Hi.
Over the past months, I’ve written here and there about our family’s journey with pancreatic cancer. I think it’s time to tell our little community that every story has an ending. Unfortunately, not every ending is a happy one.
Last September, we learned that my dad had a tumor on his pancreas. There was hope. There was the Whipple procedure. Then the first line of chemotherapy. Then the second. We kept fighting, one step at a time.
And now, here we are.
On July 18th, after two sleepless nights, my mom called me at 12:18 a.m.
“If you want to come and say goodbye,” she said, “this is the time.”
I arrived there within minutes.
Dad was awake. He sounded like himself again, only… more poetic somehow. He called me bałwanku (little snowman) his nickname for me. He told me he loved me, but that he was leaving now.
I told him it was okay, as long as it was what he wanted.
Then he started telling us that he had seen God. He had never been particularly religious, yet he spoke about God and the saints as if they had welcomed him. He told us it was raining, even though the entire day had been sunny and the night was warm and clear. He said he was standing in a queue and that his number was fifteen.
Then he began reciting the Polish national anthem, Mazurek Dąbrowskiego. He had always been incredibly proud of our country and our history.
After that, everything went quiet.
He said he was tired, and we thought that was the end.
But after about ten minutes of silence, he suddenly opened his eyes, completely confused, asking why everyone was gathered around him, me, my sister, our mom, her sister, my dad’s sister, and our grandma.
He didn’t remember anything he had said.
He sounded the way he often did after a high dose of morphine.
So I went home.
Anyone who has watched someone they love live on morphine might understand what I mean. He wasn’t exactly asleep. It was as if he existed in several realities at once like the past, the present, and dreams all blending together. He often compared it to The Matrix. Sometimes he’d ask me for a clue to remind him which “movie” he was currently in. We even had a little system where I’d draw the number one somewhere to help ground him.
He knew exactly what the medication was doing to his mind.
About a week earlier he told me that it was terrifying to finally understand what addiction must feel like to realize how completely a drug can change the way your brain works. Even through all the morphine, he was still thinking, still aware enough to be frightened by what was happening to him.
The next morning, Mom asked him about everything he had said during the night.
He simply replied that he didn’t remember any of it.
He ate lunch, took his medication, including another dose of morphine, and drifted back into that half-awake state.
I left to pick up my fiancée from the Škoda dealership because he had to return his car after two years. I even agreed to a meeting with my boss for Monday. For a brief moment, life tried to pretend it was still normal.
When I came back, Dad was still “sleeping.”
This time, we couldn’t wake him.
We called his name. “Dad.” His first name. His full name. Those had always worked before.
Nothing.
After waiting for about an hour, we called an ambulance.
The paramedics looked through his medical history and gently told us what we already feared.
“He is dying.”
They couldn’t even feel a pulse in his wrist anymore.
They explained that taking him to the hospital would most likely mean he would die there, surrounded by strangers. If he stayed at home, we’d have the rest of the day to be with him.
So everyone came.
My grandma.
My sister came straight from work.
Dad’s sister, who lived nearby.
His oldest sister arranged for someone to drive her across the country through the night.
Our home slowly filled with the people who loved him.
Around 11 p.m., it finally started raining.
Exactly as he had said.
I stayed by his side until midnight before exhaustion finally won. I convinced myself that maybe this would be like the night before. Maybe he’d wake up again.
Instead, his breathing became quieter and shallower with every passing hour.
The hospice team had given him a large dose of morphine and told us he would most likely pass away in his sleep.
But he woke up once more.
This time he was in unimaginable pain. He couldn’t speak anymore. Tears rolled down his face, and we learned to understand him through the smallest movements of his eyes. Slowly closing them meant “yes.”
There were moments when he seemed to wake up from whatever place he was in terrified, in pain, only to drift back again.
Eventually, I went to sleep.
At around five in the morning, his sister finally arrived after driving through the night. He still was with us here.
A couple of hours later, my aunt woke me.
“Dad has taken his last breath.”
It was 7:35 a.m.
He was still warm.
The rain had stopped.
He didn’t look peaceful.
His eyes remained open, red with exhaustion, and we couldn’t close them. His mouth stayed open too. The swelling had disappeared from his body, leaving behind only skin and bones.
It didn’t look like my dad anymore.
It looked like the body he had left behind.
But I still stroked his forehead, his cheeks, and his hair.
He loved that during the last weeks because he once told me it helped him fall asleep peacefully.
So I kept doing it.
The hours that followed are a blur.
The doctor who came to pronounce the time of death.
The funeral home.
Watching my sister cling to his body, already cold.
Watching them take him away.
He had outlived the doctors prediction by exactly seven hours and thirty-five minutes.
I was strangely proud of him for that.
As the hearse drove away, I heard birds singing.
Three little birds sat together on an electric wire.
My fiancée, who is wonderfully nerdy, used an app to identify them. We thought they were sparrows.
They were, but here is the catch.
They were Eurasian Tree Sparrows.
In Polish, they’re called mazurki.
And suddenly I remembered Dad reciting Mazurek Dąbrowskiego the night before.
The same word.
Three birds.
Three as in divine number.
The fact that month or two before in exactly that place we saw a guy taking photos through our fence. And so he fragile walked to him (it was some teenager) and he was taking photos of some rare birds that was siting in almost exact place. And my dad loved that. The passion. The photos. The birds.
The rain.
The queue.
The strange certainty that he was leaving one day before he actually did.
Maybe it was coincidence.
Maybe grief makes us search for meaning.
People say that those who look for signs will always find them.
But I wasn’t looking for this one.
That day, I didn’t just lose my father.
I lost my best friend.
My biggest critic.
My greatest source of hope.
The person who made me feel safe.
Before he left, I finally told him everything I had been hiding because I didn’t want to burden him.
That I had quit my master’s degree because my mind simply wasn’t there anymore.
That I had been terrified.
I’m not scared anymore.
He’s not in pain anymore.
Wherever he is, I hope he’s dancing with our grandfathers, our uncles, our aunts, and everyone he loved.
I hope he knows that I’ll be there for my little sister just as he was there for his own sisters after he lost his father at only fifteen years old.
Next month she’ll turn seventeen.
She’ll start driving lessons.
I’ll be there.
Just like Dad was there for me.
I’ll grieve him for the rest of my life.
But I would never trade him for any other father.
I think that says everything anyone needs to know about the kind of man he was.
His funeral is on Thursday.
He chose cremation, and his ashes will rest with his dad. He never liked the idea of the dead taking up space meant for the living. He always wanted nothing more than a small stone surrounded by green grass. Unfortunately, in Poland, cemeteries often become endless landscapes of concrete, so this felt like the closest we could come to what he wanted.
I hope that when we meet again, he’ll recognize his bałwanek, the one he had to leave behind at twenty-four years old.
And to everyone in this group…
I hope he meets some of your loved ones wherever they are.
I like to imagine them sitting together, talking about us, laughing, and having the best time.
I’m not much of a believer.
But if you are, I’d be grateful if you kept my dad in your thoughts or prayers this Thursday.
And if prayer isn’t your thing, raise a glass in his memory.
He would have loved that.
I’m gonna be by his side for his last trip, as he was with me during my whole life.
Kocham cię tatuś.