The Seevers Family of FIVE: January 4, 2010

I remember it like it was yesterday…the sadness and the scariness of the whole situation. Five years ago on Jan. 2, 2005, Paul, Jerry, and I were having our annual Christmas dinner with our dad. We were at Brann’s on 44^th & Division and talking, laughing, and waiting for our food to arrive, when all of the sudden Dad got up from the table and never returned. About 15 minutes after he left he called Paul’s cell phone and told him he was outside and was having a hard time breathing. Paul & I rushed outside only to find him sitting trying to catch his breath. He told Paul to take him to the med-center at 68^th & Division. I asked him if this had ever happened before and he said one other time. As Paul was getting the car, I sat with Dad and was scared that something might be terribly wrong and that this wasn’t just a time that he needed a breathing treatment (although that’s what I was hoping). I thought he should go to the ER, but he insisted that the med-center was just fine. Paul rushed him there while Jerry and I paid for our dinners and left to meet them there. We met Paul in the lobby of the med-center only to find that they had Dad in the back and were “working on him.” The nurse told us that he would need to be transferred to Spectrum ER as soon as possible. We figured we would leave and meet him there, so we left. I called my aunt and told her what was happening. She said she would call my other aunts and grandpa and meet us at the ER. Paul had called my mom and she too met us at the ER. When we arrived at the ER we didn’t realize how severe Dad was. As it turned out he had a massive heart-attack and his heart had stopped for roughly 45 minutes. Unfortunately during that 45 minutes his major organs had also shut down and we later learned that he would never wake up, or at least not to the point of being Dad again. After a two day struggle for all of our family we all decided it was time to take Dad off life support and let him be with his mom and Jesus. On Jan. 4, 2005, around 7:10 pm my dad took his last two breaths and he was peacefully gone.

God works in mysterious ways. To this day I believe the timing of Dad’s death was a miracle. Dad was not what you would call a “family man.” Although he may have had good intentions, he never really understood that family came first. But on that day, Jan. 2, he had seen his father, two of his sisters, a lot of extended family (at a funeral for his cousin), and both of his children. I think that was a goodbye worth mentioning, since that was more family he had seen in quite some time.