> Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end
This rings very true for me.
My dad died of brain cancer going on five years ago now.
He was diagnosed in 2014. They were clear the prognosis was not good. One or two years at best.
They removed the tumor as soon as they found it, and he returned basically to normal. There was a weird settling in of what it all meant and treatments that were meant to stall things a while.
But since the tumor was small, he was able to function and be basically his old self.
We had our first daughter in the fall of 2015. He was there to meet her. Everything felt like it was looking up.
Three weeks later, on my first day back to work, I got a call at 10:30. "The cancer is back." I took the day off.
At Christmas, he was definitely starting to act goofy and be more forgetful. We'd have to distract him so he didn't try to go plow the driveway or do things like that.
It became a question of "do we go up every weekend, or can we take this weekend off?"
And then at the beginning of February things started getting really bad and my mom moved him into a nursing home in town. That lasted for a little less than a week I think. Then it was clear this was the end.
So we came up in the middle of the week. Sat by his bedside for hours on end. Held his hand.
My dad had two things he'd always say about dying:
1. When someone comes to die, they need someone to hold their hand.
2. People need permission to die. Otherwise they will hang on way longer than they otherwise would.
So I held his hand for a couple days. And then on maybe the third evening, it became pretty clear he was deteriorating.
So I leaned over, kissed him on the head, told him that he'd done a great job raising me and my brother, and that it was okay and we'd be here till the end.
And then we watched him die. I think it was about 4am when he finally passed.
I never remember what day it was, but I do remember that Lent had just started and he died the morning of Transfiguration Sunday. Which the internet tells me was Feb 7, 2016.
There's a Deathcab for Cutie song, "Love is watching someone die." It's the truth. You have to love someone a lot to be there through that.
Anyway, to come back around, it all just went so much faster than you think it would. Especially towards the end.
It took a little over a month for "Dad's acting funny again" to turn into "Dad died last night".