I used to think that my parents were really healthy.
My world was turned upside down when my mum was diagnosed with cancer.
The whole family’s attention was on her and we were focused on taking her to all the medical tests and scans before the oncologists came up with a suitable treatment plan for her.
One day during this time, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt an urge to send my mum a message. My parents were with my sister that week. I asked my mum how she was. I was really confused when she told me that my dad was on an ambulance. He had just accompanied my mum to her medical appointment that morning, and he was not the one I expected anything to happen to.
Mum told me that Dad was not conscious when he was taken into the ambulance. My sister was with him. Because I did not know which hospital he was on the way to, I could only sit and wait. My mum told me to try to get some sleep. She anticipated some tiring days ahead.
I remember thinking: “This couldn’t possibly be happening.”
As I was waiting for news about the situation, I was hoping and praying that it was nothing serious.
“Dad is going to be fine,” I told myself. “The doctors are going to tell us that it was all just a scare.” I closed my eyes and frantically visualised my dad with healing lights surrounding his body, healing him from the inside out. I imagined my dad conscious, perfectly fine and exactly like his usual self.
A while later, I received messages from my sister to let me know that Dad was sent to the hospital and that I should be there.
It did not sound good at all.
It was snowing that night and traffic was busy. By the time I arrived at the hospital, my dad was already gone. He died in his sleep.
I did not know this at the time though. I was still holding onto hope.
As soon as I was allowed into the room, I rushed to my dad’s side and took his hand. It felt very warm, but it was very strange for me to see him lying motionless on a hospital bed, with tubes and machines all over him. I talked to him, but there was no response. His heart rate picked up, however, as soon as I spoke. The monitor was beeping wildly and a nurse had to come in to silence it. My sister was convinced that Dad must have heard me.
I told him that we all loved him, and that my sister and I were there, and that we’d bring Mum as soon as we could. I told him where he was and what happened to him, in case he was conscious and was confused and panicking in his mind. We told him that he didn’t have to worry about Mum.
Later on, when my mum was there, it seemed to us that there was some slight motion in Dad’s eyes underneath his eyelids.
It is difficult to write about what happened that day, but eventually my family had to make the decision to take my father off the ventilator because he was already considered “brain dead” by the doctors. We were told that he had a devastating bleed in his brain stem – an area of the brain that could never be operated on. We saw scans of his brain and how his skull was filled with blood.
The doctor who explained everything to us treated us and Dad with an incredible amount of humanity.
I asked him if he believed that my dad could no longer hear us. He said that they did not know for sure, but we should all speak to him as though he could hear us.
We did not get to say goodbye to Dad or to tell him one last time that we loved him while he was still conscious. We stayed by his side, however. We cried, we held his hands, we touched his face, we talked to him as if he could hear us, we laughed through our tears, we reminded him of some of the good times that we had together, and we eventually said our goodbyes.
Some of the scenes that followed were heartbreaking to experience. I remember watching the colour drain from Dad’s face, and his arms and legs. I remember seeing his heartbeat come to a stop on the machine. I remember the sobbing and the tears running down our faces uncontrollably as we stood by his bedside.
The doctor told us that we could stay with him for as long as we needed.
When we were alone with him, I remember telling Dad that it was almost Christmas and that it was snowing outside. I took his hand one last time and told him that we were going home. I reassured him that the doctors and nurses at the hospital would look after his body. I told him that I knew he would be watching us from Heaven.
I remember Dad looking very serene when his body was no longer forced to keep breathing, and my heart felt more at peace.
For many days after that, my mind could not be reconciled with the fact that my dad was gone.
I kept trying to have conversations with him in my mind. I could picture him very clearly. The images of him would respond to whatever I said to him. I knew him so well that my mind could come up with the kinds of things he would say and in the tone of voice he would say them in.
I remember memories of his soothing voice kept coming to my mind, from all the times he patted me to sleep when I was a small child. It really aggravated my sense of loss.
For days, I went strolling aimlessly to many of the places we had visited together just to feel closer to him. It was a walk down memory lane. I also passed by the hospital multiple times – not intentionally – but because it was close to where I lived at the time.
These are some of the songs that I kept listening to on a loop:
We The Kings – “Just Keep Breathing (Acoustic)”: https://youtu.be/FM2F8qMMuqo?si=ZQDrpAZaRc0wcjtb
For a long time, I could not believe that I was living in a world where he no longer existed.
My mind was flooded with thoughts such as:
- “Would he still be with us if I had done more?”
- “Was there anything that we could have done to prevent this?”
- “I could’ve seen him that morning, and I didn’t. I didn’t know that it was my last chance to see him alive.”
- “I don’t want him to be gone so soon. He hadn’t had the chance to fully enjoy life yet. It was just a few short years into his retirement.”
- “I wish I had hugged him more and that I could hug him one last time.”
- “At least I think he knows that I love him.”
- “I hope he heard our voices at the hospital and knew that his family was with him.”
- “Dad, I can’t imagine living the rest of my life without you.”
I experienced grief like never before. I had never felt more heartbroken in my life.
It was the loss of the kind of unconditional love that I knew I would never get from anyone else for the rest of my life.
The worst moment was my dad’s funeral, when his coffin was brought in. I had never felt anything like it. We all broke down as soon as we saw the coffin. The tears were uncontrollable. It is difficult to describe how I felt in words, but I remember how poignant it felt, knowing that the father I had known and loved my whole life was reduced to a lifeless wooden box. That was all that was left of him. It was the moment that it all sank in for me.
My father died on a cold December night. It was snowing outside. On the day of his funeral just before Christmas, the sky was grey. It was raining heavily when we were on our way there. On the way back from his funeral, however, we saw a rainbow in the sky.
A rainbow of hope that I believe he wanted us to see. It was especially meaningful to us because my dad lived in a residential area called “Rainbow Estates” growing up.
It gave me faith that Dad was watching over us.
I imagined him in the skies, reuniting with my grandmother. I imagined them having tea just beside a rainbow on the clouds.
Since then, I felt calmer, but I still had moments of disbelief and crippling grief from time to time.
I still cried sometimes when I was lying in bed, and it was hard to breathe. Sometimes I would look at pictures of him on my phone and think about how it was just a few months ago that I heard him say good morning when I went into the living room. It was just a few short months ago that the three of us were spending time together and going out for lunch to cheer Mum up.
Sometimes a specific memory would surface in my mind and fill me with a twinge of sadness and pain:
When we were at the hospital for a medical procedure, my dad and I were sitting by my mum’s bedside. A member of the hospital staff stood by as we were deciding on our orders for lunch that day.
She made a comment that we were such a nice family.
“You seem really close,” she said.
She was right. We were really close – and we were a very happy family.