My dad’s death was nothing like I imagined

Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final installment of cartoonist Jack Ohman’s series “The Care Package,” for PBS NewsHour.

For years, Ohman imagined the moments leading up to his father’s death a thousand times, but when he died, the tedium, alarm and pain were nothing like Ohman had envisioned.

The final three weeks revealed how broken and tired his father’s body was. Surgeons removed part of his father’s colon, and then his kidneys stopped working. Doctors sat down Ohman for an end-of-life discussion.

“This goes on thousands of times a day in the United States, and you never think you’re going to be involved in something like that,” he said.

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Reporting by Laura Santhanam