The time has finally come. After 5 years and 11 weeks from his initial diagnosis, my dad passed away ever so peacefully tonight at approximately 8:40pm.
After leaving the hospice this afternoon, I managed to get home and grab a shower and a quick bite before heading back to my mom's place to do some more packing. My oldest sister and my brother stayed at the hospice with my dad while my mom and other sister went home to pack.
It always seems that there's not much left to do until you get to the house and realize just how much there IS left to do.
I came back home and waited for my sister from Calgary to come over to eat dinner before she and I went back to the hospice to relieve my brother (who had been there since 3 this morning).
My oldest sister also managed to slip out long enough to go home and get a bite, and she also decided to return, even though she thought she might just stay home for the night and return early tomorrow morning. We opted to leave my mom at my sister's place for the night. She can get in the way at times and somehow often manages to make my dad's illness all about herself.
We got back to the hospice around 7pm and my niece met us there. We lit some tea lights around his hindu statues and said a prayer for him. While my brother took my dad's hands to touch the statues, a tear came from my dad's eye. Again, he was not coherent, but it's like he knew.
My sister (from Calgary) had brought some jewelry beads along with her that she wanted me to help her make a bracelet with. I brought all of my jewelry making stuff and she, my niece and I sat at the table in my dad's room and started making jewelry.
My dad's breathing was very laboured, sporadic, and also very congested. They had to aspirate him several times with a long tube but because he's so heavily drugged, it's likely that he didn't feel any pain or discomfort.
So the three of us are making jewelry and my oldest sister says that she's going to go home for the night and come back tomorrow, but not before she writes up some stuff on her computer to post to her blog tonight (we have lots of family overseas who are solely dependent on her blogs for updates). As she grabbed her computer, my dad started sputtering and flailing his arms. She went over to the bed and told him that she wasn't going to leave anymore, and instead she would stay at the hospice with me and my other sister for the night.
The nurse came in and gave him some more meds and my sister sat down with her laptop and started to write up her blog material.
The entire time we were making jewelry, I had an ear open on my dad's breathing. Every now and then he'd take just a little bit longer to take his next breath, and then all of a sudden, he just stopped breathing. I dropped everything and said, "Guys? I think Dad just stopped breathing??" My sisters said that everything was probably ok and that Dad had been breathing that way all day. I said, "No ...?! He hasn't taken a breath in a much longer time than normal ..." We all jumped up and went over to his bed. My two sisters and I along with my niece waited for what seemed like a lifetime for the next breath and it never came.
I checked his radial pulse and there was nothing, so I paged the nurse in immediately. She came in, and we continued to wait for him to breath. She grabbed her stethoscope and placed it to his heart and said that she heard a faint beat. We continued to wait, she checked it again, and then she said, "He's gone".
For all of his suffering over the past 5 years, and specifically over the past few weeks, it was truly poetic that his life would end exactly the way we'd want it to for him. No agitation, no crying, no fuss, no muss. In the end, everyone was exactly where they were destined to be at the moment of my dad's passing. My dad has always had a special place in his heart for his girls, and in the end, it was his three daughters and oldest granddaughter who were with him in his final moments.
I called Darwin at home and told him that my dad had just passed, so he went to my sister's place to get my mom and bring her to the hospice.
We stayed with him for about 2 hours, talking to him and holding his hands before we all decided to leave for the night. My niece and I will return tomorrow to pack up his belongings.
So I am finally off to bed, and hope to have the best night's sleep since Feb 1st when my dad left home. I've had a total of 2 hours sleep since 7am Monday morning and am looking forward to a peaceful night without the constant scare of the "middle of the night" phone call.
There will be a private (family only) cremation on Thursday, but we will be having a public ceremony on Friday April 29th and either Sunday May 1st or Monday May 2nd (depending on a few things).
I can provide more info as it becomes available.
It's been the craziest journey, but I'm thankful that I was where I was when it happened.
Good night everyone, and sleep tight.
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