I really didn't think Dad would die this last time with pneumonia. I really didn't.
In fact, when Hospice nurse told me that he was in his last stages of life, I laughed at her....I told her...."You don't understand, I have seen my Dad worse than THIS...believe me. He pulls out of everything."
Not that I think she really did understand more than me....cause she didn't really. Dad and God chose his time. I was the last to know.
I had written down what he said to me when he was in the hospital in January with a UTI. I found it again in my notebook when I was cleaning out my purse.
Dad said, "I ain't got too long to live, so you better get busy." He went on to say give me some story about photography that I didn't quite understand. He continued with, " I wish I had a club to hit myself in the head." "The trouble with the diagnosis....the body is made the same as meat." He saw the confusion in my face I think, cause he then said, "I might as well shut up because I am not making any sense."
I just thought at the time that he was having a reaction to the UTI....it sometimes makes elderly people hallucinate. Dad already hallucinated without a UTI.
You see, inside my mind, I wanted to hug him and tell him that I didn't want him to die.....I was afraid when he talked like that....and he did that often enough that if I had let it get to me, I would have cried way too much. I just wanted to turn his thinking around so he would stop thinking about how much better off he thinks he would be dead. I wanted him to stay here with us for as long as he was not miserable and in awful pain. We did everything to keep him comfortable as anyone his age could possibly be without knocking him out with meds that made him a vegetable. I wanted him awake. He wanted to sleep.
Now I have some regrets for not just letting him have his way and maybe just sitting down and praying WITH him that God would come and take him home. To me, that's like saying I want him gone when I didn't.
I wanted him to stay for when my Daughter and Grandkids would come back to live in the area. I knew being around the kids would liven him up. I was picturing it in my mind that Dad would be in the hot tub and Kilah and Kiara would be in talking to Grandpa giving him the will to carry on for even just a little while longer. I had plans for that.
Unfortunately many of my well planned out plans in my life have dwindled away of no fault of my own.
Due to others failing in their own plans affects us all in so many ways. There is only but one thing to do and that is not to lose hope. Hope is what keeps us going. One door opens when another closes. I keep trying to keep that thought.
So while I am waiting for another door to open, let me say that if you are putting off something like taking a trip with a loved one, or playing a good game of Scrabble cause there is some TV show that you or someone else wants to see......then put your foot down.....play that Scrabble, turn OFF that TV.....take that trip, make those plans, JUST DO IT, whatever it is. Get it done THIS YEAR!
