Part 3 of 6: It's all over...

That weekend went by so slowly, knowing that Monday would tell us if he was going to make it or not. Monday finally came. Things had gotten worse: his kidneys and lungs were failing. The doctors wanted to keep trying other things to save him, but we knew that even if he made it, he would be a vegetable. My busy active father would not want to be a vegetable.

It was then that my mother and I made the hardest decision of our lives. We knew my father and the life he had led. We also knew the quality of life he would have if he even slightly recovered. There would be no comparison to the life he had before.

So after many tears, we gave him the greatest gift a person can give: the gift of love. That night, around 10 p.m. the doctors took him off of his ventilator. The next couple of hours were long and hard. Me and my mom and family and friends sat in his hospital room watching him. His heart was enlarged and he gasped for breath. It was too much for me to watch, so I sat in the waiting room with my mother and some family friends. Around 2:30 a.m. his heart stopped, and my father was gone. We all went in to his room with a pastor and said a prayer. The picture of him lying so still in that bed is stuck in my mind.