My dad died yesterday morning. I spent the rest of that day and this morning making calls and funeral arrangements. I'm so glad to be away from the hostile nurse who didn't want me staying there with him all the time and who felt his grimaces of pain were "just his Parkinsons". It was very peaceful, he was on morphine and oxygen for comfort but no lifesaving treatments.
I trusted the night nurse. I could hear her there taking tender care of dad and was able to rouse just slightly and go back to sleep next to him. I got up at 6 am planning an hour walk so I could be back before the nasty nurse arrived and found he had slipped into a slow pulse and low oxygen saturation. They gave him more morphine to keep the oxygen hungry panic down and I got him dry and cleaned his face and reassured him. I told him for the hundreth time I loved him and called his wife. She got there and he just breathed slower and slower. She laid her head on his pillow next to him and he breathed his last....I couldn't believe he was gone, I'm a nurse myself but I've never seen a peaceful death before. I felt compelled to listen to his chest for the absent heartbeat for minutes to convince myself he wouldn't wake up in the morgue. I think the fact that I could lay his poor drawn up legs down straight for the first time in weeks was what really let me believe it. He had left.