A Loved One Final Days

I remembered my dad as a strong person when I was 5 years old. He would place me on his head and on his neck and walk me through the neighborhood. I have fond memories of my Dad playing hide and seek with me.

I couldn't bear to see the man who raised me suffer so much. He had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and was progressively getting worse. His heart simply couldn't pump strong enough and was not able to get the fluids out of his lungs. People with this disease simply suffocated as their lungs filled up with fluid. I felt as if I was suffocating as I became my dad’s sole caregiver. I went with him to the hospital many late nights as the ambulance picked them up. His chronic illness made him go to the hospital on average once a month to remove the fluid from his lungs and his body. And at that point, the doctor suggested hospice because there was nothing more to do. I was told that my dad would get worse over time and that soon the medications will stop working.

Together with my sister, we had to come to a hard choice to place him in hospice. We have been through this once before with my mother who had died a decade ago. My mother had hospice at home because I could manage with her. I would have to take care of my mother for the most part. They taught me how to bathe her, change sheets with her in bed, and how to administer IV medication once. My mom had hospice at home where she died with her loved ones beside her.

As we discussed hospice for dad, we decided on a facility that was only one block from home. My dad needed more care than I could do with the hospice alone at home.

I spent every day with my dad and spent nights with him at Legacy's house. I couldn't imagine my dad Dying by himself in a cold hospice room. The hospice where my dad stayed was very home-like and cozy. I smelled the fresh cut flowers in a vase. They had a light cover mural of a garden above my dad's bed so he could look at it in the evenings. It was a peaceful scene of nature that echoed serenity.

My dad would look up and say “how beautiful” in Spanish. One day we were in his room, and he yelled out "Maria, eres tu?". He said looking at the corner of the room. My sister and I told Dad that Mom was resting. The hospice has been giving my dad medications that can cause hallucinations, so all we did was humor him. I would sleep in the chair bed they had next to my dad and make sure he didn't try to get out of bed. My dad was bedridden and too weak to walk. He was in diapers most of the time. My dad was a veteran of the Korean War, the hospice had a ceremony celebrating his service. They awarded him a certificate and a small quilt. My dad was not conscious during the ceremony. He mostly slept. He couldn’t open his eyes because of the drugs. I saw my dad become someone else. The drugs made him sleep and he could not eat. The doctor told me this was normal during the dying process. My dad's body was shutting down. Every day he was slipping away. I cried so much, I no longer had tears. This loss is so great I cry when I write about it. One night, my sister and I spent the night, the doctors warned us that any day my dad would die. We stayed around making sure that my dad was not left alone. At 12:30 a.m. on August 24th, 2019 he took his last breath. I knew this day would come but I wasn't ready for it. My sister and I comforted each other in our terrible loss. We stayed with him for hours before the faculty transferred him to the funeral home. My dad had a military funeral with a police escort to the county line and so we arrived at Bushnell Florida. There we said our goodbyes forever.