The airplane touched down in Albuquerque. A plane ride I’d taken every 4 days the last 4 months. I knew to expect the turbulence. I knew to expect the worst. In April we had been told he only had 4-6 months to live.
I spoke to him on the phone that Thursday. All I could understand was a very muddled, “I love you.” And that was the last words he spoke to me. On August 30, 2003, my plane touched down and I was there to watch my father die.
The jovial turkey hunters on the plane kept my mind busy, teaching me exactly how to shoot a turkey, and I never once told them why I was flying to Albuquerque.
I arrived at the hospital to find my mother, my father’s friend , a preacher. And my father. He was in a drug induced haze. I had developed a routine in the last 4 months, I would come in, grab his toes and say, “hey sicko!” or, “You’re still living!” This time when I grabbed his toes, hoping he would feel some familiarity, they were cold, and thick. Unbelievable that this very athletic, over 6ft man that used to play on his guitar, mostly old Eagles songs, Desperado was his favorite.
Mom lifted the covers back and from the knee down to his toes was blue and purple and yellow. His heart had already gone into defense mode where it shuts down pumping to the extremities and concentrates only getting blood to the main organs.
We left that night. The next morning we picked out his urn. A beautiful urn made of wood, with a shadow box on top and a beautiful poem on a slide out piece of wood. It would have been perfect, had it been someone else’s urn. It would’ve been beautiful had it belonged to anyone else.
We went to the hospital afterwards and we were told by Hospice that it was just a matter of hours. So I told my mother I was going to stay until he passed. In April when we found out how sick he was, my mother and I discussed his death and where we would be. My mother didn’t want to be there. But I wanted to be holding his hand. It was very much like the idea that I came into this world him holding mine, he would leave this world holding mine.
So the clock ticked away. I talked to dad as his eyes would roll around. Occasionally I would joke with him about how we could play a game of Scrabble, (his favorite game with me) and I would definitely win. We read magazines. We walked the halls.
At 7:41pm, August 31, 2003. my dad passed away, and I was cradling his head in my arms. I told him to go. Go to Heaven and be the best damn Angel God ever saw.
It was then that I fell by his side and screamed, “Not now! I haven’t learned enough from you yet! I don’t know how you cook pork chops so perfectly!”. They tried to pull me away. I stood back up and grabbed his head and it had already gone cold. “I screamed at him , Don’t go cold yet! It’s not right! It’s not time!”. But his time had already passed. And it was time. His body was in such agony.
He was 62. Had a perfect physical in January of that year. And in April he as dying. In August he was gone.
I wanted to put my fist through the wall. I wanted to crawl into the bed with him, like I had done a million times as a child. I wanted to play one more round of Scrabble. Just one.
My mother took his ashes and spread them at the wolf preserve in Florence, Colorado. He loved the wolves and when they had visited there the year prior, when they drove down the mountain , he cried. He said he felt the most spiritual he had ever felt. So there he lays now.
The urn’s shadow box holds his glasses, his wedding ring, his Navy card, and the Q and the X squares from our Scrabble game. Because the Q and the X are worth the most points, and he loved getting them while he was here, and I know he’s using them in Heaven.
For me, this is the day the music died. Dance With My Father.
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