Counting Down

One......two......three.....each labored breath was accompanied by a low moan on the exhale....six.....seven.....the timer on the phone counted down the seconds from the minute timer as  the slow shallow breathing continued.....twelve.....thirteen.....fourteen.....one minute was up.

There was no breath number fifteen. I had just counted my Dad's last breaths on Earth*. I looked at my brother. "He's gone", I said. Dad's pain was done. He had gone to join my Mom in Heaven. 

I had made my peace with it in the previous days.

He called me at precisely two am Friday morning. The conversation was short. "Joe, I need you to come stay with me"

"I'm on my way. I'll be there as fast as I can".

It was just a a few days more than month ago, on his birthday, when he went to see the doctor about swelling and fluid leaking from his leg. Two days later he was back at the Doc, and on his way to the hospital where he was told it was the Big C, a mass filling his whole abdomen, more spread through his body. Go home. Call hospice. Make arrangements. 

He was vomiting in a bucket when I got there. Uneaten food sat on the tray beside his recliner. He was weak. Throughout Friday I helped him get up, brought him water, watched westerns on TV with the volume turned way too loud. He slept on and off, more on than not. Hospice came. A hospital bed was ordered. He moved into the bed. Friday night was rough. He was up every ten minutes or so. Saturday saw my family come to see him. The hospice nurse came by. The end was getting near. Morphine was brought into the picture. Saturday night was restless, but better than Friday as the drugs held him down.

Sunday my brother came. The hospice nurse administered stronger cocktails to ease his pain. Death came to visit too. 

My Pop was gone. I choose to remember him sipping beer, laughing, his good humor evident. Not as the shrunken, broken shell that held on to me as I lifted him up in the hospital bed in his living room.

So long Dad. You are back with Mom, where you belong.

* the hospice nurse said tracking the breaths per minute was a gauge of his status