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Published: September 3rd 2008
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It's been almost nine months since my dad passed away and left behind the heavy curtain of Cancer that has surrounded him for many years. He is now in a peaceful place, somewhere he can be free of doctor's appointments, hospital visits and Cancer treatments.
My dad, Curt Johnson, was a very active man while he was alive, even in his last three weeks of life while he was dying of Cancer at the VA hospital in St. Cloud. He enjoyed giving people tours when they came to visit him in hospice. We would wheel him from one end of the hospital to the other constantly, he couldn't sit still long. The week before he died, he was taking people on tours of the special tub, the size of a hot tub, that the nurses would give him a bath in, stating to everyone, "wouldn't this be great to have at home?"
You couldn't tie my dad down, he was always exploring and "touring" his way through life. A few months ago, I was feeling down, we had just buried my dad's ashes and had put he and my mother's (she died five years ago) house on the market to sell. I was in a bit of a funk. I went out to dinner with a childhood friend and I talked her into joining me in a reading from a "psychic" who was working down at St. Anthony Main. She decided that she didn't want to partake in it, but that I should go ahead. She sat and listened while the "psychic" started her reading. She knew my parents were dead as she began and she said that my mother was in the room but that "my dad was busy"... I laughed and so did my friend. "Busy". Whether the psyhic was on to something or not, the mere fact that she said my dad was busy was interesting. Could he be as busy in death as he was in life?
My dad loved to travel, which I think he also instilled in me. We both loved trains and big cities. Or really was it that he loved trains and big cities and I was inspired by his passions. Whatever the case, we both loved trains and big cities.
Before he died he had talked my brother into taking him on a cross-country trip. On December 1st, they were to fly from Minneapolis to Denver and spend the night there. The next morning, December 2nd, they would hop on the Amtrak train headed West for Sacramento, CA through the mountains. From Sacramento, they would drive to San Francisco and fly home from the Windy City by the Bay. It sounded like a lovely "last" trip.
Unfortunately, he became so weak and confused from his cancer, in late November, just before the trip was to take place, we had to make the decision to call off the trip and take him to his final destination here on Earth. We took him to the VA Hospital hospice program on November 30, the day before they were to take their journey through the mountains.
When I left him there, I felt like I was betraying him. I wanted him to take his trip. Mostly, I wanted to protect him and bring him back home to his familiar three bedroom rambler where he had resided for so long, where he could sit in his comfortable chair by the t.v. and look out his huge picture windows to see the winter that was about to happen and watch all the snowflakes fall.
Did we do all that we could for him? My mind was filled with so many doubts, yet certainty, because I knew none of us were capable of taking care of him anymore without the assistance of nurses. My brother, who had become a caretaker to him, was getting tired... He needed a break. That was the decision we had to make.
He never took that last train trip. He mostly stopped talking about it when got to the VA. Maybe he somehow knew, even in his clouds of confusion, he knew the trip wasn't going to happen...
My dad died a very peaceful death three weeks later surrounded by a loving and compassionate staff of nurses at the VA. He died on his 81st birthday. He completed a full circle.
A few months after he died, my Aunt Dorothy, my dad's twin sister, casually mentioned that she would like to take that train trip to Sacramento. I said to her, "why not, let's go - let's do it". She hesitated in her Minnesota-nice way. Then I had to insist a couple times to have her finally give in.
So here we go, we're doing it. On Thursday, Dorothy and I begin the journey that my dad, and her brother, couldn't take.
We take this trip in honor of my dad's memory...
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