taking a quiet moment

Yesterday, after a year-long illness spent at home under the care of my mother and an absolutely amazing team from Hospice, my father passed away. He was in his own bed, in his own room, surrounded by his wife, children, brother, and the Hospice Chaplain.

Even though we had been saying goodbye to him for most of this past year, yesterday was harder than any of us expected. His death was peaceful, he was not in pain, and he knew we were there. But he, like his father before him, really did not want to go, and he had to find his peace with that as he left us.

We reassured him that it was okay to go, that he would be met by a pack of dogs: his boyhood dog Shadow, who waited for him to come home from school every day and then amazingly knew the day he came home from the Korean War and was waiting by the train track when he crossed it, Pongo our Dalmatian, Pepper the poodle who found us and stayed, Tika the Siberian Husky, Oliver the smart-as-a-whip pound puppy, and Buddy the white German Shepherd. My brother reminded him that he would see his father and mother, and more friends and family members who preceded him in death. He seemed to ease at the thought.

Sometime I might try to write down some of the many memories I have. We sat in the room after he left us yesterday, telling stories of our memories of him, breaking down in fits and starts as we needed to, and finding comfort in the haven of our parents' home.

His entire Hospice team was there, making sure things were taken care of so that we could do what we needed to as a family, and in a wonderful moment of serendipity, when the cremation service came to get his body, his Hospice social worker saw I needed some distraction, and asked me about horses.

She let me ramble on for ten minutes and then suddenly I saw her name tag, made a connection, and realized she had married into the horse family who owned the stable where I learned to ride, bought my first horse, and years later, taught both my children to ride.

Amazingly, she knew all the school horses I had ridden, and knew my horse's dam very well. She knew the ponies my children learned to ride on. And she had married the one member of their family who facilitated, so many years ago, the most wonderful of all my riding memories - cantering around a small lake on a trail that we often rode, feeling as free as the wind, as though I had shifted into some other dimension of water and forest and horses.

As my father's body left his home, I was back on that magical ride, and hope that in some way his spirit was having the same feeling of freedom and magic in the ethers.

I was incredibly touched by the sharing of hugs and "I love you's" that passed between my mother and this team of women who have spent the past year supporting her, taking care of my father, and whose job it is to guide families through the death process.

I can't offer enough praise or enough thanks for these women. They do their job so well.

For now, I'm taking some time off from blogging, as I think I need to open up some time to process other things, to enjoy the spring weather on the backs of Keil Bay and Cody, to work on my books, and to spend some time with my mom, who has given up so much of her own freedom over the past year to make sure my dad was comfortable and safe and as happy as he could be.

When I left November Hill yesterday morning to go to my parents' house, knowing it would be a day we had all on some level been waiting for, I encountered a large snapping turtle stranded in the middle of the main road. He was muddy and I couldn't tell if he'd been hit, but there was a fair amount of traffic, including big rigs going too fast for anyone's good. I couldn't stop, but I called home and told my husband where the turtle was. When I hung up I started crying, feeling terrible for the turtle, feeling like it was some sort of sign but too complex for me to sort out in the moment.

My husband called back minutes later to assure me he had gone to rescue the turtle, who had NOT been hit, and had moved the turtle to safety in the woods on the other side of the road. In some odd way the turtle's rescue became a comfort for me all through the day and evening.

Until I get back to blogging, enjoy the spring, live well, and travel safely.