Breathe

My mom called Thursday: my dad was dying. Not just sick and weak, but dying.

I rushed to be there. I wondered if he would pass that night.

Over the next few days I watched him breathe, then stop, then gasp for air. Each breathe I thought would be the last.

He was fighting to stay. He never wanted to believe this was the end for him.

I didn’t know this was what dying looked like.

But as the hours past the more comforting his breathing became.

I didn’t know then how much I needed those extra days that I never knew I would have with him.

It was that breath that I needed to take, didn’t want to take, but by the end I took gladly, deeply, fully.