The End

Michael, I can't stop thinking about the day you died. Besides the way this whole horrible nightmare happened, I realized why your death is so hard to accept. Why I push the images and memories away. Why I am still so upset at Shrek and the hospital.

When the nurse deliberately told Dad you died first while he was alone- that was strike one. When the nurse left him alone, sobbing- that was strike two. When the nurse followed up the news of your death with "he could have lived as a vegetable in a coma"- that was strike three. My final straw.

Almost three years later those words still haunt me. I know that you were dead on the beach. I knew that I had lost you to the ocean. And even though you would not have been breathing on your own, tied up to one too many machines, you would have been living. We would have gotten to say goodbye. Mom, Dad, and I could have been the ones to pull the plug, the three of us, as one family. 

This whole notion that you could have been in a coma haunts me, will always haunt me. It not only signifies our goodbye, the fact that you could have lived longer, but it also tells me that the hospital didn't do everything in their power, they just didn't do enough. But then I have to ask myself, regardless of the way they delivered the devastating news, would I have ever thought that they did enough? 

No fears and limitless, MHF