RIP My dad

I prefer to keep the blog poker related but this kind of transcends it all. My dad died yesterday, Tuesday, aged 69.

He hadn't been ill, which makes it harder to take. Basically he'd had 3 failed operations on a hernia over the past 5 years, and it kept coming back until it was a ridiculous size, pushing right out through his stomach. The doctors wouldn't try again as they said it was too dangerous. Unfortunately, on Saturday night he was rushed into hospital in agony, apparantly the hernia had strangulated the bowel - they tried to get rid of the poison in his body with tubes everywhere but eventually said they had to operate or he would die.
He was in surgery on Monday for a solid 9 hours.
As far as we knew the surgery had gone well and we all relaxed.
When he came out they deliberately kept him asleep to help his body recover but on Tuesday morning he started to detoriate and they rang us to come over.
They took him back to theatre and found his bowel had died, which meant he was slowly dying and they couldn't do anything to save him.

They explained to us what was going to happen once they reduced all the meds and machines that were keeping him alive and we sat with him until he passed away. I have never watched anyone die before, and to watch your own father die like this is pretty fucking heartbreaking. I'm crying as I write this, what's breaking my heart is he so wasn't ready to die. He had loads in his life and he really used to enjoy himself so to see that ended as it was is hard.

The doctors said he would be able to hear us on some level although fully sedated so we had to try and keep it strong. at the last minute we decided to get my 13 year old daughter from school as they were very close - he worshipped the ground she walked on but I wasn't sure if it was appropriate for her to say goodbye like this. My mum told dad I was going to get Tamsin, and I shot to the school which is literally 5 minutes away, picked her up and briefly filled her in - her instant reaction was to get her back to him to say goodbye before he died.

We ran back to the ICU, all dad's signs were still the same, Tamsin gave him a kiss and held his hand and told him she loved him, and whether coincidence, or whether he had waited for her, he then passed away.

I have to organise stuff now for my mum, while running two pubs and managing my own grief, so i don't see this being a good few weeks. RIP Tony Cove I love you xxx