The Void – March 5, 2024
On March 5, 2024, the bottom dropped out from my life as I free-fell into a shadowy abyss. I lost my rock, my best friend, and the first man I ever loved . . .
On March 5, 2024, the bottom dropped out from my life as I free-fell into a shadowy abyss. I lost my rock, my best friend, and the first man I ever loved as my father was called from this planet to his eternal rest somewhere in the vast cosmos. In an instant, everything changed.
“Your father is in cardiac arrest,” the faceless voice from somewhere in the hospital uttered so calmly on the other end of the phoneline.
“What?” I gasped breathlessly, those words smashing around inside my brain, ripping it apart.
“He’s been in cardiac arrest for a couple of minutes now. Do you want us to administer CPR? A DNR was signed previously,” the unidentified voice asked unperturbedly as if she was asking me what I had for dinner that night.
‘Yes,” I shrieked. “Do whatever you need to do to save him. I know my Dad didn’t sign a DNR, and I didn’t either.”
“Well, we have a paper signed that…,” she mumbled, and I sliced into her words abruptly. How can she be so even toned and matter of fact when my father was dying.
“I don’t care what the paper says. Do the CPR,” I howled, terror gripping at my heart. I was so panicked, I couldn’t even cry. Everything shut down in my body to shield me from the inevitable, but no armor would ever be strong enough for the impending reality that was crashing down around me like flaming meteors.
“Since he’s been in cardiac arrest for a couple minutes, the outcome may have changed,” she continued composedly. It wasn’t her father fighting for his life.
“Please, just do the CPR,” I screeched, my voice quivering with abject horror furious that this conversation was still happening and wasting precious seconds. I wasn’t about to get into the logistics of who signed what when my father was dying.
As I waited those interminable minutes to learn of my father’s fate, my son, rapt in three-year-old bliss was galloping joyfully around the house naked, as I was in the middle of preparing him for bed when I received this harrowing phone call. My husband was asleep earlier than usual, getting much needed repose for an overnight overtime shift, and my mother was at a concert. I was alone, and I was crumbling. How was life still continuing around me when my father was fighting for his life?
My insides tore themselves to pieces as I screamed to myself that this couldn’t be real. How in the world was this happening? My father, the man who conquered stage four esophageal cancer twenty years ago, and yet again two more times when it recurred. The man who still went to work as a bartender and to the racetrack to bet horses with a chemo bag attached to his waist was dying. When I would ask him how he was able to do all this when most people receiving chemo can barely function, he would say, “Cancer won’t get me,” and he meant it.
No one expected him to live, but he did. The treatment he received was brutal. At the age of fifty-six he was receiving a dosage of chemotherapy and radiation that was given to a healthy man in their twenties. He took it all and didn’t complain once or give voice to his fear. He had one aspiration, and that was to live.
Now, that life was being siphoned out of him with every second that passed. When the hospital called back, I knew what I would hear before I even picked up the phone. I felt it in my heart. A part of me had left.
My son was running up and down the hall dancing and squealing happily, and I was being told my father had died. A perfect example of the absurdity of life. Initially, no tears came. My inner recesses shut down. I was anaesthetized with a cocktail of shock, disbelief and devastation. The thought of my father lying in a cold hospital bed alone, enveloped by the cloak of death was crushing. I wanted my Daddy, but he was gone forever.
I wondered if in his final moments he felt death approaching, clawing at him. I questioned if he went willingly, tired of fighting all the battles with his inspiring will to live over the decades. What really shattered me was wondering if he was scared, and what his last thoughts were. He was alone when he died, and that was heartbreaking. A man who was so loved shouldn’t have died so isolated, but he did. Did he think of me at the end? Did he think of little Nico who was the light of his life? I’ll never know.
The night before his death, I intuitively knew something was very wrong. He sent me periodic texts from his hospital bed reminding me of where his important papers were, and how to access his bank accounts. That unnerved me. I questioned why he was messaging this to me. I told him that I was anxious as it seemed like he didn’t think he would be coming home. He never answered that text.
The day of his death, I drove to the hospital. Something inside me recognized that I had to get there as soon as possible. When I arrived, he was so fatigued that he could barely keep his eyes open, but when he saw me, he smiled. We didn’t speak much. I just sat next to him, at the side of his bed, so he knew he wasn’t alone. He whispered he was becoming disoriented, and very tired. I felt so powerless. The warning signs of what was impending besieged me, but I didn’t want to see.
He fell asleep. I went to the restroom and debated on whether to wake him before I left since he appeared so exhausted, and I knew he hadn’t been sleeping well. When I returned to the room, his eyes opened. I’m so grateful he did.
“I’m going to leave, Dad. You get some sleep,” I said quietly, kissing his cheek. He couldn’t speak, but he gave me his proverbial fist bump as he always did even during happier times. Thinking back on that now, even in his final hours, my dad was still inside the body that was about to take flight. “I love you, Dad.” Those were the last words I ever said to my father. Hours later, he was gone.
I woke my husband up. “Anthony, my father died,” I mumbled, shaking him awake from his peaceful slumber while my world was crumbling to ashes.
“What?” he asked, brushing off the remnants of the shelter of sleep to connect with me in my hellish pain.
“My father died,” I said again, the words seemingly disconnected and disembodied as if they weren’t real.
“What happened?” he asked, rising out of bed.
“He had a heart attack. He died,” I reiterated again, attempting to convince myself of this excruciating reality.
“I’m so sorry,” he said as he enveloped me in his arms, and I finally allowed myself to cry.
I didn’t break down, wailing and bawling in his arms. I wouldn’t give consent to my psyche to suffer the depths of my utter devastation knowing if I did, it would swallow me whole. Instead, I allowed myself to whimper, small cries that held back an avalanche of pain and agony. I was in a dissociative state. Nothing seemed real. Time stopped. What was I going to do without my dad?
“I loved your father, too,” my husband said, as his eyes welled up with tears. In the years I’ve been with him, I can count on one hand the number of times I ever saw him come close to crying, and this dreadful moment was one of them.
We sat on the couch, and he held me. My brain was swirling, and all I kept saying to myself, over and over like a broken record, was, “Dad is dead. Dad is dead. Dad is dead…”