Excerpt: Layers

From 7 Days:

In order to get back to a place of such odd relief, such distant grief, such disconnected emotion, I have to reread what I wrote back then.

Sitting in a mortuary waiting for a consultation with a funeral director, I pulled out my journal to clear my head:

I can't believe I’m sitting here. I knew it would come, but how is it already here? And how expensive is this all going to be? Don't know why it matters. We'll pay whatever it costs. Who knows if he'll even make it through the transfer. I don't even know if they'll transfer him. God, I hope not. What a difference between private care and the VA. He doesn't seem to mind, but this comes from a man who lived in a room of self created chaos for years. Anything might've been better. I hope he dies before they transfer him. Just want him to have some peace. God, I must be horrible. I’m his daughter and I want him to die. The seizures have been getting worse. Probably having strokes. I don't know what to do. There’s nothing to do. Nothing I can do. I feel so helpless. Even more helpless than he is. He’s not even coherent any--

My entry was cut short by a phone call. My uncle. Rick. At the hospital. Things didn't look good. My father's doctor gave him 12-24 hours to live. Told Rick to contact the family to come say any final good byes. 

My next entry:

So surreal. Can't believe this is happening. In hospital waiting room. Need a minute to myself. Just a minute. Feel so selfish. So conflicted. Don't want this to happen. Need it to happen. Can't live inside this hospital any more. Cannot wait any longer. Just go, just be gone, and just leave already. Just take him; he doesn't want to be here anymore. He doesn't need to be here anymore. And I just can't take it anymore. Maybe not knowing is better. Maybe sudden death is a blessing. No warning, no overnight stays in hospitals, no mortuaries before death, no heart being ripped out for days, weeks, months at a time. I need to go back in there. Somehow being with him will heal me.

The last two days with my father were the most difficult. And the most rewarding. There were times of intense grief and uproarious laughter (and solace in such grievous laughter). I talked with people that had known my father for longer than I’d been alive. My father's best friend from junior high school: a forty-year friendship. Members of a car club from high school: two years shy of a forty-year friendship. My father's best friend in adulthood and her husband: a thirty-five-year friendship. I knew these people; some of these people, but never knew my father through their eyes. It never occurred to me that my father was someone other than who I knew.