My Dad

died 17 years ago today.  I looked at last year's blog entry where I posted his obituary.  Dad's obituary   I mentioned in that entry that it was such a sad day, but not without it's tender mercies. 

Dad had been in the hospital for 3 weeks before he died.  The first week we still had hope he would recover, but after two weeks the Dr. said his organs were shutting down and that we should call the family home.  Charlene, Richard, and I were already here, but  I'll always remember seeing Gary and Tom as they came into the hospital from California.  It was such a comfort.

For that last week, we spent most of the time at the hospital, and someone usually spent the night with him.  He was more or less comatose, but he would have moments when he would seem to be aware.  I will always be grateful that we had the week with the whole family together.  We each got time alone with Dad, but also relived many memories as we spent time with him.

On the day that he died, we had been there at the hospital all day.  At about 4:30, Natalie called and said she wanted me to come home.  I told Dad that I was going home to be with Natalie, but that I would be back. He probably did not hear or understand, but we talked with him anyway. 

I had only been home for a minute, when the mom of one of Natalie's friends called and asked if Natalie could come over to play.  This was a friend who she very seldom played with, so of course she wanted to go.  I told the mom later that she must have been following a prompting when she called, as it enabled me to have a very touching experience that I would not have had otherwise.

 As I sat here at home after Natalie left, I thought I might as well to up and see if I could fix Mom and Dad's vacuum.  Mom had been worried about it for several weeks because it wasn't working.  So, I went up to the house.  A year or so before that, I had gone down to the Kirby vacuum place with Dad.   As the repairman showed us how to dismantle the parts to fix it, Dad had told me to watch very carefully so I could do it if it happened again.  It didn't make any sense to me when he was showing us, and it didn't make any sense to me when I tried to fix it up at the house.

As I was trying to figure it out, the bottom part finally came apart.  But I didn't know how to put it together.  I thought I had really made a mess of it then.  I was saying in my mind, "Ok, Dad, you've got to help me with this."   As soon as I said that, my fingers just kind of put everything back into place.  I was actually kind of stunned, not really sure how it had happened.   I started vacuuming with it to make sure it worked, when the phone rang.  I answered it, and it was Charlene crying and saying that Dad had died a minute ago.    The first thought in my mind was, "He helped me with the vacuum."  I just knew that as his spirit left this earth, he made a little stop to help me as I had asked him to.  It softened the sadness at not being there for him when he died.   As I drove back to the hospital and my aunts were watching for me, the first words out of my mind were, "Dad helped me fix the vacuum."    It was truly a tender mercy to me.

I've even saved the bottom of the vacuum as a symbol of that memory for me.   I'll have to take a picture of it, but not now.  I'll do it tomorrow.