On November 24, 2014 at about 4:30 a.m. my father Melvin Aron passed away. He died under the tender care of Catholic Hospice at Holy Cross Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I believe my father’s death was a result of myriad medical errors.
I mourn my father, my daddy, my adviser, my go to guy, my rock. He was my children’s role model for what a father, a family man should be. He loved us and we loved him. He was a strong man, even at the age of 87 years.
Born in to the depression, he was a self made success. He was proud to talk about his years in the United States Army which he joined at the end of World War II.
My father was a happy man. He never understood feelings of anger. He wondered about the simple things in life and took little for granted.
My father was active until the end of his life. He worked for my brother in a role that I never quite understood but that was meaningful to him. He loved to tell jokes and each time we got together, he told them whether they were new or the same old ones he had told over and over.
My father knew he was slowing down, he was quieter in his last few years. He told me one day that “I’m almost 90 Linda, I’m not going to live forever.” Although I too saw him slowing down, a part of me thought he would live forever.
Now that he is gone, Dad will live forever in my heart and mind. I think of him when I turn my car out of the community where I live, because that is when I would call him in the mornings, on my way to work. I feel the pain of the emptiness left by my father’s death. I am so sad that he is gone yet so happy that he saw two of his grandchildren marry. Justin to Rebecca, Darielle to Aaron, and he got to hold his great-grandchild Asher and play with him a little bit.
In the last days of my father’s life, the family was there with him. When he went in to cardiac arrest, I called Justin and my youngest daughter Sarah to fly home today and not wait until Sunday, a few days before Thanksgiving. The kids were coming home so we could all spend Thanksgiving together. When they arrived dad was on a ventilator. His hands were wrapped in white mittens because his arms were flailing and he was trying to pull out the respirator. This is the last vision we have of my father. Heavily sedated and gone. We stood by his bedside, not knowing if he knew we were there or not. We cried, we talked to him, to each other, we prayed.
At last, my father died an hour or two after we went home to sleep. I believe he waited for us to leave and then he left too
Dad in his favorite shirt
. He was the last to leave the party of life. Good-bye daddy. Be at peace.