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I posted this a few years ago, and after a good session with my therapist this morning, it feels right to post it again. Another little memorial for dear old dad as we crash into the holiday, and the grief process I go through every year around this time.

I know it’s a little heavier than my usual book promotion shit, but if you ever wanted to get inside my head for real, here’s your chance.

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December 1st used to a day of good things. My fiance at the time Kelly and I used to go get our fresh Christmas tree on the 1st. Either it was a weekend day, or we’d do it after work, and we’d always go pick it out, bring it home and get it set up, then let it relax overnight. The next day we’d decorate.

At the time we’d moved into the renovated barn in Henniker my Mom and Dad already lived in. We’d gotten the other bottom floor apartment, and we loved it there. I was able to pop into to say hi to my Mom and Dad whenever I wanted, and between the lilacs and the view, the place had character. I know my Dad loved it.

You have to understand that my Dad was… 78 when he died and the last few years of his life saw him failing. He had almost died I think a year prior when his kidneys failed due to a triple bypass a few months prior to that, and as 2001 aged on, he became less and less able to live. He fell down all the time, forgot to take his meds, forgot to test his blood sugar, was less and less lucid, and had become a real burden on not only my mother, but Kelly and I, and to some extent my whole family. We couldn’t afford and weren’t willing to put him in a home, and we could only barely start the conversation of a home nurse to take care of him while my Mom worked, or while Kelly and I were away.

Back to the day of the first. Forgive me if my memory fails a bit on this, but the basics are all going to be here.

Kelly and I walked out to my car to leave to go get our tree. I had been worried that week because Dad had been worse than ever, so I walked over to the sliding glass door to their apartment and looked in the window. Dad was watching tv in his recliner, and he and I waved to each other. All was well.

We got in the car, and gallivanted downtown to the house where a really nice family sold Christmas trees, and we picked out a good one. I think we paid $35 for it. I tied it down on the car and drove back. The drive was short. Five miles maybe.

I parked, and we were carrying the tree across the yard to our place when one of us couldn’t see my Dad in the recliner. I think it was Kelly who went to the window, and said, “He’s lying on the floor.”

The slider was locked, so we ran around and let ourselves into the building, then into their apartment with the key. Dad had fallen again, couldn’t quite form sentences, and was covered in a cold sweat. I had Kelly get a small glass of OJ while I tested his blood sugar, and as I expected, it was low. Rock bottom in fact. We got the juice into him, and within minutes he was more coherent, and I was able to lift him back into his trusty recliner. When I asked him what he’d eaten that day he couldn’t remember eating anything, so we warmed him up some soup, and sat with him while he ate it. The food helped, and after about an hour he seemed fine, and my mother was due home very shortly, so we went back out into the yard where the tree sat waiting and we got it inside.

I told my Mom what happened, and that we needed to talk that night.

After the tree was setup I remember eating a dinner, and painting a miniature at the kitchen table. It was a Ral Partha knight I was painting for no reason other than to paint, and when my Mom came over I put it aside, and the three of us had a lengthy conversation about what the hell we were going to do about Dad.

Mom was distraught over the fall, and how fast he seemed to be degrading. We couldn’t leave him alone anymore. Mom couldn’t afford to miss work, and I had already missed multiple days to take him to the doctor’s, and I couldn’t afford to just quit. We figured we’d put it to the family, and see if my brothers and sisters would be able to pitch in for a nurse.

Before we called, I remember telling my Mom that we had to tell all of them that if they wanted to see Dad again, they should come up immediately. I think it was a Friday, and I said, “They need to come up like, tomorrow. I don’t think he’s going to last long, and they need to know to come soon.”

I hate myself for saying that.

We called several of my family members, and they were wonderful. All agreed that they would try and find money to help. Together it wouldn’t be that much if we all pitched in something. One of us told them that they should visit very soon, and they started to plan a trip up the next day, or by the end of the weekend.

I think that was around 8pm. I returned to painting.

At 10pm, my Mom pounded on the apartment door, screaming for help like her life depended on it. I answered it and was able to decipher that Dad had fallen again in the bedroom, and wasn’t responding to her. Kelly and I leapt out of the apartment, and ran down the hall to their place.

My Dad had gone down just inside the bedroom. He was using a walker at the time, and the walker had to be tossed out of the way for us to get into the bedroom. He had landed on his back, but his head had hit the doorjamb and was propped up in the corner near the closet. It looked painful and unnatural, but my father had no expression of pain on his face. He looked serene. Peaceful almost.

I knew he was dead, and God help me, I felt some relief.

My mother was hysterical. And I mean hysterical. Balling, screaming, bellowing, walking around throwing her arms in the air with no rhyme or reason. I tried to calm her down as Kelly got the phone, but that didn’t work. She was lost.

I’ll admit that I didn’t want to give him CPR for a few seconds. In the moment I knew that any kind of life he’d have after this moment wouldn’t be good, and I honestly felt like sustaining his existence in whatever form it would be, would only serve as a disservice to him, and to those of us who loved him.

But you can’t NOT give your dying father CPR. Kelly snapped me to my senses. I don’t remember what she said.

I moved him carefully until he was flat on his back (keeping his neck as stable as possible), and as she talked to the 911 dispatcher, we did CPR. She did most of the compressions while I did his breathing. After a few minutes I had Kelly get off to get my mother under control and to watch for the ambulance or police and I took over. After a minute my Dad made this gurgling noise. Air escaping, as if he was coming back to life. That was the death-rattle you hear about. The sound of the air you pushed into the person escaping from their stomach. He still had no pulse, and wasn’t breathing.

Not long after that a Henniker cop showed up with a defibrillator. As he set it up and fired it off the paramedics arrived, and then I went to my Mom, and somehow got her sitting, and got her hyperventilating under control. When I say she had become hysterical I mean it. She had entirely unplugged mentally.

The cop (I don’t know his name, but he was great) said that the defibrillator said he had a pulse, and that our CPR had kept him alive. He said we should gather our things, and head to the hospital, as the ambulance was leaving. That thought galvanized my Mom, and in my pajamas and sneakers, we piled into my Camry, and I drove… far faster than the speed limit towards the Concord Hospital.

The main road from Henniker to Concord is 202/9. A 55 mile an hour road that runs maybe ten miles to I89. The exit from Henniker onto 202/9 is a downward slope to the right. As my mother tried to gather herself, and Kelly fought to help with that we made that right hand turn onto the onramp and sitting there parked in the breakdown lane was the ambulance.

As we drove by there was no driver, and I knew then there was no reason to hurry. When the ambulance stops, and the driver goes into the back to help, it’s all hands. Either they resuscitate you right then and there, or you don’t make the trip. The golden hour doesn’t matter anymore.

My Mom asked me why I had slowed down to the speed limit, and I pointed out the parked ambulance that had Dad in it, and I said that we were going to beat them to the ER anyway, so we might as well not get a ticket.

The ride was us talking about the previous twenty minutes, and how crazy it felt. My mother was sure Dad would pull through. He’d survived two triple bypasses, countless back surgeries, a mortar round in World War Two and worse. A fall? Not enough to fuck with Arthur Clyde Philbrook.

Sitting in the ER waiting for the ambulance to show I was less optimistic. Despite the ray of sunshine that the cop illuminated us with, I knew the likelihood that Dad would pull through was nearly nonexistent. I told my Mom, “We need to start making plans for his funeral.”

The ambulance pulled in. No flashing lights.

A few minutes later a really nice administrator lady asked us to move to a tiny room away from the waiting area. I forget what the room was called, but the little plate with the braille on it said something benign, like ‘room you’re told your loved one died.’

Questions were asked and answered, and I could tell she was gathering info to make the death announcement properly. The look on her face when she looked at me told me what I already knew.

A doctor came in; also a lady, and addressed my mother. Dad had been pronounced dead.

I think me telling my Mom in the waiting area prepared her. She cried, but didn’t lose her marbles like she had in the apartment. The doctor didn’t know what had ended his life, but they would find out soon. Not really an answer you need in that moment.

I hadn’t cried yet. I am not really a crier. It takes a lot, and I am not the guy who panics, or gets emotional in the moment. I focus, I really do. People have told me that it’s calming, being around me when the chaos hits. It’s a compliment. Sometimes I wish I would just let shit affect me so someone else could take the reins.

The doctor asked if we wanted to see his body before we left, and for some reason, I said I wanted to. I think I said yes because I knew after that moment, the next time I saw him he’d be in a suit, in his casket.

The doctor went with me to an ER suite where a mother and father sat with their sick or injured child. The doctor stood beside me as I looked down on my Dad, laying there with his eyes closed as if he’d fallen asleep while reading the newspaper, like he always did after I got out of school. Still, I didn’t cry.

“He was a good Dad?” the doctor asked, and that did me in.

I told her about him as I cried, not much, just a little bit about how I felt. I know my Dad wasn’t perfect, and in the years since his death I’ve learned that he was even less perfect than I knew him to be, but in that moment, he was the best man ever, EVER.

And he was dead. Gone. I’d lost my Dad, my bestest buddy, my biggest cheerleader, the guy who winked at me when I brought a girl home, and asked me if I liked her still a week later. The guy who brought me to baseball and basketball practice, and yelled at me the summer day I lost my glasses tubing down a river.

When I left the ER suite the family I’d walked past had overheard everything, and they were crying as hard or harder as I was. I can’t imagine how it felt to have a front row suite to a son mourning his father not thirty minutes after he’d died. I wonder to this day if they thought about their child having to do the same after the decades passed.

I returned to Mom and Kelly, and we drove home. We made the calls from my apartment. I don’t remember quite who called who, but as memory serves, I think I was the one who actually dialed the phone and spoke. It was too much for my Mom, and it wasn’t Kelly’s job to do, though she was there for us.

The calls were quick; no one was surprised, and despite the grief, there was little to say. Dad was dead. There would be a wake and funeral soon. Call you tomorrow.

We got Mom home, and the apartment cleaned up. I don’t know how she slept in that room that night, or ever again, but I suspect exhaustion had something to do with it.

We went to bed as well, and once the lights went out, Kelly put her hand on me, and that’s when I had my breakdown. In the dark with no witnesses to judge me, I cried and cried. Sobbed. Wracked with grief and hopelessness it came over and over in waves. I couldn’t imagine a life without my Dad. He’d been everything to me for so long.

But I would move on. I had to. He would give me shit if I didn’t. He was like that. Maybe not the best man ever, or even the best Dad ever, but he was my Dad, and I loved him.