Bereft

Towards the end of the workday on Monday I received one of those calls you dread -- my father had been admitted to the hospital after suffering a heart attack.  They thought they could stabilize him and perhaps try some additional procedures in a day or two.  Nonetheless, the prognosis was not good.  In a way it wasn't a total surprise, as heart problems run in his side of the family and he was certainly overweight.

I scrambled and finally found a flight that would bring me down by 2 pm on Tuesday.  I had to decide how long to stay and compromised a bit with a Sat. return.  (It's a little hard to explain a one-way ticket into the States these days...)

I met my brother at the airport, and he gave me the bad news that my father had passed away about an hour or so before.  It probably wouldn't have mattered even if I had gotten a red eye on Monday, since he was on a ventilator and heavily sedated.  About the only mercy was that it wasn't a long, protracted illness.  Overall, it was a relatively painless, easy death.

Nonetheless, I obviously don't feel I have any closure, since I wasn't able to talk to him at the end.  We had had a chat right after Thanksgiving, and we did talk roughly every two weeks, but I hadn't seen him in person since the summer of 2017.

It's bitterly reminiscent of when my mother died (many, many moons ago), though in her case she suffered a massive aneurysm and hung on at the hospital for about a week (though probably not really in any pain either).  While I probably talked to her every week, it still had been a while since I had seen her, even though I could have taken the train from Chicago to Detroit, but just didn't until it was too late.

I can't say I have major, major regrets in the sense that we were on good terms, but one still wants some time at the end to say goodbye before it is too late.  And of course in the case of my mother, she never even knew my wife or children.  I'm a bit sad that I didn't find more opportunities to bring the grandkids to visit my father, but I brought my daughter twice and my son three times.  You just always want more time, particularly so long as one's parents aren't actually suffering.  I'm just really sad and feeling sorry for myself.  Tomorrow we'll have to start thinking about the service, but mostly I'll stay out of the way as my stepmother does what she needs to do.  I'll know soon enough if I need to try to extend my stay by a few more days.