I grabbed a tea and brought it into the elevator and got off on my father’s floor. I expected to go back into his room, take a seat next to my mother, and wait, my ears filled with beeping, my nose with rubbing alcohol.
The doctors had been telling us for four days that we were near the end.
I’d known we were approaching it for a while, he just kept fighting. But from what I could see, he wasn’t going to for much longer.
When I approached his room, I learned that was a reality.
I didn’t feel the tea that sloshed out of the top of the cup and burnt my hand. Because, in that moment, all I felt was coldness. All I heard was the alarm on my father’s heart monitor going off as he flatlined. The only thing I saw was the nurse hit several buttons and then the room turned silent—no ventilator, no beeping, no humming. She didn’t grab the paddles or perform CPR.
He had a DNR.
As I walked in a little more, I should have been looking at my father, taking in his face, memorizing more of it even though I knew every line and freckle. I should have been standing at his side, holding his hand.
I wasn’t doing either of those things.
I was frozen halfway between the entrance and the bed, staring at my mother, watching her expression.
My father once told me it was easy to determine how much a man loved his soon-to-be wife on their wedding day. You had to watch the groom as the bride walked down the aisle and his face would give him away.
What I learned in those few seconds was watching someone die was no different.
And it was that look—the one my mother had on her face right now—that would haunt me for the rest of my life.