I feel a very strong need to write about my dad tonight.

Just came from a fundraising event for our local hospice organization, and this year, it affected me a little differently – a little more intensely, yet with a lot more clarity than this same time last year.

I’m going to need the assistance of a little Woodford Reserve for this one, so bear with me.

This time last year, I decided to attend the event for the first time. Although I had no idea what to expect, there was no telling me I wasn’t going to participate. The thing is, about eight months earlier, my dad had passed away in one of the local hospice houses, so it was still a bit “fresh” in my mind and heart.

The event was a total blur – although it was one where you sampled food from local businesses (and I enjoy my food sampling), I was in a complete haze. Seeing the organization’s logo everywhere I turned, the reality of the excruciatingly painful last month-and-a-half of dad’s life was once again making itself known.

Dad received the diagnosis of stage four metastatic lung cancer on December 6, 2023. He was almost 82 years old. For him, the decision was a no-brainer – no treatments… he wanted to go out as peacefully and as painlessly as possible. So, on December 12, he was transferred to an assisted living facility near my house, where hospice services would be provided.

His hospice nurse, Sally, was an angel, sent to help us make sense of it all. At first, she would come weekly to check on him and talk with us about hospice, his diagnosis, and what type of care he’d receive outside of that provided by the facility. But as the days progressed, she began to talk more openly with us about changes she was seeing in dad’s vitals and what to prepare for in the future.

By the week before Christmas, dad was being visited by “Sally from the Valley” (the nickname he gave her), several times weekly, and then she and I would sit in the lounge area for a bit. Sometimes I would have a written list of questions or concerns, and other times, I would simply listen to her talk about what was happening right now and what will likely happen in the near future.

And sometimes, she’d just sit with me and let me cry.

In the days between Christmas and January 18, dad’s health took a rapid decline. He became less willing to eat, was on oxygen most of the time (when he would actually place the cannula in his nostrils), and his memory was beginning to fade. On January 18, I visited him in the afternoon, and he was groggy from the effects of the morphine that he was now receiving for pain. But in a moment of clarity, he suddenly told me that he “only had ten more days here”. Having witnessed him earlier, sitting in his bed, looking wide-eyed up at the ceiling as if he were talking with someone, I had a feeling he might be right.

On January 25, I received a call that he had fallen from his bed, cut his face pretty severely, and had been taken to the local emergency room. He had no idea that I was there with him – by that time, he was in the beginning stages of what nurse Sally called the “active dying” phase. I sat with him until he was discharged back to the assisted living facility. On the 27th, he fell again, and in a state of total loss as to what to do, I reached out to Sally.

She found a space for dad at a hospice house, and at 4:30pm that afternoon, he arrived there. Dad received his wish – to come full-circle and spend his last days in Asheboro, the town where he was born. I had planned to come that evening to check in on him, but the hospice nurse said he was resting comfortably and that I should also get some rest – she would sit with him that night, and my sister and I could come in the morning.

Less than twelve hours later, I received a call from the hospice nurse. Dad passed away peacefully and painlessly in his sleep at 3:46am on January 28, 2024. She was with him and comforted him as he slipped away. He was finally “home”… exactly ten days later, as he predicted.

Later that morning, I returned to the assisted living facility to figure out what to do next. All of dad’s things were still there, and we needed to get them out within seven days. I felt like my whole foundation had been pulled out from under me. What does one do when faced with the task of having to relive the past weeks with every box packed, let alone, prepare herself for the unknowns of settling an estate and the waves of grief that were starting to churn?

Back to the event earlier this evening…

I almost didn’t go because honestly, I wasn’t sure how I’d handle it this time. But with the encouragement and support of someone who has become very special in my life, we made our way through the entry, past the hospice logos and into the crowd. We found some great brisket, mac-and-cheese, and a Coke, and sat away from the crowd, in our own quieter little piece of the world. This time, instead of the memories and images of oxygen tubes and morphine, I found myself actually thinking very little about dad’s time in hospice care. As we sat there, laughing and talking about anything and everything, I realized something significant.

I was healing from my grief.

And because of help from people like nurse “Sally from the Valley” and the counselors at Hospice of the Piedmont, I was doing so as peacefully and painlessly as possible. Hospice not only provides comfort care to those who are dying… they provide it to those who are living. And the care they provided to my dad, my family, and me will not be forgotten.

Looking out over the stadium, I noticed that the earlier rainy and dreary sky was beginning to turn bright blue – just like the watercolors my dad so loved to paint.

Maybe that was his way of telling me that he “was home”… and so was I.