Dad is Gone

The last time I saw dad we "had dinner together".

Today was a strange one. I didn’t ride today which was weird in of itself. I was supposed to train but something was driving me inside to not train today and to instead follow up with everything from mom’s death.

I just felt like I needed to get things done, make phone calls, wrap things up, do my thank you cards, answer tons of emails, get moms Celebration of Life in order, print programs, etc. I worked tirelessly all day on everything which kind of came out of the blue for me because I wasn’t planning on doing it all day like I did. And when I say that I worked on this all day, I mean ALL day.

I finally got to a point at 8pm where I felt really good about things, where everything stood with moms stuff and my own stuff as well. I felt like a weight had been lifted and that I was in a good spot because of all I accomplished today. I got a lot done and it was time to chill for the night.

I got an hour of chilling in and at 9pm I received a phone call from my brother about dad.

Dad was showing signs of probably not living more than 24 hours and the nurses had called us to let us know. The signs were that he stopped eating in the last few days, his heart rate was up and his blood pressure was down. The classic signs.

What to do now with this news??! I was supposed to be leaving for mom’s Celebration of Life in WA in 10 days and now it was looking like I was going to be leaving for a plane in 8hours heading to WA.

Ok.

I booked my flight for 8am and started packing for what could be an insta 2 week trip to WA. Dad could possibly last longer than just a few days and I needed to be prepared to stay up there for days and/or weeks. Whatever it took.

So with my flight booked I started packing frantically at about 11pm. I needed stuff for the next couple days at least, possibly my Celebration of Life attire if I was there that long, ALL (and I mean ALL) of the Celebration of Life stuff in case I was up there for a few weeks. That would be a disaster to have me there in WA and all the finished stuff in Utah!!

And then I needed to think about the possibility that dad could pass while I was up there and his obit was in Utah, his pictures (for any Power Point that I would want to do at the Celebration of Life) were also in UT, nothing was set for him to be a part of the Celebration of Life and I now I had to start thinking about scanning pictures, making copies of things and going through his stuff to find things that represented him.

Talk about having to plan ahead and this was VERY important to me. VERY. I was taking moms Celebration of Life party extremely seriously and I would do no less for dad. No less.

During the night I took several calls from the nurse that was caring for dad. I also spoke to hospice at length at about 2:30am. Both were helpful, understanding and insightful.

I was in a daze, focused at the task at hand. I was running on pure energy and/or shock and I never got the least bit tired while doing all these things all night long.

At 4:30am after a long night of getting things completely ready for what may lie ahead I laid down for just an hour. Woke up at 5:30am and was off by 6am for my flight.

I was just hoping and praying that my dad would make it at least long enough for me to see him. I had booked the earliest possible flight as soon as I knew what was happening. I was also hoping to just call dads care unit and have them put the phone up to his ear so I could say any last good byes but I was waiting for a more reasonable hour. I didn’t want to wake him.

On the way down to the airport at around 6:25am I got a call from my brother and I knew what he was going to say.

Dad had passed 25 minutes earlier.