Unexpected Vacation

2 mondays ago was just a normal monday. I woke up. Got LL up. We both got dressed. S finished getting ready and LL and I drove him to work. LL and I went to playgroup. We played. It was fun. I was still stressed out over some things and working through them. Playgroup Mom Therapy helped. It is always great to have fun ladies around that can listen and give some great advice/opinions. We went about our day. In fact LL and I had so much fun at playgroup we missed our lunch date with S and had to run home for nap time. LL was too charged from playgroup so she skipped her nap and we ended up watching Gnomeo and Juliet on TV while we both chilled and I slept. I cannot say whether she had a nap or not but I did. Then when the movie was over I got up and for some reason checked my email. Instead of my email it was S's that came on the screen and what I saw made my heart quicken. It was a notification we had a voice mail. Now that would not normally make my heart quicken but when I saw the number. My mom's cell phone I knew I was in trouble. I plugged in headphones ( we don't have speakers plugged into that computer) and listened to 15 seconds of the worst thing ever. My mom was crying and saying my dad was in the ICU and it was not good. call her. Well that probably sounds to many of you like it was scary enough however you have to know my dad has been sick for a very long time and in and out of ICU many many many times. I mean we are talking in the 100's in terms of hospital visits. Normally my mom calls and says things like he is ok or the drs are just watching. There was even a time in July where my brothers wanted her to call me home but she had faith and said "let's wait and see". She never cries. She always has faith. This time she was crying. This time there was no sound of hope in her voice. I knew I was in trouble. I tried the phone and of course our internet was not working. I called a couple of friends and found Erin was home. I drove very quickly to her place and called my mom. She was tired sounding and sad. I cannot remember if she cried but I know I did. She said that Dad was not doing well. He was on a ventilator. They were trying everything they could but it didn't look good. She wanted to know if I was coming home. If I was coming home she would wait to take him off the ventilator. It sounds broken when typed out and in my head it is pretty broken. With each word that was said my heart sank. My mind raced to calculator plane tickets, time in travel, when I could get there, and just plain the logistics of an emergency trip with a toddler that I had not at all prepared for. Could I do it? YEP! I knew I could. I called S at work and told him the situation. He said go. So I called back and said I was coming. I then waiting for S to get off work. We picked him up and hurried home to look for plane tickets. We found some. Thanks to the fly America act we had to the fly the US carrier so direct flights were out. We chose the United flights. It has the best schedule and was leaving that night/morning. In the process of booking the tickets the flights disappeared from the computer. We figured it was because it was so close to take off. So we called united. well S called. I was a hot mess and could not stop crying. After being on the phone for an hour. He rolled the chair wrong and disconnected the power cord. The phone cut off just as we were to the part about paying. he called back and started over again. The person found the tickets but took another hour and when we got to the payment part they couldn't do it because they did not understand that our address was AE (Armed forces Europe). She told S that it didn't exist. That we were making it up. and things like that. He tried to calmly explain it. It didn't work. She wanted to list us as in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and at that point S lost his cool and after some words back and forth He hung up and we had no tickets. I was even more a mess at that point. I needed to get home and it wasn't looking possible. I then got on the internet and was looking for flights and the original one I wanted came up!!! I booked it. The return flight route was a bit strange but oh well the important part was getting home. Then after booking the flight we received a notice to wait 24 hours for confirmation of the tickets. It also said it was waiting for Fly Dubai (a partner carrier for the return leg of the trip) to confirm. Well we didn't have 24 hours to wait. We packed and headed to the airport in 30 minutes. We arrived at the airport to be told we did not purchase our tickets. There was a hold on the card for the amount but apparently we only reserved seats. We asked if we could pay for the tickets there and the guy said no. I cried. He told me to calm down. He told us to call our travel agent. We explained it was United.com. He called united but that didn't result in any help. The only solution he could give us was to buy one way tickets or to come back tomorrow and try again (well the flight left in 1 hour) so we bought the one way tickets in hopes of contacting United once we received our confirmation email and merging the itinerary's. LL and I made the flight and all connections. We arrived in Detroit on Oct 1st at 5:30pm.  Local time (October 2nd 12:30am Jordan Time) We spent 23 hours in airplanes or airports and 27 hours in transit to and from total. It was a long time without a lot of sleep but we did it. My in Laws rushed me to the hospital where I met my family. I was taken into the ICU and given 20 minutes with my Dad. At that time it was made clear he had deteriorated. he was on life support and just waiting for me. The call was made at the time to discontinue life support as he was brain dead.(he had pneumonia and was thought to be recovering. It is now believed that some mucous came loose and blocked his airway starving his brain of oxygen before the ambulance could get to him). The family all gathered around his bed. We all cried, told stories and prayed. We knew he could go quickly or he could hang on for a few hours. Instead my Dad had such a strong will he survived without life support just oxygen from 7pm On Tuesday October 1st until 2:50am October 3rd when he took his last breath with my mom, my 2 brothers, my sister in law, me and LL by his bed side. In that time we spent lots of time as a family talking and laughing about times past and present. We ate food and watched a lot of Mickey Mouse Club house. LL played in the grass outside of his hospital room and learned of her grandpa as always sleeping. She bonded with him though he could not interact with her. She said "grandpa" for the first time. She reminded us that he was sleeping and to "shh" all the time. She blew him kisses and told him she loved him constantly. She was the shining light in the room and we were glad to have her there. Though I am sure that if my Dad could have interacted with her he would have spent a lot of time telling her to "shhh" too. As she ran up and down the hallway and in the room talking, laughing, and screeching. She was one tough little girl. She was also very good. I can honestly say there was not a lot of kid things for her but she was my strength and I needed to have her to focus on something other than the sadness. After my dad passed. We all sat quietly for a while. Eventaully taking our turn to say a final good bye and leave the hospital. Only my oldest brother stayed. He could not leave dad. He stayed and waited for the ER doc to come and pronounce time of death. He waited for the funeral home to come and get him (at 6am). He stayed and fussed over dad. Taking care of him while I, LL, and my sister in law returned home with my mom to take care of her and all of us get some rest. We waiting until the next day to make phone calls. We then arranged the funeral. The viewing was on friday and the funeral on Saturday. Saturday because it was his favorite day of teh week. He looked forward to breakfast with the family and time spent at home listening to his jukeboxes (yes plural) and relaxing. I made sure the family wore blue (his favorite color). My thing to fuss over. Mom is the only one to get off the hook. She chose a dress that Dad said she looked good in and I thought that was a good enough reason to deviate from the blue plan. LL was at the funeral and the viewing. She kept asking to see grandpa and kept blowing him kisses there too. She really does love her grandpa. During the funeral my in laws were amazing and sat with her in the kids room, watching elmo and feeding her pretzles.They all survived! After it was over we went to lunch and LL had a piece of lettuce on her plate and handed it to me deeming it to be "grass". I guess we need to work on salads. Then we returned home. What a thought. Home. The place I grew up. The place filled with a lifetime of memories with my dad. A place filled to every nook and cranny with his collections (he loved to collect things). It is bitter sweet. Though LL is doing her best to enjoy all of grandpa's trinkets. The jukeboxes are playing regularly. The train lap is constantly on. She is forever harassing Gutchai and Oliver (that cats). It goes on. My little girl is amazing and really is our bright spot in getting through this tough time. On a side note. I still do not have things worked out with United. After waiting for a confirmation for another day. S called them. They said without the confirmation there was nothing they could do. Then it turns out that the tickets had been cancelled, possibly due to us not showing for the flight for because fly dubai pulled out (though we did not book with them it was all done through United.com) We have yet to get an answer as to the exact reason why. Calls have only lead to being told to contact other departments and now we wait for yet another department to contact us back. However it looks like we will now be buying one way tickets back to Amman. Thank you United for making a tough time even harder. Now it looks like we have spent 6,000 on these tickets instead of 3000 and while I would not change what we did. I can be irritated with Uniteds process as that is a lot of money that we are out for a mistake on their end. Does anyone know anyone that works for United? Thus far my poor husband is getting nothing but the run around and LL and I would eventually like to get back to see him. We miss him. Either way we will get back to Jordan some time soon but for now we will continue to enjoy this blessing of extra time spent with our family.