They were asking us, basically giving us the option of; “What do you want to do?” Do you want to keep him on this life support equipment or do you want to take him off?
That was Father’s Day weekend. My Dad would have been fifty years old. He was having a headache and things but he was sick because of all the chemo, radiation and things. But we knew the transplant was coming. So, I asked; “Dad, we are going to go out and grab something to eat (it was getting around dinner time), do you need anything before I go?” He said; “No, no I’m good. I love you.” I said; “I love you too.” So we went and ate.
We got a call while we were at that pizza restaurant there. And my brother said; “Hey, something’s happened to Dad. You need to get back to the hospital.” He had had an aneurism in his brain. They wheeled him back into the room and he was hooked up to a monitor and the life-saving equipment or whatever and he was lying there unconscious. I remember us all sitting around the room and they were asking us, basically giving us the option of; “What do you want to do? Do you want to keep him on this life support equipment or do you want to take him off?”
Our family doctor was a deacon from our home church. He said; “We are not getting any kind of brain activity from your Dad at all from the scans and things we have done. So, in my belief, your Dad is already in Heaven.” He said; “This is just his body being kept alive by medical science because there’s no brain activity whatsoever. So Mom looked at me, [as the oldest, I guess] and she said; “What should we do?” I remember God just giving me an incredible peace to say; “Hey, it’s okay. (Dad already knew where he was going. He is already there and I know that I will see him again). I said; “Well Mom, Dad wouldn’t want his body to be kept alive this way knowing that he is already in Heaven.” So then she went around to my other brothers and they kind of nodded. They were younger than I was. They even asked his Mom (my grandmother). Then asked her parents (my grandparents), they were all in the room. And so, it was unanimous. We unplugged the plug or turned off the machine or whatever it was. About five minutes later his body breathed its last.
That was Father’s day weekend. My Dad would have been fifty years old. I remember walking out to the van after leaving the hospital room and just having the peace that passes all understanding that I had sang about all of my life in the church. But God gave me that peace. And again, the peace that God had has just been there the whole time.
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