Trigger warnings: car accident, physical trauma, death, hospital scenes.

Sunday afternoon a Sheriff knocked on my door. My 86 year old dad crashed his truck. He veered off the road at high speed and slammed into a culvert. He was taken to the local hospital by ambulance, but from the get go, it was clear that there was a traumatic brain injury and that he might have had a “medical event” that sent him veering off the road at high speed.

Since then, I’ve logged a lot of hours between the ER that day, then at the hospital. We believe he had a stroke as brain scans from the ER showed he had prior, smaller strokes in white matter areas of the brain (which can go unnoticed more but can also foretell a larger stroke to come) because as bad as his driving might have been, he wouldn’t have veered off the road for 100 feet going full speed. Something happened.

Not going to lie, a part of me wishes the accident would have taken him, because this week, seeing him not in his right mind, not even recognize me or anyone else, and getting worse by the day has been hard and a quick end would have saved a lot of his suffering now.

With a patient who is angry, agitated, flailing around, slurring gibberish, and ripping out IVs, even though badly injured, they resorted to oral morphine this afternoon and I lost all composure. That’s what they gave Mario to send him out pain-free. All those memories came rushing back like glass shattering and I broke. I had to sit down. Tears streaming down my face not just for my dad, but remembering losing Mario.

There were too many similarities. Mario got to the ER thrashing and fighting the staff with no comprehension of what was going on. Toxins from a failed liver had reached a crescendo and caused complete incoherence. He was unable to speak clearly, never mind understand anything that was going on. Because he had no other physical injuries, the staff at the time elected to restrain him to get an IV and medications in. Those were taken off the next day when the doctor told me that his liver had fully failed along with his kidneys and the rest of his body was slowly giving out. The only easy part about Mario was that it was abundantly clear he was done. He’d lived his life and the best thing to do was pump him full of morphine until his heart gave out. And so they did.

So as my mind was racing through memories, I could vaguely make out the nurse to my right saying, “He lived a good long life, and now he’s done”. Her voice trailed off. Someone else offered me a box of Kleenex. My mom, ever stoic (I think it’s the German in her) said she couldn’t make a decision right then. We left and I said I would come back later.

We went back to my parent’s house. My mom busied herself with making us some lunch and kept talking the whole time while I just sat in silence, buried up to my eyeballs in grief. Later, while we were eating, she asked me, “What do you think happens to people when they die?” My mom tried to cling to the heaven and hell thing for a long time in her life, but this was an interesting question coming from her. She continued, “People have a soul and you know, they sometimes send you signs after they’re gone.” I replied, “I think they go to a different plane of existence.”

My mom will have a private moment where she grieves where no one can see her. She’s always been that way. I’ve only ever seen her cry once in my life and it was for a span of about 2 minutes when she got the call that her mom died. Then it was right back to stoic, tough mom. I’m the polar opposite. I’m an emotional jellyfish, often wearing those emotions on my sleeve. I’m empathetic, feeling other people’s emotions in edition to mine. I can’t imagine being stoic like that or holding all the emotions inside.

For the vast majority of people, we outlive our parents. My dad had his faults, he wasn’t perfect by any means. Stubborn as a damn mule on many fronts. But I grew on him from the day I was born. He made sure to express how proud he was of me for various accomplishments in life. He always accepted me just as I was–didn’t try to mold me into something I was not. He was smart, and could fix anything and a lot of my mechanical and fix it knowledge comes from him. He was also the one who got me interested in the unknown and a general quest for knowledge.

Just about every Sunday for the majority of the 10+ years they’ve lived close to me, I’d go hang out with my parents and we’d play card games and eat dinner. In the last few years, I’ve been very mindful of both of them getting up in years and that any one of those Sunday game nights could be the last one. Well, it turns out the last one for my dad was June 23rd and actually happened at my house because they both wanted to come over to see the new teardrop trailer I bought. I also got to make him his last stuffed artichokes (his favorite) for Father’s day. And on June 20th, I got to take him out to lunch for the last time at one of our favorite places. I’m going to hold on to those last memories and hope they outlive the memories of this week.