Losing My Father: The Crash, CPR, and Letting Go
The vision of him on the kitchen floor stays with me.
Trigger Warning: this story contains graphic descriptions of my father’s passing.
The loud crash got my attention.
It was just after eight in the morning and I was sitting in bed watching YouTube and drinking coffee. The unusual sound pulled my attention to the present moment and I got out of bed, stopping for a moment to pause the video I’d been watching.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew what I was about to see.
“Vanessa,” the helpless scream came from my mother as I headed for the door. I took off running down the hall and into the kitchen. She was standing over the lifeless body of my father, her hands clasped together tightly at her chin, not knowing what to do in that moment.
Every bit of training I’d ever had, every TV show I’d ever watched, every scene of resuscitation etched in my psyche took over as I dropped to my knees next to my father.
“Dad, DAD!” I yelled as his eyes rolled back through slightly open lids.
No response.
I tapped my hands on either side of his face hoping to revive him as he lay on the floor, a mess of items around his feet that had fallen from from the top refrigerator rack he had grabbed to stop himself from falling.
He had been cooking my mother’s breakfast.
“I don’t know what to do,” my mother cried helplessly.
“Call an ambulance!” I said as I began CPR.
I didn’t count compressions. The last of my training was a decade ago when I was a carer for people with Multiple Sclerosis. I just pumped his chest again and again, one hand interlaced with the other as I was taught.
I took a deep breath and forced air into his lungs. It wasn’t going in easily. I tilted his head and tried again. An awful sound emerged as air came rushing back out of his slightly open mouth.
I pumped his chest again.
For what seemed like an eternity, I blew air into my father’s lungs followed by compressions, my hands sinking into his frail eighty-nine-year-old chest.
I didn’t stop.
Time was lost to me in that moment and I couldn’t tell you how long I continued to try and revive my father. From my mother’s hazy recollection, it was about 10 minutes. I also don’t remember saying anything, just desperately trying to get him to take a breath on his own and open his eyes.
My mother recalled what I said though, over and over again.
“Come on dad, breathe. Please. Come on!”
The paramedics arrive.
There is a security company here in this sleepy little seaside village and they are good. Very good. As it is mostly retired folks who live here, they are popular and almost everyone uses them. They also have a paramedic team.
The team arrived and I was glad to see them. I felt helpless and knew I wasn’t equipped to bring my father back to life.
As they came rushing in, questions flowed to get a handle on the situation which mom and I answered in turn. I stopped compressions to step back and let the two men take over. I needed the comfort of them taking over in what I was sure was a shoddy job.
“Please don’t stop,” Ivan said to me as I started to get up. “Please continue CPR while we get ready.”
I immediately returned to the trance I’d been in, breathe air in once, twice, then pump again and again. Relief flooded through me as they indicated they were ready to take over.
Jaco took over. His compressions dug further into my father’s tiny chest. Dad hadn’t been eating much over the last eighteen months and had become so skinny. My mother told me when I had arrived in South Africa two-and-a-half weeks prior that he had suddenly become old, almost overnight.
“He’s tired,” she had said to me. I didn’t want to hear more but I could see it for myself.
Back to the present moment.
Ivan radioed for the hospital paramedics and then set about getting out the defibrillator to shock my father’s heart back into rhythm.
I looked on helplessly, moving from intently watching the scene, comforting my mother who oscillated between calm and tears, and following any order the men gave me, including continuing CPR as Jaco ran down to the van to retrieve another medical item.
My mother started to clean up the spilled items around my father’s feet, picking up containers and jars and mopping the floor.
What else could she do?
“We need to move him more onto the carpet,” Ivan said as I grabbed his legs to shift him onto dryer ground. His tiny body was so easy to move.
Two more paramedics arrive.
For the next hour, the four angels in uniform tried everything they could to bring him back. I spent that time answering the occasional question, holding my mother as she watched on helplessly, and following orders.
“Please get some towels and clean all the water around his feet,” they asked concerned that the stronger shock paddles would cause a negative reaction through the liquid.
I grabbed some towels and cleaned as best I could, placing a towel under each of his legs, his old red sweatpants resting on the folded cloth. I removed his Crocs, gently running a hand over one of his feet as I stood back up and got out of the way of another shock.
Sweat was dripping off Jaco’s face as he continued to pump my father’s chest, stopping only to stand back when the shocks were administered.
My father was eventually shocked more than six times.
The team was growing weary.
I could see it.
“He wouldn’t want this,” my mom said to me.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked her. I would make the call to the paramedics if my mom chose that option.
“Let them keep going,” she said reticently, watching her husband of fifty-four years lying unresponsive on the floor.
I grabbed my father’s phone and called my sister in Australia.
“Dad’s collapsed,” I said. “The paramedics are working on him now but he has a fifty-fifty chance of survival. You need to get on a plane either way.”
In retrospect, I know I could have delivered the news a little more gently but adrenaline was coursing through my veins and I was all business. Through tears, she agreed and asked me to keep her informed.
Making the call.
An intubation tube was taped to my father’s pale lips and there was blood on his chin as they had tried to insert it successfully. Dad had been on blood thinners for at least a decade and he bled easily. His stomach was distended and it was becoming all too obvious that despite the valiant efforts from the paramedics, he wasn’t going to come back to us.
He was tired. He wanted out.
Life had become a series of routine actions that brought him very little meaning.
The paramedics stopped for a minute to regroup and chat amongst themselves.
I looked at my mother. She nodded.
“Call it,” I said looking directly into Christina’s eyes, the only woman on the team and the one in charge. She looked back at me, searching my eyes for confirmation, then continued her conversation with the three men.
They agreed. It was done.
It had been almost ninety minutes since my father collapsed and he showed no signs of wanting to return. He had no pulse. We had all fought to save him but it was time to let him go.
They stopped and moved away giving us time to say goodbye.
I knelt next to my father with the defib pads still stuck to his tiny body and the intubation tube still taped to his mouth and took his hand. I cried and apologized to him.
I don’t know what I was apologizing for and apparently neither did he because at that moment, and barely perceptible, he squeezed my hand. My father was gone but there it was, the slightest movement of his fingers as he reassured me one last time that everything was okay.
I cried more and bent to kiss his bald head.
“I’m sorry Daddy, I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I said goodbye, moving away from his frail body to wrap my mother in my arms.
The Rock.
I became the rock, stoic in my resolve to take care of everything. My mother would not be overwhelmed in any way.
I am the rock — that is my job within the family unit.
I grabbed my father’s cellphone again and called my sister.
“He’s gone,” I said followed by an apology. She was crying but said she could only get a flight out on Wednesday. It was Easter Monday. The call was short — I had to get back to the paramedics and take care of the aftermath.
And I did.
The funeral home was called. The mess around my father slowly cleaned up as my mother laid a soft yellow checkered woollen throw over him.
Conversations were had, paperwork was completed, and then I knelt next to my father one last time before they loaded him onto a stretcher in a body bag and took him away.
Soon, it was just me and my mother.
We talked, laughed, cried, and began the process of coming to terms with it all.
A mere few hours prior I had been watching a YouTube video, my mom had been at her computer while my dad cooked her breakfast. Our German houseguest had gone into the city for a day of sightseeing.
I had cooked Brazilian feijoada for us all the night before and we had sat in the enclosed balcony with the beautiful view out over the mountains and ocean, chatting and reminiscing.
Everything had changed now. It would never be the same.
The dust has settled.
It is day three and the cremation has been ordered and the invoice paid. All immediate financial issues have been taken care of and the death certificate has been issued.
Today I will schedule an appointment with the executor for next week and my sister arrives from Australia tonight. The German houseguest left for home yesterday afternoon and the house has become deathly quiet.
It is just me and my thoughts now. Me and the aftermath.
The visions of my father lying on the kitchen floor unresponsive haunt me. The memory of desperate CPR keeps playing in my head.
My mother is doing well. She has watched him decline over the last year and had prepared herself for this. I’m glad she’s doing well. She’s my focus for the foreseeable future.
A snippet of a conversation comes back to me. “I’ll take care of Mom,” I said with complete authority to my father a mere few days before. I can’t recall what he said to elicit my response but it must have given him permission to go.
So much more needs to be done and it will be. I will stay in South Africa until the end of the year to make sure that my mother has everything she needs.
I had a chance to say a final goodbye, asking to see my father one last time at the funeral home. His body was cold and I wept as I kissed him on the forehead one last time.
“Goodbye Daddy,” I whispered.
My father has gone and life continues.
I wish I could just stop the images in my head.
