Almost here

I went and saw my father in law yesterday. I saw him just a week ago when he came home from the hospital....to die at home. I can't believe the changes that have taken place. And not for the better. His eyes have sunken and are cloudy. They were never cloudy, he has always had the clearest blue eyes, like my husband and like my children. He is so thin, skin stretched over a skeleton. They have had to discontinue his TPN (nourishment) because his body can no longer absorb it and parts of him were swelling with fluid. He still has his sense of humor, and was making jokes. I wanted so to break down and cry but I didn't want my mother in law to cry too. She is going through enough right now, without me blubbering.

What it must be like to lay there, knowing you are going to die, when all you really want is to live. When you prayed for a miracle, that God would heal you. He's had to accept it, because it is inevitable. He will be gone from us much, much sooner than the doctors have predicted. His hospice nurses have told my mother in law that he will eventually just go to sleep and never wake. He will hover in a coma like state and then just drift away. I pray that is the case, that he doesn't have to suffer anymore than he already has.

He dreams instantly now when he falls asleep, and holds onto the bar on his hospital bed. I think it is because he feels like he is floating away and he is just not ready to go.

My kids are going to be so lost without him. Their Grampy that always gave them treats and held them as babies letting them falls asleep on him. Holding them for hours, and just loving them.

My husband is losing one of his best friends. When John was well, he and Steve were always together doing projects, making plans for something they wanted to build, or just sitting around and bullshitting. He is closer to his father than any man I have ever met. His grief will run very deep.


The way we'll always remember him