Lost my dad, too.

[AJ4]

I feel like I'm putting grief on top of grief.  I know a lot of people experience this, but I don't know how they cope.   

My dad died on February 9.  He had two types of cancer, one of them was being treated "successfully" but then he got pancreatic cancer and pancreatitis and the combination of all of those going on at once (we believe) must have been the cause of his sudden death.  They only had found the pancreatic cancer in January, a few weeks before.  

Thursday he had gone to the doctor with my mom to see about options for surgery but the procedure they have sounded very horrible,  and he was going to do it although he really didn't want to and didn't want to be in the hospital at all.  His wish had always been to wander out to the woods and die when it was time, like the animals do.  He loved the wilderness, the prairie, nature (his second career was as a botanist).    I get my love of the same from him.    However this sort of thing can be hard on the loved ones, who have to look for you, we all imagined.   
He did a few chores Thursday night, and had a good dinner with my mom, and then about midnight he woke up, tried to get out of bed and died just like that, instantly.  
My mom called me early in the morning and I threw my bag together and drove down there (I live 9 hours away).  My brother also came, a two day drive from Colorado.   There was lots to do and we cleared out a lot of stuff from the house that my mom wanted help with right away.   My heart hurts that she is now feeling the pain that I felt when my husband died in 2021.  I wish I lived closer so I could be there in person more.  I had to come home because I have a job, and farm animals, and dogs that need to be taken care of.   Most of the time I am in a state of disbelief, or denial, that he's really gone.   But I am thankful that he didn't have to suffer through a hospital stay and surgery that didn't have much of a chance of helping him and probably would have just made him feel worse.