"It smells like Grandpa in here."

...is what my toddler said to me tonight.

As many are well aware by this point, my dad died in June. My partner and I finally took my dad's hospital bed out of his room and put our bed in it at the end of September. We had talked about it numerous times, and he told me he was going to start moving things out of there-- you know, the heavy stuff I can't lift, the unimportant things. He told me when he was planning to do it, and before he did it, yet I still felt hurt by it. That isn't to complain, I'm glad he just did the damn thing because Lord knows if I had my way I probably would have left it as my dad did for the rest of my life. Which would have been awful, to be honest. His room had not been his sanctuary anymore these last few years. When his regular bed had to be moved out and a hospital bed put in, oxygen tanks and tubes everywhere, having to do his breathing treatments on his nebulizer... why keep it like that? I could hear his voice in my head telling me to get rid of all of that shit right away.

So tonight, while we lay in bed with our son trying to get him to sleep, he suddenly blurts out, "It smells like Grandpa in here." Caleb and I are just completely taken aback by this, and we react to him with confusion. "It smells like Grandpa?" "Yes. Where is Grandpa?" When I tell you my heart shattered... I'm still trying to figure out how to tell my son that his grandpa isn't here anymore. How do you make a 2 year old understand death? We've just been telling him that grandpa is sleeping somewhere else, which I'm sure is confusing for him in its own right. Why would grandpa not be sleeping at home? Why is he always sleeping? Why can't I see him?

⚠️Warning: the rest of this post is going to contain content surrounding my dad's death that some may find triggering. Please click here to go back, or here to watch a video of cute kittens.

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The concept of death never eluded me, even when I was as young as 5 years old. I'm not sure how I knew; whenever I try to think about it, its felt like knowledge I was born possessing. Obviously, that isn't really the case, but nevertheless I was fully aware of the permanence of death even before experiencing loss. There were many nights wherein I would lie awake and cry because I would think about the fact that my beloved kitten would one day grow old and then die. People often remarked how old my dad was-- after all, he was in his late 40's when I was born. Thinking about the fact that he, too, would one day die often kept me up at night as well. As it goes, my beloved kitten did in fact grow old; he lived 14 years filled with much love before passing peacefully. When he finally passed in 2015, I had many, many years to prepare myself. Of course, I was still sad and I cried, but it was easy to accept as a part of life. By this point I was early in adulthood. This wasn't my first time experiencing loss.

And then the inevitable happened. My dad passed away on June 2nd, 2026 at 79 years old. I've had 25 or so years, give or take, to prepare myself for this. It is the natural order of things, no? Parents should always predecease their children. In my dad's final years, I was his caregiver. Things had gotten very hard. My dad's health took a turn for the worse in late 2023 and into 2024. For some reason, he had just stopped taking his medications, wasn't eating, and stopped checking his blood sugars. He kept telling me on the phone he was fine, but I knew he wasn't. I had him go to the hospital, where we found out he was in diabetic ketoacidosis and had gone septic. Eventually, after numerous hospital visits, he had to spend 3 months in recovery at a nursing facility. He did so poorly there that they would not release him unless he had someone to care for him at home or was put into the nursing home permanently. It was while he was at this nursing home that I found out he was in congestive heart failure and his COPD was far more severe than what he let on. My dad was always strong and stubborn, and he played the part of being fine until it got to a point where he just... couldn't anymore. I discussed it with him, and he said that if he's going to die, he wants to do it at home. So, in April 2024, with a 3 month old baby in tow, we moved back in with him.

Things seemed like they were improving for a time despite all of these new changes around the house. My dad was 5'11", and while at the nursing facility his weight had dropped down to 111lbs at its lowest. After a few months at home, I was able to get him back up to 135-- still not ideal for someone his height, but a drastic improvement. He started sounding less weak. He was laughing.

During this time, I noticed that his memory and personality had changed quite a bit. It took a while, but in July 2025 he was diagnosed with the beginning stages of vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease. He always had a bit of a temper, but this was highly exasperated by these diseases and his other physical ailments. His COPD continued to worsen until, towards his final months, we were told he also had bronchiectasis. He had peripheral neuropathy that also continued to worsen and with no treatment available (trust me, we tried). His legs gave him so much pain every day he needed to use a walker around the house. He couldn't walk to the end of the driveway unassisted without his legs hurting too badly or not being able to catch his breath.

My dad was the type of person who was always doing something. He could build just about anything out of wood, and he was always planning projects around the house. As aforementioned, he was stubborn, a go-getter, and self-sufficient. He only ever watched TV in the evenings before he'd go to bed. He was always outside in the garage, which was his workshop. Now, he was confined to the couch or his bedroom. Myself and many others tried so very hard to get him to find other joys in life, to figure out how to continue to do the things he loved with accommodations to his new normal. I reiterate, the man was stubborn; but, for the first time in my life, I saw him utterly defeated. Despite this, he was still confident he would live into his 80's, and he wanted to stay here for as long as he could. There were days when he was honestly so sour to me, so enveloped in his bitterness and anger that he stopped caring who he took it out on. Except for his grandson. When he got to spend time with Bubby, he almost didn't seem sick anymore. That is, until after Bubby turned 1 and he was running around all over the place. I think it compounded my dad's sadness. He would often make comments about being upset that he couldn't show Bubby how a grandpa should be. Couldn't get down on the floor to play with him, couldn't play catch with him, couldn't do much of anything with him. Sure, there were alternatives to these things, but if he couldn't do it right, he didn't want to do it at all. Still, that kid made his eyes light up every day.

Knowing all of that, you would assume his passing wouldn't have been so unexpected. He wasn't formally on any kind of hospice. We had just seen his pulmonologist who was prescribing him some new medication to try and help ease the COPD. If he could breathe, he could still try to do some things.

The day he passed away was how it usually was. My dad often slept most of the day and came out in the evening. Sometimes he liked watching game shows in the morning, but for the most part the interesting stuff was on at night. He had also been having trouble sleeping for quite some time at this point, and we tried everything to get him on a normal sleep schedule. He kept saying the schedule he was on didn't bother him, so with that, the doctors said it was fine so long as he was unbothered and still getting some rest. He did occasionally confuse day and night though. I remember one morning he woke up at 7am thinking it was 7pm, and kept calling Round Table to order pizza for dinner and getting angry that they weren't answering their phone, haha. There were some days when he would lounge about, dozing off and on, in his bedroom until 9pm, sometimes later. I usually tried not to bother him too much during the day to let him get some sleep, especially if I knew he had been up until the wee hours of the morning. Besides that, I usually got some signs of life from him like hearing him use his nebulizer or have coughing fits (this often kept him up a lot of the night too).

At 2pm, I went into his bedroom to give him his afternoon pills as I usually did. I honestly for the life of me can not remember much of what we talked about. He sounded fine, though. I remember he had asked me if his new Dexcom sensors had been ordered yet and he was annoyed they weren't here already. We had been having a lot of trouble with them lately. After he took his pills he said he was still pretty tired and wanted to rest some more. I heard him cough off and on the rest of the day and use his nebulizer. Around 9:30pm, I went into his room to check on him. I remember only sticking my head in through the door because I wasn't expecting much of a conversation. He had one of his lights on. When I called out to him, he startled awake (happened often) and looked at the clock. He asked me if it was 9:30 in the morning. I told him it was the evening and he said, "Damn, is it really 9:30 at NIGHT? I can't believe I got my days and nights mixed up again."

I told him that's okay, asked him how he was feeling. He said fine. I told him that I was going to clean the litter boxes and take a shower and that dinner was ready. "It's spaghetti," He grimaced. He used to love spaghetti, but he had lost most of his sense of taste by this point. "Is that kitchen cleaned up?" "I mean... I cleaned off the dining room table, but it looks mostly like it did yesterday." He grumbled at that. The kitchen wasn't bad, but he liked things to be unreasonably spotless.

He had asked me if I could do his laundry the day before when I had the time. "Oh, by the way, when I'm done with my shower I'll start your laundry." "Don't worry about that, it's late. You don't need to be up all night doing my laundry." "It's okay, I'm going to be up anyway." He made a comment about how he didn't know why he was so tired. And then he just stared off into space. He did this a lot, and often made comments about being tired, so none of this seemed unusual. He did sound like himself, too. He wasn't rasping, wheezing, coughing. He just sounded like... my dad. He had random bouts of that, too. Like an impatient child, and knowing just how long he was capable of sitting there in silence for, I said, "Okay, I'm going to go take my shower now." and he said, "Okay. I'll start getting up." I asked him if he needed anything, he said no, and off I went to take my shower. I was probably only in there for around ~20 minutes or so. When I got out, I heard his nebulizer on in his room. "Good, he's getting up," I remember thinking to myself. I figured I would get my stuff out of the dryer so it'd be ready for his stuff when the washing finished. I took my stuff out and hung everything up. When I walked past his room again right when I had finished, I still heard his nebulizer on. I didn't take long to put my stuff away, but the nebulizer had been on long enough for it to be odd. I went to check on him, and that's when I found him.

Slouched over in bed. I won't get too descriptive here. Caleb heard me yelling and came running, immediately started performing CPR while I called 911. It felt like an eternity before they got there. They intubated him and tried their best but, even though he had a heart beat, they couldn't get him to regain consciousness. At 12:12am they called it. A few weeks later, we were told it was a cardiopulmonary arrest.

The concept of death never eluded me.

But the aftermath is something I don't think anyone is prepared to face.

I felt like it was my fault, somehow. At first, you couldn't convince me of the contrary. Caregiver guilt. Even now, I struggle a lot with this. But the thing I think about the most is just how unfair it was-- is. How wrong it feels. How it shouldn't have been his time yet. Every time Bubby does one of his little quirks that my dad found hilarious, or when he does something new... he should be here to see it. When I've been upset or excited or even saw something I knew he'd find interesting, I find myself reaching for my phone to call him because my brain still thinks that if he isn't physically here, surely, he's still somewhere within reach. All of the regrets... not being able to say, "I love you," to him directly or hear it back. Not being able to tell him I'm sorry or that I forgive him. But I replay that last conversation I had with him over and over. Even in that final exchange, he was still being my dad-- asking about the kitchen being clean, worrying about me staying up late doing something for him.

And I was his daughter. Telling him dinner was ready and that I was going to do his laundry.

Love you always.