The Goodbye That Woke Me Up

I’ve tried to make sense of the last two years of my life in blog form multiple times and can’t seem to get the words just right. So in true form of who I am, let me just get messy on paper for a minute to try to get this out.

I know I’m gonna look back when I’m at the end of my life and remember this time. It changed me. It altered who I am as a person and who I thought I wanted to be.

I not only moved, birthed a child, and saw a major shift in my career, I lost the most stable thing in my life—my dad. And I didn’t just lose him, I watched him die.

Excuse my language as I know you all remember me as the Christian missionary and mostly church culture will pretend like they don’t cuss here and there, but.. hospice is the biggest bitch I’ve ever met.

My husband and I set out to Dallas for a temporary work assignment in November of 2022. We thought we would come, do the job, and go back home. Adya was approaching 18 months and becoming a fun toddler and things were alright all around.

The morning we left I got a positive pregnancy test. Our life was truly changing. And I don’t know how— but immediately I knew I was having a son. Prior to that moment we had joked about little brother here and there and knew immediately after having adya we wanted a big family. We settled quite well in Dallas, focusing on our work and finding adya a cute little day school while I navigated morning sickness that made me feel like a corpse.

Then one day as I was vomiting for the fourth time in an hour, I received a text from my brother. I didn’t read the text, but Sri came and told me that my dad was dying and my brother had text me to let me know. I was very confused and checked the text and dad wasn’t dying he had only went to the hospital for a fall.

But minutes turned into hours, and hours to days. And I was on a plane to birmingham the next day because suddenly a simple UTI had turned into all kinds of ailments no one could explain. Ailments then turned into a stroke? And then a stroke turned into paralysis. It was a big WTF moment if there’s ever been one. My dad, the hero in my every story, was lying there on life support while his body shut down. Due to some infection that spread, paralysis took over his body and they removed part of his spine in order to save his life. The doctors gave us little hope, but hope nonetheless, and we believed like hell in the God our dad preached to us for years.

While everyone believed and prayed and rallied together, we saw our dad improve enough that he regained his ability to speak and though he would never walk again, he wiggled his toes! As he progressed, I went back to Dallas to be with my 1 year old baby and husband , and tried my damndest to not be so sick. But morning sickness mixed with severe anemia during pregnancy had me literally losing consciousness at any given moment. I was sick. But dad was getting better so everything was okay. I opted to find out the gender as soon as possible—I wanted to tell my daddy he was having a grandson. So that maybe, just maybe, he would want to hold on a while in this life.

But ultimately, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was. My dad graduated from a critical ICU room, to an inpatient rehabilitation hospital and was moving in the right direction. Until one day he wasn’t. None of us can tell you what happened , probably not even dad if he was here. But somehow—dad lost his will to live. His eagerness to fight. He asked to term his existing living will and became a DNR, and ultimately decided to finish his life at home on hospice.

When I tell you that was the hardest 12 days of my life, I mean it with every part of my being. I don’t wish it on anyone—ever.

When I look back on those twelve days, I wish could I could tell you we did everything we could to make the end of my dad’s life meaningful. But it was too much. We didn’t understand why this was happening, what he—or we, did to deserve such a bullshit ending. Though we were thankful for the unique opportunity to say goodbye, we were exhausted. People, from various decades of dad’s life came to appreciate him, pray with him, and kiss him goodbye. While we sat back and all of gained about 15 pounds because all we could control was eating something tasty to make that hell hurt less. When dad slept, he fought demons. We watched him be angry. We watched him be sad. We watched him forget us. We watched him remember again. And just like they tell you in the books, we got to see him be our daddy again one last time. Right before he passed, he was fully lucid, and we did everything we could to soak those moments in. But we were tired, and so much was left unsaid.

I regret it now, but at one point in those 12 days I sat with dad, and I begged him to stop suffering. I didn’t want to see his pain anymore. I wanted him to be free, even if it meant I lost him. And that’s what happened—and he’s better off. But damn we weren’t ready.

It’s almost been two years and I still can’t face the fact that he’s gone. It feels like at any moment I can call him and say something. Ask him about a car problem, tell him about the kids, or just chat for a minute. But at the end of the day, some random Joe carries his phone number now (I’ve called it), and we reached the end for this life.

There’s much more to this season of life that I have to expound on—but at the end of the day, know this. Nothing is forever. We’re not that powerful to keep it that way. And it should be like that. I had just held my dad’s hands moments before he breathed his last breath, no one else was in the room. I kissed him, told him I loved him and I knew this was the end and I would be okay but I would miss him. We had on his favorite gospel music, and the room slowly filled with his closest family. I went and sat on the couch, and I feel like he saw me lay down just tired as hell, right after that, my sister in law sat next to him, and in went a breath… then out— and we all knew immediately, he left us.

Since that moment, a lot of me also left. The insecurities, the doubts of what to do next, the petty little fights I had with people, the need to always be right, and also sadly the security of always having someone there for me. I’ve tried to navigate being a wife, a mother, a daughter, a student, a business woman, but a lot of it has felt pretty temporary since he’s been gone. And somehow, as bad as I want to hate him for leaving me like that, his last breath was the reminder I needed to remember not to waste my moments I get to be here alive. My last gift from the man I’ve loved most in my life. And hopefully we can all learn from it.

Until next time friends, remember to be living while you’re alive. 🤍