Cancer Sucks...the end. #14

Robert (Rughead)
11-20-50 2-2-07

My Dad passed away at 6:26am on 2-2-07. It’s been five months. The doctors were right on from the start. It went like clock work. He was diagnosed on August 21st. Not feeling well, but as a whole, looked like the man I knew all my life, such a difference from the person who lay in this house just two days ago. I came to Colorado on the 19th of January. I planned to spend a couple of weeks, to visit. I thought I’d travel back and forth for awhile…till the time came.

No matter what the doctors said, deep down I didn’t believe this disease would claim him so quick. I said the words, I mulled them over, I drilled them into my head, I cried over them, I thought I had accepted them, but his passing has shown me that I didn’t believe them. I’m in shock. I’m numb. He was here just days ago, talking, laughing. Over a forty-eight hour period he visibly weakened. The hospital bed that took up the living room became his everything. He told me to be strong, right after he told me he was scared. I told him I was to. He held my hand; a tear slid down his cheek and with eyes that could see your soul, he asked me to stay by his side till the end. He said our relationship was so much more then father/daughter, I was his closest friend through this. “If you’re here I’ll be o-kay.” I said I would and I did.

The last week of his life was filled with many emotions. My family, his siblings, which were never a constant in our life came to say goodbye. With mixed emotions I kept my mouth shut. Inside I was angry that my daddy was the reason for their sudden devotion, their regrets, and their empty pledge to keep in contact. Resentfully I watched them whisper their last words to my father.
As the end approached I watched as his body turned black and blue, the oxygen abandoning his limbs in a useless attempt to save the vital organs. At night he cried out in pain as his feet slowly died. We added more morphine to his plethora of pain meds, and this seemed to help, unless he was just too high to tell us it wasn’t. He whispered, “I love you, Kee” (from childhood he was Daa and I was Kee) the day before he died. Each of us, my brother, my step mother and myself told him it was o-kay to go. In our own way we did our best to comfort his body, mind and soul. We lied and told him we were alright, to relax and go to sleep, stop struggling and fighting.

I will never see him again. I can’t call him on the phone. That is very strange to me and this fact has not really gotten its grip on me yet. I am going through the motions, and as long as I’m busy I don’t have to feel the reality of his absence. My world is completely different, there’s a hollow feel to it, an emptiness in my heart that makes me so fucking angry. I rock back and forth trying to shake this feeling, this weight that lays on my soul, but it stays. I can’t cry enough; I can’t scream enough, I can’t find anything to ease this pain. I can’t grasp this. It’s all so wrong. My daddy….he’s gone.
And where did he go? Is he ok?Heaven and hell, are they real? I am not a religious person. I do believe that there’s a God or Goddess, a higher power out there, but heaven and hell? A place for the good and the bad? I don’t believe that. Whatever Being created us would not create us so differently, so diverse, and with free will just to punish us for not following one strict path. This Being, all powerful, just, and righteous does not make mistakes right? I could go on, but my point, as simply as possible, is just that if there is a God, in the Christian sense of the word, he/she (or both) knew what she/he was doing. Whether we actually have freewill or we are pre-destined to be who we are, it’s not a mistake, and to be punished when it’s all over is the same as saying that that power made a mistake in our creation…and if that’s the case this power is guilty as well.
Also, I don’t know that I believe our loved ones watch over us after they die. This is a little selfish to me, to think that there is nothing left but to sit and watch someone. It gives people comfort to think they have not really left us. Self serving and not at all realistic in my eyes.
Then there’s the idea that those who pass are reunited with loved ones who have passed before them, this is also hard for me to believe. It’s a nice, comfortable thought, but wouldn’t heaven be pretty crowded by now? And as much as we love the people that have gone before us, would it really be ‘heaven’ to spend eternity with them? What would we do? You can only roam around on soft fluffy clouds for so long.
Reincarnation is another theory, which I can’t fully wrap my head around. I guess it could happen…like a ‘do over’ in the bigger scheme of things. If you don’t learn all you need to ‘go on’ you come back to try again, each time advancing. Like maybe Gandhi was an old soul.

Or maybe we just go to sleep and that’s it. That’s not very comforting, and seems too simple for this complicated existence.
All of these thoughts are abbreviated of course and when I lay down to go to sleep there are plenty more ‘what if’s’. I don’t think I have ever put so much thought into what happens after you die. I’m just worried about him. Not because I think he’s burning, or stuck in-between places, just because it’s the unknown. Dieing is like a trip to an unfamiliar place you’ve never been to, and in this world of choices you have no choice but to go, you don’t know what the ‘ride’ will be like, nobody can come with you, and you can’t call home when you get there. Pretty scary to me.
I have no regrets through this process. I’m happy with the time I spent with him and the talks we had. I was able to say all the things I needed to and to ask the questions I needed the answers to. I know his favorite season was Fall, and his favorite place was Red Rocks. I was able to ease his mind in regards to some things pertaining to how I was raised. He thanked me for that. We talked for hours about everything and nothing; some people never get that chance. I’m grateful for every minute, and I will miss him to no end. Some say, with time my pain will ease….I don’t believe this either…I think with time you grow used to the pain, you grow accustom to it, you build a tolerance and it doesn’t seem as severe, but its still there.

I love you, my Daa, my daddy, my father, my friend.

I'll light a candle for you everynight.