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.
…just as he let his last breath go.