2 weeks, 2 hours, 2 minutes

My previous post unfortunately has been resolved. The confusion I have cluttered my head with has come to an abrupt halt, and soggy clarity has gripped me.

Two weeks ago today, I received a phone call that is still ringing. I wonder to myself when I will wake up, or if this could have been avoided. Guilt and denial have stung my eyes everyday since then. My dad was in the hospital, unconscious, and no one knew what was wrong. The minutes passed by like lifetimes. Eventually, a lifetime did pass, on October 3rd. He was 52. Today has been better than yesterday, and so on. But I am unsure still what the measure of "better" is.

He is slipping into my past, and I am tugging so hard to keep him in my present. We discovered he had an asthma attack, one of the countless others he has conquered his entire life. This one was different, and the air stopped. His brain died, my dad was gone. The machines kept beeping and humming and we said goodbye. Still clouded by hope, and the chance for a false miracle.

The doctor wore cowboy boots, he showed us his brain, and he said the man laying in that bed wasn't my dad anymore. The 4 of us became one, they held me up. Their faces, different takes on the same person, I could see my dad in all of them.

His eyes watered, we were told they weren't tears. I didn't care. We jammed away, to a viking funeral being piped through tiny ear buds, his eyes watered again, and pooled heavily in the nooks on his long nose. He heard me, he knew I was there.

The man in the cowboy boots called it "posturing". He didn't explain it to us, so I looked it up. It meant damage, bad.

I stared at him for hours, he looked OK, his chest moved up and down, his heart steadily thumped in his chest, sweat rolled from his brow. He never smiled, squeezed, or winked at us. I kept wondering... If my dad isn't there, who is?

I miss everything about him. I miss the 45 minute weekly chat that I would complain about. I miss the cackle of his laugh, like he was holding it in. I miss all the things he knew, and never told me. I miss all the things I knew and never told him. I never told him I was proud of him, but he reminded me every time. I miss my dad.

They pulled the tube from him, and his chest roared. He panted, grasping for the stale air squeezing past his parched lips and tongue. I could see his tongue, purple and beaten from the abuse of his miscalculating jaw. His eye rolling back and forth with the sway of the bed. Then came the shots. I would never leave him, but the doctors said we must. I lost count of them, 3 1/2, maybe 4 1/2. It ripped through his veins and made him drunk with death. He fought off each one, like I expected him to. A gurgle and a puff and he kept ticking, kept driving, kept rocking. The last one was too much, they put my dad to sleep, like my dogs in the years past, they always called it humane... painless. All I feel now is the pain of it, the shots didn't work.

For 2 hours, he swung at the barrage, and at 10:15am, little bubbles sputtered from his mouth, and his eyelids crept open. Again, the 4 of us became one. None of us looked like him anymore, my dad was gone.

The world kept spinning that day, under my feet, I was oblivious. All of the things I questioned and feared went away. I have spent my adult life thinking outside of a box that I never spent time in. A box now with four corners, their faces like mine. I have found love, it was here the whole time.