2-24-2005

My sister Mary woke me. I think it was sometime around 2:30 in the morning. Right, Mary? Or maybe that's when we pinpointed that it had happened.

She said, "He's gone." It took me about two seconds to register what she was saying. And then I immediately dismissed what she said and thought to myself, "No, he's not. She just hasn't checked his breathing right." I ran to his bed thinking she had to be wrong. The image that greeted me and is forever burned in my memory is one of unmistakable correctness. Not "rightness" because there was nothing right about it. But, yes, Mary was correct. He was gone. Dad was dead. His mouth was frozen open in one last gasp. Mercifully, his eyes were closed because he died in his sleep. Words cannot describe the stillness that permeated the room. He had left; his overwhelming bigger-than-life-ness had evaporated. Was that even possible?

The world slipped off its axis, and I can't quite remember how things happened from there. I know Dad's dog wouldn't leave his side. I didn't want to either, even though it was so eerie to be near him. The hospice nurse came to pronounce his death. She flushed his meds. His wife, Maureen, took the dog outside to go to the bathroom. Around daybreak, the funeral home came to pick him up. In a minivan. How abnormally normal. I waited to call Dan until a decent hour, not wanting to wake him too early. (He was in Missouri and I was in Virginia.) We called nearby family. I showered. I got on the computer. I shut down emotionally and didn't recover myself until Dan's flight arrived much later. Visits to the funeral home, people arriving at the door, and all I wanted to do was go back to 2:29am.

His last words to me? "I love you."

He's gone and now nothing more to be said. Nothing more can be said because he's not here to hear it. Right?

In our last coherent conversation, I told him that I would miss him every single day. And I do. I thanked him for all the ways he loved me and all the things he taught me, and that in doing so he taught his grandchildren too. I said he wouldn't be forgotten. I told him that every time I see a hawk, I think of him because of what he taught me about the birds. He promised me he would come back to me if there were any possible way.

I see a hawk almost every day now.