March 17, 2011; 3:30 AM
I heard the phone ringing and my stomach dropped because I knew.I was staying at a friend’s house that night after track practice.
Thirty seconds later, my friend’s mom came into the room to wake me up, but I was already wide awake. I grabbed my stuff and got in the car. I sat in the back of her Nissan Altima in the dark as she drove double or maybe triple the speed limit.
The moon was bright enough to light up the trees and they were racing by. My heart was racing faster, while I thought of every possible scenario of what could be going wrong.
My dad had gone into the hospital a few days earlier, but he was getting better and was supposed to come home that morning.
When we arrived, I walked into the waiting room and my entire family was sitting there – mom, brother, grandparents, and all of my mom’s closest friends.
I couldn’t breathe.
I had no idea what was going on until I overheard some of them talking about how my dad had gone into cardiac arrest.
When you’re seventeen, you don’t think about these things very often – how your whole world can change in a matter of seconds.
My grandma’s pastor came over to my brother and me and asked us if we were ready to let our dad go.
What does that even mean?
Three days ago we were jamming out to Bruce Springsteen and dancing all over the kitchen, while cooking hamburger helper.
How dare someone ask us that question?
My brother, who was fifteen at the time was speechless and I couldn’t do anything except cry.
At this point in the morning, we hadn’t even gotten to see our dad yet, but when we looked at him through the glass window, it was devastating.
He was still alive, barely.
He was hooked up to every machine imaginable. His neck looked so uncomfortable. His skin was so pale. I had never seen anyone, not even on TV, look so miserable.
After a short visit, we waited a few more hours and received news that his vitals had improved enough to life-flight him to UPMC in Pittsburgh. So we did. And we loaded up the cars with all of our family members and drove two hours and prayed for a miracle.
It was a long day.
Hospital food. Sitting. Praying. Occasionally going into the room to sit beside him and hold his hand and talk without ever receiving a response. Sitting in the waiting room and crying so much until I ran out of tears, then waiting a little to let them replenish themselves and cry some more.
Hours and hours went by. “Maybe things will improve. He is in good hands.”
Around midnight, the nurses approached my mom and said that they could go on to do the next thing, but it will only give him a few more hours of life on earth.
My mom pulled my brother and me aside and we collectively decided that it would just be best if we took away all of the machines.
We already knew in our hearts that he was ready, even if we weren’t.
So, the nurses took the machines off. All the monitors and tubes that had encompassed him like suffocating weeds. Then my mom, brother, grandparents, and I went into the room.
I crawled up into the hospital bed.
I wrapped my arms around my daddy.
I laid my head on his chest and felt my daddy take his last breaths. Slow and shallow.
My grandma was sobbing – the most painful heartbreak that only a mother could feel when losing her son.
The heartbreak was real.
But deep inside of me, there was an unexplainable sense of peace.
Peace that surpasses all understanding.
I knew that lying there in that hospital bed, my daddy caught a glimpse of heaven and it took his breath away.
No more suffering. No more machines.
Just freedom.
Just dancing and singing in heaven – just like we had together every night.
I know this and I am eternally grateful: My Heavenly Father blessed me with an incredible earthly daddy.
Philippians 4:7
