Gone

                Buzz!

            Who’s texting me? I thought as two more buzzes waked me from my sleep. But it vibrated again and then once more. I grabbed my phone, unplugged it from the charger and squinted as I held the small screen close to my eyes; without my glasses I’m legally blind.  The caller I.D. told me it was my younger brother, Mike, who was the middle child of us three boys.

            “Yeah?” I said groggily.

            “Jason…” his voice broke. “Come home.”

            Something wasn’t right. “Okay, we’ll be right there.”

            I closed my phone, grabbed my glasses and looked at the clock. My mind was such a blur, all I remember was that it was about 5am. I threw the covers off of myself and hopped out of the queen sized bed I was sleeping in. I didn’t bother grabbing a shirt, there wasn’t any time. I ran down the hall to my fiancée’s room, walked in and woke her. She sat up, looking at me confused.

            “Get dressed, we gotta go,” for what seemed the first time in our relationship, she didn’t argue and just did what I said. As soon as she started moving, I ran back down the wide hallway to my room. We were staying at the large house of friends of my parents. In fact, the wife was a teacher at the school my father worked at.

            My father had been diagnosed with cancer in March of 2010. It was the hardest news I’d ever received before. After months of treatments, the original cancer had been eliminated, but it had spread throughout his body. By Christmas it had gotten worse. There was a trial super-drug they put him on and it had the opposite affect it was supposed to. It ended up blocking his liver and shutting down his system shortly after my fiancée and I had left to go back home to Colorado.

            We got back into Colorado on a Monday; Tuesday I started a new assignment with the driving temp agency I worked for. By Friday my mom had called me to tell me I needed to come back right away; my father had gotten worse and was in the hospital because he couldn’t keep any food down.

            That night my mom found us plane tickets to fly out of Denver first thing Saturday morning.  My fiancée’s roommate graciously offered to drive us to the airport that morning. All I could remember was barely being able to sleep that night. She’d allowed me to crash on the couch for the night so we could get on the road as quickly as possible.

            Now, here I was rushing to get some clothes on because, more than likely, my father hadn’t made it through the night. It was Thursday morning, January 13^th, 2011. He had only been home in hospice care since Monday afternoon. How could God take him at 51 years old? That was way too young. I kept my composure as best as I could.

            Once I was dressed, I waited for my fiancée in her room. Within a couple minutes she was ready to go as well. We hurried through the house and opened the garage. They’d given us one of their garage remotes so we could come and go as we needed to. We got into my parents’ F-150, I hit the garage button, fired up the engine and sped out of the driveway. I couldn’t get there fast enough. I pushed the speed limit as much as I could, knowing the roads would be mostly empty. Thankfully we never saw a police officer between the house we were staying in and my parents’ place. The whole way I fought tears. Mike hadn’t said anything on the phone, but he hadn’t needed to.

            I parked in the cul-de-sac and we jumped out of the truck. I barely waited for my fiancée as we rushed up to the front door. I walked in and the first thing I saw was my dad’s hospice bed. He was perfectly still, his hands folded across his stomach and his eyes open, looking off to the side, as if someone were sitting on the piano bench to his right. His mouth slightly open from allowing his last breath to slip through.

            Mike was already crying as he hugged me while I stood in the doorway. My youngest brother, Ben, and my mom came down the stairs; Mike hugged our mother and Ben went straight for me, sobbing, not even looking at our father. I held him tightly, not knowing what to say.

            “Check him, please, make sure he’s really gone,” my mom said frantically through her heavy tears.

I let go of Ben, handing him off to Mike and then I approached my father. I placed my hand over his chest, he was still a little warm, but only from residual heat held in by the blankets covering him from the waist down. I couldn’t feel a heartbeat at all and he didn’t stir at my touch. My dad was gone. Forever.