This day will forever live in my life and not for a good way, but I need to write this down so that I don’t forget this. I’m going to continue adding things down the road for different ideas, and different hunting aspects, but I’m going to start adding stories here for another reason and mark them under ‘Dad’ because well, this was the day my father died.

I had spent the whole weekend with my father at the Farm where we hunt, and take care of the land for my aunt Viv. Everything was fine, my father and I had done shed hunting, where I found a matching set of antlers from a buck that I had called Thor. He and I even did a little bit of cutting down trees to prep for adding some tree stands, and discussed what our plans were for the summer when we were prepping food plots. The Sunday night when we got home, Dina and I had set up days we were going to be at the shore and marked them on my Dad’s calendar and our own. I didn’t tell him that night but I waited until the next morning.

I was sitting on the bowl when I texted him at 7:25, “Added dates to your calendar of when Dina and I will be at the shore this year”

7:30 my mother calls frantic. “David. Dad had a heart attack. The ambulance is here, they are going to take him to the hospital.”

“Okay mom, I’ll be there. Tell me where”

“I will. I think Overlook. Call Christine, let her know.” And she hangs up.

Dina, “what’s wrong?”

“Dad had a heart attack”

She screams “Nan no! Not now, please not now.” She starts to cry, because two weeks prior, she had just buried her Grandmother. I’m trying to call my boss but he doesn’t answer. I call Matt but I can’t hear him. I call Anthony and get through to him.

“What’s up David”

“Dad had a heart attack”

“What”

“Yeah”

“Call Dennis.”

“Already did, he bitch buttoned me”

“Okay, I’ll handle it. Let me know what’s going on.”

“Roger” End call.

Matt calls. “What’s up David.”

“Dad had a heart attack”

“What”

“Yeah”

“What.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Calm down. Do what you need to do and get to the hospital safely.”

“I know. I’m a little panic because I’m in the bathroom right now.”

“Alright, goodbye” End call.

Dennis calls. “What’s up Dave.” (Growing trend here)

“Dennis, my Dad had a heart attack, I’m heading to the hospital.”

“Ok.” Ends the call.

Dina, “What do you want me to do.”

“Go to work. There’s not much you can do.”

“Okay, I love you”

“I love you too.”

I finish my business, and get dressed, even putting on the sweatshirt that my Dad gave me for Christmas, a Spider sweatshirt. I grabbed my regular glasses and prescription sun glasses and headed out the door. I called my Aunt Viv, Uncle Dan, and my sister to let them know what’s going on. My Aunt Betty texts me something and I call her to let her know what was going on, and she tells me that Mom had to go to the doctors while we were at the farm over the weekend because something was still acting up with her diverticulitis. I started begging my grandfather for a little bit of help, to help dad through this so that he’ll be okay. I felt a weird surge of calm go over me as I drove to the hospital. When I finally did, I was thinking I’d be to late, that Dad would already be in the ER and everything would be fine. I took a wrong turn at one point, and then parked in a parking lot nowhere near the ER, not realizing at the time. I put my cloth mask on, and walked into the hospital from some covered walk way and went to the first floor. I was greeted by security telling me that I had to put a surgical mask on because the cloth mask wasn’t accepted for one, and two I was in the wrong wing of the hospital for ER.

I walked out the entrance and made a left and started walking towards where I was pointed to, I turn a corner, and make another left, keep walking, turn another corner, and that’s when I see it. The Union County EMS colors that I’m familiar of because I see them often while I’m driving on my route. I run. I run over to the ambulance and see them pulling my Dad out of the ambulance with a contraption making him breathe. Some sort of mechanical device performing CPR or something to him because I can see his stomach move. I’m now in a daze because all of a sudden this is real. This is my father, my hero, my hunting partner, my best friend, getting assistance to breathe by a machine and tied to a stretcher.

Some short guy points me somewhere and tells me something about checking in and I don’t remember because I’m so focused on my Dad but tells me that Dad’s heart was not beating but the machine was breathing for him so oxygen could get to his organs. They wheel him into the hospital, and someone else says go straight and through the doors. I do so, and am stopped by security again to take my temperature. Damn Covid. I go into the waiting room.

Front desk “How can we help you?”

“I don’t know. My dad just came in here.”

“He was just brought in?”

“Yes.”

“Take a seat please.”

A simple text to Matt at 8:30am. “His hearts not beating.”

The ER manager comes in and tells me to follow her. I tell her my mom is on her way. I see them bringing my father into a room and putting him onto a gurney instead of the stretcher as I’m ushered into a waiting room on the other side of the wall. My mom shows up and starts crying as she sees me. I’m holding my mom who’s shaking, and I see a doctor start to come in who doesn’t have a friendly face on him.

“I’m sorry to say, but we have exhausted all of our resources. David has passed.” Mom crumples to the ground crying. I start bawling. He was gone. My Dad was no longer with us. My mother stood up and asked to see him which the doctors said yes to.

We walked into the next room, he had a hospital gown on with a tube down his throat to help him breath from the machine. Mom, “Dave. Come on Dave. Wake up. It was supposed to be me!” Mom started to cry more, I was tearing up. She sits in a chair next to him and I do the same. A simple text to everyone at 8:37am. “He’s gone.”

Dina apparently lost her mind at work and left work immediately because she was so distraught.

Christine shows up, “What’s going on?”

I look at her and as mom was about to say something, I say, “Chrissy. He’s gone.”

Christine crumpled to the floor and screams as she cries. Ugly cry crying. Mom goes to her and helps comfort her. At some point we requested someone to come to preform last rites for Dad, and the hospital chaplain comes and says some words. We start to discuss what Dad wanted to have done, which he had expressed to me many a time cremation so that he could have some of his ashes spread at Garden Island Lodge in Canada. Mom also wanted to talk to Dad every day, which made cremation logical at that point, because when she was to go, she could have the urn buried with her.

At some point I text Aunt Betty to come as soon as she could because mom needs help and I don’t know what to do with some things. She lets me know what she’s booked a flight for that night and that her daughter was working on a flight for later in the week for the services. Aunt Viv calls to let me know to call her if we need anything. At some point the chaplain leaves and I call Immaculate Heart of Mary Church and see if they can send someone from the church up to do last rights for my father since they were parishioners to the church. While we wait I call Rossi Funeral Home, and let them know Dad had passed away. They start working on getting Dad from the hospital, as the Priest from IHM arrives and we say prayers over Dad.

At 11:00am, Rossi calls to let me know that the Hospital can’t release my father without us leaving the hospital first. I gather my mother and my sister and individually we say our goodbyes to him before we leave. My mother’s crying more and more now and is answering phone calls from her friends from work and my father’s friends from work. We get to my car, again parked in the wrong location, after a 15 minute walk. Dina calls and asks me what do I need from the house. I tell her my suit, my shirts, tie, shoes, a bunch of daily clothes so that I’m not wearing the same thing every day. As I’m leaving Mom tells me to go this way or that way, and that I’m not going the way that Dad always took her from the hospital. I’m just following my GPS on my phone as to how to get to her house. We wind up going through the Watchung Reservation and she says to me, “This is the most peaceful ride home. This way is so beautiful.”

We get to my mother’s house and it’s dead silent except for Myles who’s happy as always to see me and mom. “They re-arranged everything”

“What Mom?”

“The neighbors, they must have moved everything back to the way it was because the Police and EMS moved everything out of the way.” And she was right. I’ve done enough first aid and CPR course to know that things will be moved just to make things easier on everyone. She starts going through the house making sure everything was back to the way it was, I go upstairs to his room to look for the knife I gave him for his birthday but he had left it at the Farm. That’s when I noticed the shoes and the cut up sweatshirt. A blue version of the same one I was wearing.

Rossi calls at some point and we start collecting information for them for my father, including the suit he would wear and tie. A tie that I always remembered him wearing when he had to wear a suit and tie. Red with a gold design on it.

I go all the way to the top floor, apparently where my Dad slept for the night because his CPAP machine was there.

“Mom, why is his CPAP machine up here.”

“Because he wanted to make sure I got a good night’s sleep. Don’t you think I feel horrible that he didn’t sleep next to me last night, not knowing it would be our last?” All I could do was hug my mom.

At 12:45pm, Matt shows up at my moms house. I lose it. I had been trying to hold it, but I just flat out lose control and bawl in his arms as he bear hugs me. He comes into the house and hugs my mom as well. We talk, and Dina shows up at my moms after coming from our home. Matt goes back to work, and I find out that I don’t have a white shirt for the funeral for my suit. Dina and I get our clothes, which we had meant for us to bring to a dry cleaner to begin with, and bring them to the dry cleaners on my route before heading to Kohls. I get a white shirt, and a red tie with a gold and blue stripe pattern going through it, similar to my Dads.

Around 5:50pm my mother gets a text from the neighbors saying that the neighborhood was putting out American flags in a sign of respect for my father. My mom gets the idea to take the flags that my dad had in his office as Chief and put them out at the front door because it was the right thing to do since everyone else was. We set up the flags, with the bases and even set up a light on a timer so that my mother didn’t have to take the flags in every night. More neighbors came and talked to my mom as I set this up.

We get pizza sometime after and wait for Aunt Betty who’s supposed to be arriving at around 9:15pm. Dina and I get to Newark Airport and it is an absolute nightmare in terms of traffic, so we circle once since we knew that she was still on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open, before going into terminal C’s short term parking lot. The whole time we are talking to Matt who stops at my mother’s again to give her a bag of ice because the refrigerator door ice machine broke and instead of paying $500 to fix it, they make their own ice. Except Betty loves to have a lot of ice in her cups.

Its finally 11pm and Betty is finally in the car with her luggage and we are heading home.

We get home and Dina and I head to bed in the upstairs room. She sees the CPAP and says something about moving it, and I look at her and say I can’t do that right now. That was my Dad’s.

This day, and the subsequent days after, leading up to the funeral were the hardest days of my life. Phone calls and people stopping over to talk about my dad.

I miss him.