we ate this week. Most of it was whatever we could grab whenever we passed by a Subway or gas station.

                And food feels so frivolous this week. We’ve had much bigger things happening in our little corner of the world. My thoughts today come to you on Monday, but I’m writing them on Sunday, while I sit in a hard metal folding chair beside Dad’s bed.

                After eight full months of Dad being so sick, declining – sometimes fast, sometimes slow – and multiple moves – apartment to hospital to rehab to hospital to rehab to healthcare to another wing of healthcare, the time has come to say our last goodbye to Dad on this earth.

                He’s been weakening, eating less, sleeping more, and then in the last week, he began his decline in earnest.

                I’ve been in this room for a little over 24 hours now, and we have reached the point where although we know he can hear us, he can’t open his eyes or respond anymore. I have piano hymns playing on repeat on my laptop, I’ve read Scripture to him, prayed with him, and now I sit, praying for him and asking God to be merciful in these final hours.

                Mom is being so strong. I’m so proud of her. Facing death in the face is always hard. Watching the person you’ve shared life with for 72 years walk this journey is helpless and hard. She sits with him, talks to him, tells him to just keep trusting Jesus. I said my goodbyes earlier today when it was just the two of us in the room.

                He seems comfortable. The staff is all being so kind – to him and to us. They’ve brought snacks and drinks, brewed coffee, provided pillows and blankets for attempted sleep in recliners. They turn him, they rush when I panic and hit the call light because I don’t know what some change means, and they offer anything they can do to help.

                I don’t know how to say goodbye to someone I’ve known every day of my life. I wrote in my journal last night “God, I don’t know how to be a fatherless daughter, but I’m not, I suppose, because I have You.”

                But that doesn’t make this hurt less.

                So we sit and listen to his breathing, watch his chest rise and fall, and we pray for peace in the parts of his heart we can’t see.

                Lexi knows. She knows something is wrong. Dad is her buddy. He loved her so. Ryan has gone home for a bit to be with her and our sweet neighbors came throughout the day to feed and walk her. It takes a village, even with a dog.

                None of this has been coherent, but these are my thoughts of goodbye as I sit here today. Thanks for reading along over the last 20 years and getting to know him. Thanks for praying with us over this year with his various setbacks and illnesses.

                And thanks for walking forward with us in these strange days that lie ahead. We don’t know what they will hold or look like, but we trust the Lord with them.