tl;dr: my dad was really sick and needed a lot of hospital care. When he needed his finger amputated was when I felt in my gut that it wasn't going to be okay.
My dad has had health issues since 2008 when the first stroke hit. Since then he was always in and out of hospitals and it became just another thing. It happened so much that he would dismiss symptoms just so he wouldn't have to go to the hospital again. It became even worse when he was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney failure and had to do dialysis three times a week.
Anyway, I went to visit him about a month ago and out of the blue he kinda looks at his hand and says, "you know, my finger has been smelling funny lately." I'm all incredulous and I tell him funny smells usually means infections. I joke around and tell him he needs to get it looked at before they have to amputate it.
Spoiler alert: by the time he had it looked at the bloodflow to the finger was compromised due to a fistula in his arm. He needed to get it amputated.
This is where the funny feeling kicked in. My grandmother, his mom, passed away in 98' after her leg was amputated. The fact that he had to have anything amputated starting making me anxious, and I dismissed it as being over dramatic.
His surgery was the Friday before Mother's day and I went to visit him after work to see how he was feeling. He was so groggy and kept falling asleep at the table so my mom and I basically carry him to his bed. He's a proud man, super oldschool in a 'I'm a man, I don't need my wife and daughter helping me' kind of way but he clung to us because he just couldn't do it on his own.
We got him to the bed and he couldn't even lift his legs up. I had to do it for him and stick some pillows under his head. I looked over at my mom and the look on her face made my stomach drop and I asked her if she wanted me to stay with her tonight. You know, just in case. She said yes.
2am I go downstairs to check on them because I can't sleep. He starts moving around and trying to take his sweater vest off because he's hot. He was still wearing the clothes from earlier. So I help him unzip it and he wakes up briefly, sees that it's me and smiles. He puts his good hand on my arm and just smiles.
4am Saturday morning mom wakes me up and real calmly says she doesn't think Daddy is breathing. I knew it before I entered the room because in addition to the kidney issues, he had some breathing problems too and always took laborious breaths when he slept. It was quiet, I heisitate to use the term dead quiet because thats exactly what it was.
We called 911 and the ambulance came. They got him back, lost him, got him back again but said he was clinically brain dead and we should probably call the family. So we do.
1:00 am Mother's day my sister and I are standing watch in the room. We agreed to sleep in shifts and it was her turn. My anxiety is skyrocketing and my fight or flight is kicking in and I just want to leave and go for a walk around the halls to calm my mind. So I get up and as I'm passing his bed my anxiety becomes more direct, if that makes sense. I suddenly felt that I needed to be there. So I stood by his bed and held his hand. I told him that we were there with him, and just spoke about anything that came to my head because honestly I'm just flying on auto-pilot when it came to cognitive function. I do remember saying, right before I sat down, that I know he's tired and that we don't want him to hurt anymore and we'll always love him. I went to go sit back down because I was crying and a few minutes later the machines started going haywire. He passed at 1:30am.