The Last Leg of the Journey
The nurse asked, “Jacob, are you sure you are able to handle all this?” as I stood before her, stressed out, with my nerves frayed, thinking that I just wanted to collapse in exhaustion on the floor in the emergency room.
“Yes, I can,” I answered her, praying to God in my mind for strength but mostly praying for my 77-year-old father who was the very sick patient in the E-R.
“No, he can’t,” my father, Bobby Bembry, with concern in his voice, answered. “He’s sicker than me.”
“No, I’m not,” I answered quietly.
The day had already been busy and overwhelming for me. I had taken my brother to the urologist in Tallahassee. My father and mentally challenged sister, Abbie, were with us. I didn’t want to leave them at the house alone because Daddy had been sick and wasn’t able to take care of Abbie that day.
Abbie was the light of my father’s eyes, as she is of mine and my brother, Danny. God was the center of Daddy’s life, along with his family. He had a special place in his heart for Abbie, and, in, turn, she adored him and doted on him. She was definitely a daddy’s girl.
Abbie and I sat in the car and waited with Daddy, who wasn’t feeling well and had been very weak lately, as Danny went into the urologist’s office. I asked my father repeatedly if I needed to take him to the emergency room at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. He repeatedly refused.
Daddy was still refusing as we began to make the trek back to our home in Lee, approximately 65 miles east of Tallahassee. When we arrived in Madison, we stopped at O’Neal’s Restaurant in Madison, where we stopped to eat. Inside, my father had to go to the restroom. He was weak and I assisted him to the back. As I waited outside the stall, I asked him if he wanted to go to the emergency room and he said he did.
Danny, Abbie and I left immediately left and took Daddy to the emergency room.
At the small hospital in a small town, they deemed that he needed to be transported to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. I told the nurse, who is a friend of mine and who my father had attended church with, I would go to the house and get some needed things and then go over in the car, and then she asked if I would be able to handle everything.
As EMS arrived, and began to get my father ready for the ride to Tallahassee, I noticed that one of them was the daughter of a former co-worker of mine. She had been a little girl when her mother and I had worked together. I told Daddy who she was and he seemed please, in spite of all the pain he was in at the time.
I knew in my heart that my father was dying but I thought it would be a few months or at least a few weeks away. I didn’t know how soon it would come. Seven days later, he was released under hospice care.
The next day, January 23, 2014, my hero, the man who loved God, and who loved his family, passed away quietly at home in Lee, from this world into the arms of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
In the hospital, Daddy had said he would see my mama, who had died January 16, 1999, by Mother’s Day. I thought later how awesome it was that he got to see the woman he loved so much by Valentine’s Day.
It had been a little more than two years before that Daddy had sat by my hospital bed, as I hovered near death after going into cardiac arrest and clinically dying on the floor at Greene Publishing, Inc., where I was working as the editor of the two Madison, Florida newspapers. A miracle from God pulled me through and I ended up writing a book about it, Sudden Death: God’s Overtime . The cover features a photo that a friend took of him sitting at my hospital bed with me hooked to a ventilator. I had my miracle with my recovery. Daddy had his miracle when he saw his Lord.
He had only been on a journey through this world. As the lyrics to one of his favorite songs say, “This world is not my home, I’m only passing through.” He had trod many footsteps through a world that was foreign to him, that was not his home. He had begun the last leg of the journey on January 15, 2014 and he completed it January 23, 2014. He arrived back Home that day.
Read his own personal story of how Jacob Bembry went into sudden cardiac death at work, was revived by EMS and how he hovered near death in the hospital and read about the miracle from God that kept him here.
In honor of my father, I am giving away free Kindle copies of my book, Sudden Death: God’s Overtime through January 19. For paperback copy ordering options, visit My Books or for a signed copy, please send $15.99 ($12 plus $3.99 shipping and handling) to Jacob Bembry, P.O. Box 9334, Lee, FL 32059.
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