In May, my family learned that my dad had pancreatic cancer. John and I decided right away to move back to America. We came home for a ten day visit in late May and early June, then went back to Abu Dhabi to pack up our house and lives and bring them back home. 

Iola and I have been in California since July 15th, spending time, cooking, going for walks and playing with grandparents. Dad decided against surgery, instead following alternative treatments with all the rigor of his normal way of being, investigating every healthy avenue, buying hundreds of books, getting google updates daily, talking with experts in Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Gerson therapy, and admitting himself to the San Diego Clinic in Tijuana for their 8-week treatment schedule. 

He died Wednesday morning, the 24th of August. It seems too soon, just four months after hearing the first news. This last Sunday evening we all had dinner together -- John has been here, working from California for the past three weeks -- and went for a walk when the day cooled down. My dad and John swung iola between them. Mom wasn't feeling well so the tables were turned, with dad bringing her water and researching cures for her on the internet. He was rakishly disheveled all day (we wondered, does mom usually comb his hair?), made a joke about how terrible the vegetable juice that Julia made for him tasted, decided not to take his pills, looking at them thoughtfully and saying "I don't see the point," which sounded ominous, but then in the next breath observed that his insulin requirements had gone down by a factor of ten, from 30 to 3 doses, and that must mean his pancreas function was improving. He was always optimistic and resilient. 

He had a couple of seizures that night, though we didn't know that's what they were. The first one was at 3am, when he got up with mom to get a glass of water and then collapsed on the floor.  John, mom and I helped him get up and back in bed. It seemed to me like maybe he'd been sleepwalking, and was still asleep, only drowsily pulling himself out of it to answer our questions. That was how I rationalized it. At 6am there was another one in bed, but by the time I got to his side he was snoring innocently. The third was during his morning routine on Monday at about 9am. We couldn't get him up and called 911. He was unresponsive, so the paramedics brought him to the hospital, but I still was only vaguely worried; he just seemed incredibly sleepy. I couldn't figure out what to do with iola, but Adriana pulled me along to her friend's house and the kids played there. I was fuzzily thinking I could get some errands done, but once alone in the car I called Julia, who had already gotten to the emergency ward, and her voice sounded funny and she hung up mid-sentence, which cleared my mind. I sped to the hospital. Dad seemed to be still asleep, under layers of consciousness, but mom said that he answered his name and birthday when the nurses asked him. That was the last he spoke, though there were tiny gestures and expressions throughout the next two days. Julia and mom told me the results of the CT scan: a tumor mass near his brain stem, and hemorrhaging. I called Adriana and she left the girls too, and came immediately, followed by Sande Marshall. Dad was given medication for anxiety, seizures, and pain. He was moved to a different ward with a bigger room, and from then on it was never empty. The nurses let us bring the babies in, and those babies don't know how to be sad. I think they cheered him up. Pete, Jon and my John came when they weren't working. Dad's sister Sue came Monday night, and stayed overnight at Barry and Janet's studio. Patrice and Kurt also came that night and stayed at a hotel. John slept in the hospital when mom needed a break. My brother David Platford and his mother Nancy came in the morning, and David stayed on while Nancy went back to the Bay Area. On Tuesday our cousin Sam Dakin arrived, and Nina Moore also stopped by. 

In the afternoon on Tuesday, Dad was brought home in a medical taxi and slept in his bed with everyone around, coming in and out of the room, iola and Gwennie playing, Julia Landis reading to him (Outliers), my brother David Platford also there. Their good friends and neighbors Barry and Janet visited. My sister Julia figured out a rotation schedule to give him medication every 1.5 hours. I had the 12:15am and 1:45am shifts. I went to bed with iola at 9pm and then woke at midnight and stayed awake till 2am, feeling like he was just hovering at the edge of life, his breath deep and rattling. 

Adriana came in at 7am for her shift, and was concerned at the sound of his breath. I felt relieved to hear that he was still breathing, and went back to sleep. At about quarter to nine iola started stirring, so I got up with her and was being sort of slow when John said "Rose, you need to get in there now." We rushed in and Dad was still. Mom was already there. We stayed with him, and for about ten minutes I could have sworn I saw tiny tiny movements of breath, but I was hallucinating, because even now when I go in to see him, two days later, and stare at his chest, I can see him breathing. 

We cried and took a deep breath and went outside. We were all quiet but also I felt a sense of relief; the last few days had been so full of empathy for him going through this biggest trial of his life. Is he scared? In pain? Is he thirsty? Should I not drink this in front of him? Did he hear me say that? Does he need to go to the bathroom? When the answer was may well have been yes, yes, yep, yes, yes, yes. And so the fact of missing him hasn't sunk in, quite, because I am still feeling the weight of pain and fear lift away. In this way, again, it reminds me of childbirth. 

We'd been trying to figure out a way to bury Dad at Leonard Lake, and had enlisted the help of a local lawyer and a county supervisor to figure it out. In the end, it would have taken about two months of bureaucratic leg work or else more renegade spirit than we had. The county supervisor "guaranteed" that we would not be prosecuted: "First of all, they will never know, secondly they won't care" is what he said -- the kind of thing that makes me love Mendocino county. The lawyer also encouraged us to go ahead and do it, saying we only needed to somehow trick the doctor into signing the death certificate and giving it directly to us, instead of to the mortuary. Mortuaries really have a monopoly on the process, though I'm not complaining, in general. 

Meanwhile, my dad's little sister Mira was on her way from India. She was waiting for her plane when dad took his last breath, and it seemed like the right thing to do to keep his body at home for her to say goodbye in person. So I called a company in Sonoma called Final Passages that helps with home funerals. The woman was matter-of-fact and helpful, though I can barely remember the call; it was in that first hour after dad's death. She said she would call me back in two hours and that in the meantime I should clean the body, anoint with essential oils, buy 30 pounds of dry ice in slabs 1.5 inches thick, dress him, light candles, arrange flowers, have pictures. So that is what we did. We used eucalyptus oil to remind him of the Presidio and we arranged his study to be the funeral room, so that he would be near his books: The Rise of the Fourth Reich, the Secret History of American Empire, The Power of Magic, America's Secret Establishment on one side and then a huge stack of computer operating manuals on another, with books on health above that. He seemed comfortable there, and, like I said before, I still think he is breathing. Though iola knows better: this morning she asked "where's Grampy?" so I took her in to see him and she looked at his face, then said matter-of-factly: "Grampy not there." Wherever he is, it is close to our hearts. 

Mira is here now, sleeping in the sun room. She has said goodbye to her brother. Dad's body will be picked up tomorrow and cremated, and we will bury the ashes at Leonard Lake at Thanksgiving, in an urn made by Adriana.