Gone From My Sight

Today they took my Dad off of most of his medications.
He doesn't need them anymore.
Comfort care only.

I understand, I really do.
I want nothing more than for my Dad to be released from this existence; while he's not in acute pain, he's suffering.  Anyone who disagrees with me please don't comment here. If you saw him and had any idea, I don't think you could be a compassionate human being and disagree.

He doesn't know me. He doesn't know my babies. He only sometimes knows my Mom. He barely talks, he sleeps away most of his days. He's eating less.

Signs, all of them, but we really never know.


Soon, he will be gone from my sight. I do know this.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"
"Gone where?"
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"
And that is dying.

Thank you, Henry Van Dyke.