9-20-09

[luvstoscrap]

 Well it is coming up on the 1 year anniversary of my dads death.  At this point a year ago he was in the hospital with his health declining.  I didn't know all of the things that Randolph hospital was not doing for him.  If I would have stayed there with him maybe he would have lasted a little longer.  But everyone kept telling me that He was in res sped care and they would take care of him and I needed to take care of myself.  I wish I had not listened to anyone and done what I wanted and stayed with him, because I knew he told me several times he didn't want to be alone when he died.  I feel as though I let him down because they had him so sedated that he didn't even know he was in this world.  He went into the hospital to give me a little rest and he was fine, he had just fell and he didn't want to listen to me about staying still til someone could help him around.  That has always been one problem that we have is that we were both hard headed.  So I thought well he doesn't want to listen to me then let him stay in the hospital for a few days and then he may be more inclined to listen to me.  Little did I know that would be our last spar "sort of speak".  I was in constant conflict about him being there. 

In some ways I am a little grateful because I don't think I could have went through that at home.  I was with him when he drew his last breathe and I have been sad every since. 

After he passed we left and let the nurses clean him and we went back in and sat with him for a while. I gave his family time to come and say goodbye to him and fellowship a little because he was going straight to the funeral home.  I didn't want to let him go but I knew I had to.  I remember when I went to the funeral home and saw him for the last time it was like he was just there laying on a table and he looked natural.  He had his camouflaged had on with the snap on the front.  He had on his snap on shirt with a white tee under it.  I would call them western shirts the ones that snapped all the way down and then there were 2 snaps on the pockets.  He had on his cowboy boots and his belt.  He looked so good his hair was starting to grow back a little bit.