Putting it together

This morning my mother, my brother and I did something we had been thinking about for a very long time. Thinking about because time often runs on a different sort of cycle here at The Manor. What might take a week in some homes can stretch out in to a good six months here. Today the three of us met with the two men who were present when my father crashed his bike and died.
There names were Trenton and Austin and they couldn’t have been nicer people. Trenton is a trained paramedic and was doing CPR within a minute of my father’s crash. Austin was the one who called 911. Both were at that park for a church picnic and as my father died there were over 50 people praying for him. Not a bad exit when all is said and done.
As healing as meeting the two of them was, I am again shattered at the loss. These two people saw my father riding his bike and then suffer a fatal heart attack as he crossed the street. Trenton held my father as he uttered the agonal breath. As I mentioned above, both men are fairly spiritual and both felt that the last breath was my dad’s soul leaving his body.
The experience has affected them both deeply. Trenton showed us a journal entry he wrote that day. It has a newspaper clipping and a picture of my father in it. He described in detail the crash, their initial thought that it was just a bike accident and then the following actions. He said it was just 10 minutes but it changed his life on a very deep level. He had experienced death in a clinical setting but never out of the blue in a social setting. Both men said that the experience has given them a different view and appreciation of life. Both live across the street from the park and frequently think of my father when they are at the park.
There are a few details that have now been cleared up. We now know exactly where it all happened. We know the people who held him as he left this world. We know he was surrounded with goodness and prayer. We also know that the crash was hard enough to break a rib and that he was purple by the time Trenton started CPR. None of the information changes the fact that my father is gone and never coming back. It doesn’t change the feeling of absolute and permanent loss. It disturbs me to think that somebody witnessed my father die as he crossed a street, but it comforts me to think that they cared enough to try to save him, to pray for him and to make this connection with my family.