Oh, Tom. Thank you.
I had to make the call that the doctors said was inevitable. They were boosting his blood pressure with extraordinary amounts of drugs, and his liver and kidneys had already failed. I called several people, and I shouldn't have been surprised that they came. His daughter didn't believe me when I said it was bad, really bad. His sister called her a few hours later to tell her flatly that if she wanted to say good-bye to her father to get up there.
He'd stopped responding several hours previously. He wasn't even squeezing my hand any more. So I told them to let him go, made sure his Thor's hammer was in his hand, told him that he wasn't unarmed and to go with the Valkyries, and held his hand and told him I'd be all right.
He was supposed to come home. He was supposed to beat this. I kept waiting for him to wake up. My last conversation was over a bad cell phone connection. Our 30-year conversation is done. But I promised him I'd be all right and I'd take care of myself. This is going to be so very hard.