I stood somewhere between guilt and paralysis

On July 27, 2014, at 3:34 a.m. I got out of bed to check on my dad. From where I slept every night—in the room where my mom kept an old doll collection—the moon’s light made it easy to walk into where Dad now lay motionless in a hospice-prescribed hospital bed. He was in the same room where he'd been spilling his morning coffee for the last four months.

The only sound was a hum from the oxygen machine.

Ever since Dad’s diet consisted of me squirting morphine into his mouth, he had no need for his dentures, which were now on the dresser in the master where Mom was asleep. Dad’s lips caved into his gums. He was in the same position as when I said goodnight. For that matter, he appeared no different than the day before while the family held one-sided hopeful conversations. He had the same open mouth, closed eyes and straight-ahead stillness.

“Dad, it’s me,” I said in the dark. “Doing okay?”

I repeated my words, but I knew. I felt his hand, noticeably not warm. I turned on a lamp, which is when I really knew.

“Ahhh . . . Dad? I love you, Dad.”

I brushed the back of my hand against his neck. I pressed harder, hoping and wondering and second-guessing.

“Dad. Dad?”

He was gone.

As much as I knew and loved my dad, I just stood there somewhere between guilt and paralysis. My dad died on my watch, after all. But on the other hand—I would rationalize later—dying seemed like the most vulnerable thing we can do; who wouldn’t want to die alone?

More important, Dad didn’t owe anything to the living—not me or my three brothers and two sisters or even his wife of 62 years. Robert O’Brien died because his body was done.

How a person simply expires from one moment to the next, warrants eloquence and poetry but I had none. I knew he was at peace, but my thoughts and the air were deficient. Death felt dark and foreign. We enter the world, we cry, we take, we laugh, we give, we work, we share, we love, we get through stuff, we celebrate wins, we reflect, we die.

The other sadness I felt was for my sister Mary, who got on the first possible flight from SFO but then got convinced to spend the night at our sister Shelly’s house with every intention to see Dad first thing in the morning.

There was also the simple-not-simple task of waking Dad’s true love—my Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother.

I turned off the oxygen and pulled out the plastic tubing from his nose. I sent a group-text to the family but what could I possibly say? It didn’t matter. I kept it short.

“Sorry. Dad is in heaven, all peaceful. Consoling Mom now. Love.”