Part 7-The Lucky Ones - Dad. Louis E. Kok, February 18, 1929 to January 27, 2017

When I heard the news that Dad was in the hospital, it sounded pretty dire. I thought this might be the day he dies. I was at work, and went into the bathroom a few times to cry.

As you can see from the email updates, the news did get a little better. I was torn about going or not going to Lynden. I had just been there the week after Christmas, we didn't know how long it might be for Dad, or if he might actually recover, I wasn't sure whether to leave work, and so on. Then I talked on the phone to both Jan and Kathy. They were exhausted and incredibly sad. I knew then, I wanted to go, and Randy urged me to do it. I booked a one-way flight and arrived on Wednesday, January 23rd.

Jan picked me up from the airport and we both went to the hospital. Kathy came to the hospital, too. We got the approval to move Dad to Lynden Manor and I went along with him in the ambulance. We held hands most of the trip. He didn't talk a whole lot but would answer if someone asked him a question.

When they opened the doors at Lynden Manor, there was the smell of cow manure. I kind of laughed and said, "Smells like Lynden." I realized later there was a farm right across the street. No wonder.

They took Dad into the room and got him settled in a bed in a fairly large room, all by himself at the end of the hall. It seemed pretty nice, with a window and room for several chairs, even later a small extra bed that we could use to sleep on. They brought in a recliner and that was what we slept in most of the time. Kathy, Jan, and I took turns being with Dad 24x7.

Every time Dad woke up, he tried to get out of bed. Sometimes it was because he had to go to the bathroom, but a lot of times it was just he wanted to get out of bed. We'd say, "Where are you going, Dad?" and he'd say, kind of surprised, "I'm getting out of bed." We'd remind him he had to press the button to get help. With that happening every time, we just did not think we should leave him alone; he might fall.

At first I just thought Dad was just disoriented and forgetting he couldn't get out of bed, but after a couple days of him continually saying, "I have to go," Jan once said maybe he was talking about going somewhere else. Like heaven. That really struck me. I thought about how you often hear stories that people seem to wait to be alone to die -- they pass away when their loved ones have just stepped out of the room for a little bit, or something like that, as if they need no one to be there in order to let go. I wondered if the fact that we were there all the time was making Dad fight going. Later, on the day before he died, when it was just Dad and me, I took his shoulders, looked him in the face and said, "Dad, if you need to go with Jesus, it's okay. You go. We know you loved us, and we love you. You can go." Jan told me later that she had done the same thing.

The last evening I was with him, as I was sitting by Dad, he reached out for my hand several times. He would bring my hand to his lips, kiss the back of my hand, and say, "Love you so much." I sat there looking at our clasped hands, just thinking of that love. At one point, I took a picture with my phone. I thought about putting it on Facebook and then I decided it was too personal and I wouldn't do that. But I was fooling around with the thought and must have actually posted it without really meaning to. So there the photo of our hands was on Facebook. I had just seen a posting in Facebook that linked to a poem that I had been thinking of, too, as I looked at our hands. I posted a link to a blog entry I made about it:

I KNOW SOMEONE

by Mary Oliver

I know someone who kisses the way
a flower opens, but more rapidly.
Flowers are sweet. They have
short, beatific lives. They offer
much pleasure. There is
nothing in the world that can be said
against them. 

Sad, isn’t it, that all they can kiss
is the air. 

Yes, yes! We are the lucky ones.

I took this picture of me holding my dad's hand on the last full day of his life. He was lying in bed and often would hold out his hand to hold mine. I loved feeling the pressure of his hand on mine, the real-ness of his being there.
    Two times during my vigil by his bedside that evening he raised my hand to his lips, kissed it, and said, "Love you so much." I saw this poem quoted on Facebook shortly after he'd done that and thought, "Yes, yes! I am the lucky one."

I am the lucky one. We are the lucky ones, to have had Dad for all those years that we did.