I hesitate to write this post. It is heart wrenching and emotionally hard to relive this day. Although I’ve been reliving it every night as I try to fall asleep for the past 15 nights since it happened.
It was a Thursday and Mike had to conduct a funeral for a ward member. I wanted to attend, but I had Ivy at home since she has afternoon kindergarten. My parents kindly offered to watch Ivy that morning so I could attend the funeral. The last funeral speaker ended up speaking for a really long time and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get Ivy to school. I texted my mom and asked if she would drop Ivy off at kindergarten and she was happy to do it. My dad said he wanted to go too, so Ivy and my mom got in the car while my dad put the dog away and got his shoes. When my dad didn’t come to the car for a bit, my mom decided to go in and check on what was taking him so long. When she went inside my dad was lying at the bottom of the stairs in an awkward position and was completely disoriented. She told him she was going to call an ambulance to which he said, "No way!". He then tried getting up by himself and couldn't, so my mom helped him up and got him into the car. They took Ivy to school (which I’m still in awe of) and then my mom called from the parking lot to tell me that dad fell down the stairs and now he was throwing up. We thought it sounded like a concussion and that she better get him in immediately. She ran him to LDS hospital and after a brain scan they quickly decided he needed the brain trauma team at IHC in Murray. They took him by ambulance and my mom followed in her car. She called me on the way and I told her we’d run right out and meet her there. Mike and I jumped in the car and raced there. When we got there, they would only allow one of us to go back since only 2 visitors were allowed with their Covid policy. I sent Mike back to give him a blessing before switching places with him.
When I went back at 3:30 pm, this is what I saw. (His fall was around 12:30 PM) My dad was in intense pain and we learned he had fractured his skull during his fall. With the blood thinners he was on from his heart attack, they were hesitant to operate and needed more information on the severity of the injury. They also wouldn't give him any pain medicine until they knew when surgery was going to be.
They moved us to the ICU and told us they were going to do another brain scan in an hour or two and see how it was progressing before making any decisions on surgery. So we just waited. It was torture. Here we are in a hospital, and it felt like nobody was doing anything to help us.
My dad was in so much pain, and yet he was still worried about my comfort. He'd say, "Honey, it's okay. You can go. You have things to do today." I kept assuring him there wasn't anywhere else on earth I'd dream of being and I wanted to stay right there. He'd then remind us that the trash needed to go out and Bailey needed to be fed. We kept assuring him that we'd take care of both.
My mom sat and held his hand and I tried to make him comfortable. He'd ask for me to put my hand on his forehead to help relieve some of the pressure building up inside. So for a long time I stood there with my hand on his forehead while my mom held his hand. I'll never forget how soft his skin was and what it felt like to hold his forehead and gently touch his hair. I was able to tell him many times how much I loved him and heard him tell me back that he loved me too. I knew he was in pain by how tightly he gripped my mom's hands. He would occasionally moan or whimper, but he mostly suffered in silence, but we knew he was in excruciating pain.
After a while he started moving around and acting like he wanted to get out of bed. I reached over to hold his hand and he grabbed my arm really tightly and looked at me and said, "Bailey, hold still." This is when I knew things weren't going well. Within a few minutes he started speaking non-sense and we couldn't understand him anymore. This was around 5:30.
I ran out and got a nurse and said things were taking a bad turn and that we couldn't understand him anymore. She came in and they quickly took him up for another brain scan.
After the scan, they brought him back to us and told us they'd be with us shortly.
So we waited. By this time my dad was unconscious and had stopped communicating with us altogether.
Around 6:30 the doctor came in and told us that the bleeding was too bad and they wouldn't be able to operate. This is when the reality hit us that there wasn't any coming back for him. He was still clinging to my mom's hands, so tightly, which told me he was still in pain (he hadn't had any painkillers yet since we weren't sure until now that he wasn't having surgery). We told them to give him as much pain medication as they could and as fast as they could. Which they did. They told us my dad was going to start struggling to breathe and asked if we wanted them to intubate him and do CPR when the time came. My mom knew that my dad wouldn't want that, so she reluctantly, but lovingly, signed the papers to move him to "end of life" status.
This was taken at the moment we realized that my dad wasn't going to leave this hospital room.
After changing him to end-of-life status, they let us know that we could invite all his children and their spouses to come say good-bye. What a tender mercy! It's just been recently (like the last couple of days) that they've let people in to say good-bye with the covid restrictions. So I had to send the heartbreaking text to all my siblings that they better hustle to the hospital if they wanted to say good-bye to dad. (I'd informed them earlier that dad fell and that he was at the hospital, but they had no idea how serious it was.) They all were home, and shocked, but made it to the hospital within an hour or two. What a blessing for my dad. By 8:30 all his children and their spouses were surrounding him and hugging and kissing him. I have no doubt he heard all the loving words we said to him. I know he didn't want to go, we could tell by how hard he fought. We stood around his bed and watched the monitors for hours. His oxygen would dip, but his heartbeat stayed strong and he'd pull it back up. He wouldn't let himself give-up, and we could hear him fight for every breathe for over 6 hours. I expected no less from him; it's how he was in everything he did. Eventually around 2:30 am, his body couldn't fight any longer and he peacefully slipped away. We all stood there watching as he took his last breathe, and after a few seconds we could feel that he wasn't there. The monitors went flat and we each gave him one last kiss good-bye. It was a very tender moment and I believe one that the Lord blessed my dad with for his righteousness. He wouldn't have wanted to get old and loose his ability to get around. It was slowly starting to happen and it scared my dad. I truly believe the Lord was blessing him for the man that he was, and He allowed him to leave the world in this way, surrounded by his loving children, knowing his wife was taken care of, and having peace with the life he lived. I hope to be as fortunate. I'm so grateful all of our lasts words to him were that we loved him, respected him, and will always cherished him.
Nights were the worst part. This baby wakes up 4-5 times a night and just screams. After being at the hospital with my dad until 4 am, we were totally sleep deprived and needed sleep. Poor Morgan (and Miles) kept being woken up by the baby. The 2nd night with the baby I couldn’t sleep and had the hospital experience running through my head. So I decided to go down and sleep by Morgan and help with the baby. Oh my gosh!!! The baby snores!! After hearing my dad struggle for breathe a couple days earlier, this baby snoring was the most traumatic noise that I possible could have heard that night. Morgan and I made it through the night, but still had 2 more nights to get though before she returned the baby to school. So we did what any loving parent would do... we wrapped the baby in 4 blankets to smoother the noise, and left her in the car in the garage. (We actually were worried someone was going to walk by the house and hear the baby crying in the car and call the police, so we really had to smother the sound.) We had our best sleep in days that night! Let’s just say we don’t want any more babies in this house (until it’s a real grandchild, many years down the road!). This is a classic example of just because something sounds like a fun idea, doesn’t mean it’s actually going to be fun. 
