My Father Died Peacefully, in his Sleep, at Home
Now the year was 2014, and it had absolutely nothing to do with any conjob vaccine, but I thought I’d share the story nonetheless.
I was at my parent’s Las Vegas house at the time, having just moved back to the USA from Thailand after my first husband’s Visa finally went through. The original plan was for my husband to look for work and to move out, but only nine days in we weren’t there yet. It turned out God had different plans.
My father had longstanding health problems that he refused to accept medical help for. He’d had asthma since he was a child and had been diagnosed with COPD (he’d quit smoking 40 years before). Most of the time he slumped over a table for breath. His ankles were swollen, a sign of renal failure.
He’d been hospitalized before and was given oxygen tanks and medicine. He hated the experience so much he’d told me afterwards “I want to die in my bed.” You couldn’t force him and we’d given up trying to.
He’d told me two nights before “I can’t breathe.” He’d gasped this out. I asked if he wanted to go to the hospital. He slumped onto the couch. “No. I’ll be fine.”
That fateful morning my Mother came out of the bedroom. “Dad’s not waking up.” She told me after a time. I went in to check on him. His eyes were closed and he looked as he had before, which was admittedly in poor shape. I tried to check for a pulse but Dad was a bigger man and I couldn’t find one. “What should we do?” Mom asked worridly from the door.
“Call 911.” I said simply. I tried to work on my father as my husband and two daughters came in the room. I moved his head a bit and checked his neck for a pulse. He exhaled on me.
“Mom I think he’s alive!” I said excitedly. Mom relayed this information to the 911 operator. An ambulance was at our house in two minutes. They pushed me out of the bedroom as they worked on my father. Within a minute they called my Mom into the room to talk.
“Okay so we’re going to call the coroner now.” I overheard them say as shock filled me. My daughter had been asking about a birthday party we were supposed to attend. The EMS filed out as I stared at one in shock. “So my Dad is dead?” I asked her.
“I’m sorry honey.” She responded sweetly. “Your father died about 3 AM.” I wanted to know about the strange breath on me. “That was probably just built up oxygen.” She responded.
Now here’s the odd thing, relevant to this dystopian year. The police came to our house next. See back then if somebody died at home, they needed to see if there was foul play involved. Basically they were making sure that none of us had killed him.
We hadn’t. An Asian cop eyed my Thai husband. “Hey I need the code for a death in home no foul play. I haven’t had one of these in a long time.”
So in 2021 I’ve been inundated with accounts of someone “dying at home” or “dying peacefully” or “dying in their sleep.” These are all well and good, especially in the case of say a terminal cancer patient in home hospice, surrounded in the embrace of loving family. I can understand why my father didn’t want to go to the hospital. I still think he saw more clear than most.
But many of these obituaries don’t mention in any way a cause of death. They often don’t contain clues, even, like the once standard In leui of flowers, please donate to x charity (for research into the likely cause of death).
So the real question is why has my father’s once rare choice suddenly become so popular based on obituaries? And are the police still investigating looking for a potential murderer?