The Past Few Months...

...can be summed up by the past few days of my life. My father was admitted to Gilchrist hospice Thursday morning. Wednesday night he started throwing up what my mom thought was stomach bile and by Thursday morning it had gotten so bad that she called an ambulance to come and get him. I woke up to 5 voice mails around noon that day, I didn't listen to any of them, I just called my mom. She told me what had happened and that this time my dad wouldn't be coming home from the hospital, the only words that I could find were, 'ok, I'll be there soon'. I got there and my dad was still throwing up a lot of black looking liquid and the Dr. came in and asked my mom if they could put a tube down his nose to suck it out so he wouldn't have to go through the pain of throwing it up. The Dr. also let us know that it wasn't stomach bile that he was throwing up, it was old blood, my dad was bleeding internally and we had anywhere from a few hours with him to a couple of days. They gave my dad enough drugs to put him in a deep sleep that he would never come out of and the rest of the day was spent saying our goodbyes with family and close friends.

There are moments from that day that I remember very vividly but for the most part its a blur. One of those moments involves a crowded room and a single chair. I had just come in from outside and my mom told me that she needed to stretch her legs and she asked me if I wanted to sit in her chair, the chair that was right next to my dad's bed, I said, 'sure'. She leaned over to my dad, stroked his hair and told him that I was sitting next to him and that she'd be right back. As I sat there facing the opposite side of the room, which contained pretty much my entire family and some of my dad's friends from work, I could feel everyone's eyes close in on me and I knew that they were waiting for me to say the things to my dad that everyone else had already said in some way, shape or form. When my mom was sitting next to him she was holding his hand and as I sat there with everyone's eyes on me I saw my dad's hand flick and twitch closer and closer to the edge of the bed. I stared at him and then I stared at his hand and I knew that he wanted me to hold it and that they were all waiting for me to grab it. I couldn't do it. My mom came back in and relieved me from the situation and without looking at anyone I went back outside.

Surprisingly the rest of the day went by fairly fast, I had a lot of talks with my dad's friends and they told us all funny stories about my dad to lighten the extremely dim shadow of death that was cast over all of us. It started getting late and people slowly started to make their way home. Around 2am my sisters and grandmother had scattered off to find somewhere to sleep and it was just my mother and I in the room with my dad. I told my mom to get some sleep and that I would stay up and watch him. As I sat there staring at my father, anxious and scared, tired but wide awake, I somehow found the courage to walk over to him and grab his hand. I stood there and I cried the tears that I needed to cry and without saying an audible word I told him that I loved him, that I would take care of everyone, and that because of all the things that he taught me, I would be ok. My dad passed away 4 hours later.

The funeral was yesterday and we had viewings Sunday and Monday. I'm not ready to go there yet but I will say that my dad was loved by a lot of people. He was such a good person and I feel so extremely lucky that he was the person that I got to call Dad.

In loving memory of John Stephen Steber July 20, 1966-April 25, 2008

P.S.
My dad had a blog that I didn't know about until he had passed away, you're welcome to read the few things that he posted.

Colonial Vulcan

You were such a nerd dad-and I loved you immensely for it.