One Year Later

I haven't shared a lot about what it was like to lose a parent or to support my girls through their first loss.  Tomorrow marks one year since his passing and seems like a good time to share part of our story:

We were two months into living with him when we began to worry about his health.  Shortly after, he was given six months to a year left to live.  It was gut-wrenching and scary and just so, so sad. I remember crying every night for weeks, often as I rocked Eliana to sleep in my childhood bedroom. We immediately offered to move out of the house, but he wanted us to stay.  I am so glad that we did.
We clung to hope, laughed frequently and made memories I'll cherish forever.  We found the beauty amidst tragedy. We made it through things that seem unimaginable.  Even today, I don't know how he and I had a conversation about the future, a future we both knew he wouldn't be here to experience.  I've never been so reluctant to talk about anything in my whole life, but our embrace at the end let me know we were both better for having that tear-filled conversation.
Quite a few months passed before his health really began to decline.  Hours were spent by his bedside, doing all we could to make him comfortable.  Hospice prepared us over and over again for the end, but he kept holding on.  During his last weekend alive, my little sister and I decided he absolutely needed a haircut (his resemblance to Albert Einstein was uncanny). She held him up in her arms, while I cut.  Thinking back, it all seems so surreal. We slept on either side of his bed that night. 
A few days later, we made the difficult decision to move him to Hospice House.  My mom went with him in the ambulance and I met them there.  We were planning to stay just long enough to make sure he was settled, but quickly realized we couldn't leave him all alone.  I slept in the chair next to his bed the first night, my mom stayed the second night and I stayed on the third.  Something was different that last night; he seemed comfortable.  I listened to him snore instead of groan.  My girls hadn't seen him in over a month, as we wanted to protect their last memories of him.  However, Hospice House provided the right atmosphere for them to say goodbye.  As we entered his room and approached the bed, each girl reacted differently.  Ava whispered, "Hi, Grandpa" while Mia greeted him with a full voice.  Eliana, bent over and gave him a kiss on the forehead.  Just after arriving back home, we got the phone call that he had passed away.  I am so thankful that I made the decision to take my children to see him before it was too late.
We had so much to take care of in the following months, that the weight of the loss didn't settle in right away.  Then, the real grieving began.  For six full months, there always seemed to be a lump in my throat or a pit in my stomach. That has subsided, but the missing him doesn't go away.

 There are few quotes more fitting for him, than this.