My father passed away last week.

[Rubman]

Hey Guys

So it occurred to me that I haven't been anywhere near as active in the last few months as I once was. Some of you follow me on Instagram, and some of you even got me on Yee Ole' Facebook.

I've been really selfish these last couple of weeks. I've been so busy trying to take care of family shit and deal with everything that has happened that I almost forgot just how many people were cheering for my father and wishing us the best -- and so many of those people hung out right here on ChopCult.

For those of you who didn't know, my father passed away last week.

After receiving everyone's insane generosity, we booked him another flight out to California to pick up more meds. Around Christmas time, he got a cold that he just couldn't kick. About 3 weeks ago we rushed him into the hospital and they had him on some incredible drugs and shit that made him feel a LOT better. Unfortunately, they discharged him super early (only 24 hours!) because he refused a tracheotomy.

It had gotten really difficult for him to breathe, but he knew that he had to make it out to California one last time before he could go in for a trach (in case you were unaware, a tracheotomy renders you practically immobile for a few months -- which means he wouldn't have been able to get out there to get more oil, and would have had to go into chemotherapy, which we figured would kill him).

The antibiotics they had him on at the hospital worked wonders, and it seemed like he had taken ten steps forward in the day he spent in the hospital. We had originally scheduled the trip for that wednesday, but he was rushed to the hospital on Tuesday night. I was down in Philly in some girl's bed (side note: girls in Philly have been really good to me -- i suggest you all check this place out, if you can!) when I got the call from my mom at 3 in the morning, and I left immediately to go be with him.

So we canceled and rescheduled his flight, which cost my family about a $1,000 that we didn't really have to begin with, and set it up for the following wednesday. After a few days, my dad's health started to slip again, and the following Sunday after leaving the hospital (three days before he was supposed to leave again), he asked my mom if she would take him to the hospital.

My mom feels terrible about it (but she shouldn't), but she convinced him not to go to the hospital. She explained that not only could we simply not afford to cancel, reschedule, and lose ANOTHER grand on the trip, but that no matter what hospital she brought him to, they'd get his file, see that he was recommended a tracheotomy, and refuse to treat him until he did. And if he HAD consented to the tracheotomy, he wouldn't have been able to get out to California, he wouldn't have been able to get his oil, and he would have died, miserable and in pain, in chemo. His two greatest fears when he was diagnosed was going out because of chemo, and being hacked up like fucking Frankenstein to fit a trach set up.

Instead, she scheduled him a doctor's appointment for that tuesday afternoon (he was scheduled to fly out with my sister on wednesday). On MONDAY, I drove back up to see them and make sure he was set for his trip, and when I got there, he was laying on the couch. I asked him how he was feeling, he said he was ok, but a little under the weather. I asked him, straight up, if he needed to go to the hospital (I'm the kind of man where I'm not going to sit there and fuckin' baby you -- if you gotta go take care of business, we go and we take care of business and sort out all the bull shit later), and he looked at me, dead in my face, and said he was ok. He said that my mom had scheduled him a doctor's appointment, and that he wasn't feeling too sick. I believed him. I watched him eat dinner, and he even had seconds (he had lost a lot of his appetite while he was sick with the cold, so I knew an appetite was a realistic indication of how he was ACTUALLY feeling).

So I give him a hug and a kiss on his forehead, and wished him good luck for the flight. I truly believe that he didn't go out there knowing he was clocking out. To this day, I know that if he thought there'd be REAL trouble, he knew could count on me to take care of it. When he was in the hospital the first time, he couldn't sleep for anyone. Part of the reason why he was there was because he was just so physically exhausted -- he was too scared to go to sleep. I showed up to his hospital bed, sent my mom and my sister home, and told him that it was ok for him to sleep, and that I had his back. It was the only rest he was able to get, and it meant the world to me to know my Pop trusted me like that. I was his guard, and he knew he could count on me.

SO anyway, wednesday rolls around, and he and my sister fly out. As soon as he gets off the plane, he looks at my sister and says he needs to go to the hospital. She calmed him down and explained that he'd just been on a long flight, didn't get any rest the night before, hadn't really eaten, hadn't taken his medicine, and just needed to chill. She said that she wanted to get him to the hotel room, get some food in his stomach, give him his medicine, and if he didn't feel better, she'd take him to the hospital.

And she did just that. His only request was that if he went down, she She got him to the hotel room, got him on his nebulizer and shit, put some towels in the freezer to cool him down a bit, got him everything from soup to vitamins and Vic's vapor rub to clear his sinuses -- she did everything she thought she could. After she got him situated, she went out to get them some real food, and when she got back, he was in the bathtub and eating some chicken soup.

She asked how she was doing, he said he didn't feel good and was dizzy. She helped him out of the tub, toweled him off, laid him down in the bed, and from what I understand, that was pretty much all she wrote. He started going into cardiac arrest. She was lucky to find a nurse two doors down, and she performed CPR while my sister called an ambulance. By the time they got his heart going again, he had been dead for a half hour.

I got the news at about 1 in the morning. I drove home without packing a bag of clothes and got back to my Mom's house in jersey at about three. She was in complete hysterics. It was tough trying to figure out what we needed to do, and she wasn't really helping. I didn't know anything about how bad it was, just that he was in a coma in the hospital and that he was fighting.

Mom was blaming herself from the get-go. I've never seen anything like it, guys. I know the grieving process and everything like that, but she was in hysterics. Crying, screaming -- she looked wild. I'd never seen her like that. Ever. And I can say with relative certainty that, even at 25, I've seen some wild shit. I've seen the fear that crawls through a dude who just talked the wrong kind of shit to the wrong dude. I've seen a man get stabbed in the neck. I've seen some pretty wild eyes in some pretty hopeless faces -- but I'd never seen someone look like that. And it was my MOM, man. I spent 4 hours convincing her that it wasn't her fault, and that she made the right calls… But there was no stopping it.

So finally, at about 7 in the morning, I just did what I knew my old man needed me to, and I drained my bank account getting her and I a flight out to San Francisco, where he was laid up.

We arrived at about 8:30 Cali time. I had been receiving text updates from my sister on the plane. She had been super positive, explaining that dad was partly breathing on his own, and that his pupils were still reactive. We knew he was home, but knew there was trouble -- just not how much. She was telling us that she had been talking to him all day, and that when she'd play songs on her phone that he liked, tears would fall from his eyes. He couldn't move or communicate to us with anything other than that -- but it was something. It was enough for me to know that he hadn't clocked out and that he was still swingin', you know?

[Rubman]

So we got there, got into the room, and I'll never forget it…

I sat down and looked at him. He had all these tubes in him and wires connected to him. His chest was heaving up and down methodically. I looked at him laying there, you know? And I said, "Hey Pop. I'm here, I did what I knew you'd want -- I brought Mom out. She's here, too. But listen man, I didn't come out here to say goodbye. I came here to take you home. I know you're in there, and I need you to keep fighting for me."

And I swear to god, he started streaming tears. I knew he heard every fucking word I said to him. Every word. And I also brought with me a piece of jewelry he always wore. We're not real religious people or any of that hippidy dippidy shit, but this necklace was his father's, and then his. It was of St. Jude -- The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations and Lost Causes.

I put it on his chest.

I knew my mom and sister hadn't eaten all day, so I ran out to get everyone some burgers. We got back, ate, and I was dead tired. I told the girls that they could go back to the hotel and that I'd stick by my dad all night, and I set up shop on the floor. The next morning I woke up and they were still there, and the doctors had come in to do their rounds. They came in, checked his eyes, checked them again, then turned to my mom and said, "I'm very sorry, but there's something you need to know -- your husband's pupils are fixed and dilated." (That's doctor-speak for "brain dead.")

And that was that.

We spent the day convincing the hospital to let us administer cannabis oil before they pulled his breathing tube, rather than putting him on a morphine drip. That may sound a little ridiculous, but the thing about my old man is that he watched his dad go out on morphine, and said his final moments were fucking horrific. They got him so stoned he was LEGITIMATELY scared, and died horrified.

His dying wish was to do it without morphine. So the chaplain (who was an awesome lady and not only got us permission from the hospital to use cannabis oil, but also helped us arrange an autopsy, cremation, etc.) got us permission from the hospital to use oil, and we were able to send my old man off the way he would have wanted.

I couldn't be in the room for it. I sat outside and listened. What they DON'T tell you about the process of removing a person's breathing tube is that you can hear it. they make noises. They gasp for air. You hear every agonizing moment. I fucking hated it, and I'll never forget it.

He was gone in minutes.

But it's not all bad. We were shown a lot of love out there, and I'm really fuckin' grateful to have seen it all go down like it did.

My sister tried to see my dad's "doctor" out there, and she tried to sell her some bull shit hemp oil (people rub hemp oil on their skin to help heal cuts and bruises, not fucking sedate a dying man). So my sister told the lady to go fuck herself, walked outside, saw a homeless cat smoking a blunt, and asked him if he knew anywhere she could get some legitimate medical grade cannabis oil. The guy says "sorry to hear about your dad, here, take the rest of this," hands her the blunt, and then sends her four blocks up the street.

She walks into this dispensary and explains the situation to the guard at the front entrance. He disappears and returns with a guy who was incredible. Before my sister left to try and get some oil, I handed her a fist full of cash and told her to do whatever she had to. This guy refuses any kind of cash and gives her 150 dollars worth of oil. The oil was so potent that he orders it specially for someone who is on their death bed. It worked beautifully.

I did what any good man would do and drove my mom and I back to the dispensary to try and thank the guy for his kindness; pay him what we owed, or at the very least, buy him a beer. We get there, it was his day off (go figure), but we learned he was one of the co-owners with his sister and her husband (who were both there). They were the kindest people, and rather than take my money, which I tried to give them SEVERAL times, they wound up giving us more stuff for our own personal stress relief.

And then I went out and took care of my mom the only way I know how -- went down to the wharf, got her good and drunk, and took her out to a killer dinner outside next to a fire pit at some restaurant.

The chaplain and my mom hit it off real well, and the day we went by to use her computer (she invited us into her fucking home, because if you'll recall, I didn't really pack any clothes for the trip -- i thought i was going out there to bring my dad home, not say goodbye) to arrange for an autopsy and cremation, they arranged for me to marry her daughter. It's a joke, but fellas -- this kid is a fucking knock out. I'm sitting there, and the chaplain is showing me all these pictures of this gorgeous kid, telling me how she plays guitar and sings and how her favorite artist is Hendrix, blah blah blah. Then she tells me she's 16 . So, I take the chaplain out to dinner as a way of repaying her for all her kindness and compassion (this lady got the hospital to approve cannabis oil, saved us over 2 grand on an autopsy and cremation, and practically tried to take her daughter's panties off for me) (Another side note -- the kid follows me on instagram now, and I told her mom I'd see where I'm at in 5 years when she's old enough to go to the bars. Hey guys, I may be grieving, but I'm still Rubsy )

Here's the important part. The best thing of all? I remember you guys were all super supportive about my dad foregoing traditional conventional methods of treatment for cannabis oil. We got the preliminary autopsy report back two days ago, and I'm really fucking proud to say that my old man wasn't an idiot. After 120 days of strict cannabis oil treatment, my father died NOT of cancer, but of a heart attack. My father succumbed to the fatigue he suffered due in part to his blocked breathing passage and the infection from the sickness he got in December -- NOT cancer. In fact, we have 100% confirmation that not only did the cannabis oil assist in treating my father's cancer, it eliminated it completely. That's right -- my father died cancer free. No chemo, no radiation, no tracheotomy. My dad died 100% cancer free. The guy who did the autopsy couldn't believe it, and they're even waiting to cremate him so they could take more tissue samples to send off for research. I'm real proud to say my dad was a pioneer of this type of treatment, and that it actually worked. It's not some get-rich-quick scheme or snake oil -- it would have saved him, had he made it home. That's the truth.

So anyway, I just wanted to thank you fellas for all your support over the last few month. Though he passed away, it wasn't in vain -- he was right, and in the end, he planted his feet, came out swingin', and went down fighting. I did as right by him as I could, and I've made as much peace as I possibly could with the fact that he's gone. I helped my mother AND my sister overcome their feeling of guilt about the situation, and explained that they did everything they were supposed to do.

The truth is, I sat both of them down and explained that the only way things would have worked out differently is if I had gone with my dad instead of my sister. I know that sounds like I'm inappropriately placing blame or whatever, but I'm not. I have no quarrels with how everything happened, but it's the truth. My sister did everything we expected her to -- her maternal instincts kicked in, and she tried to diagnose and comfort the issue before she sought treatment for it. She checked fuel, spark, and air before she took the bike to the mechanic.

We all agreed that if my dad and I had gotten of the plane and he looked at me and said, "Max, ya gotta take me to the hospital" I would have looked him dead in the face, said, "You sure, Pop?" And if he had said yea, we would have gone; not because I would have known how to handle the situation better than my mom or sister, but because that's just the difference between a man's care and a woman's care. I'm not here to be your nurse -- you say you gotta go, I believe you.

Sorry for the long-winded shit (as usual), but I feel like I owed all of you this. You all cared so much about my family and i, and showed us so much love and support, so you all deserve the full story.

[Pendulum]

I've actually been wondering about you and your family, since I hadn't seen you around much lately. Sorry to hear that your father's gone, but at least he went on his terms and surrounded by his family. That's more than a lot of people get.

Just so you know, you *almost* made a grown man cry at his desk today. So, there's that.

[Saltytonk]

Sorry for your loss. And that's amazing about the hemp oil. That's a good thing to know.

[Guest]

Stay strong Max, we've traded some fun jabs and some real talk over the past couple of years... you've got a friend, if your back ever feels uncovered? I'm there.

[JockEShift]

condolences Max

[Rubman]

Appreciate it, homies. Just wanted to let y'all know what's been up.

Life is solid, otherwise. Helping my mom and my sister cope with everything and understand they did right by him was enough.

[Guest]

My sincerest of condolences to you and your family. Losing the ones we love is never easy,
...know that he is in a better place, beyond this mortal plane, where pain and suffering do not exist.

[farmall]

Losing your father is tough, but you did your duty well.

The next couple-something years (minimum) will be tough for your mother. Do some reading on bereavement to help you be maximally effective. Nearly everyone will lose someone they love, but the subject is not discussed enough at least in modern Western society. Everyone reacts differently but bereavement is traumatic stress and needs to be worked through thoughtfully.

Good job and thanks for sharing.

[Guest]

Damn, Rubs really sorry about your pops. My condolences. I had heard a few days ago that he had passed and I was sincerely bummed about it. You guys fought hard as did your pops and take solace in the fact that he beat cancer, he won that battle. So fuck cancer. He won, but ultimately things don't always go how we want it to. Your family did what it could and I don't think there's anything that you guys could've done. I always say everything happens for a reason and it isn't always apparent to us as to why and sometimes it is. Life is just like that. Now go and do something to honor him. Something, maybe that he wanted to do and didn't get to or something always loved to do, enjoy it for him now.

[loddytoddy]

Sorry man. Losing a parent is tough. You did what you needed to do. It's also awesome that he kicked cancer!
Thanks for sharing your heartache. Just so you know, as someone who lost their mom recently you and your family are in my thoughts.

[Guest]

damn it hippy .sorry to hear the news ,one thing you should feel good about, you got to have him in your life , for a long time, some guys don't even know their fathers, I hope you told him" what mattered "before he left you ...just remember the good times with him.condolences rubs, stand tall man .one thing is certain in this life we lead ,nothing will stay ,as it is ,one door opens, when another is closeing,,,

[DanielcDavidson67]

Hey Rubman. I'm going to offer you the same advice my brother offered me. When someone you love falls, you fall with them. I know how hitting rock bottom feels. The only good thing about hitting the bottom is knowing that there's no where to go but up. I'm sure your father would love nothing more. Than for his son and his family to do that. So, keep riding, keep loving, and for heavens sake, don't ever stop swinging. The world will eat you if you let it.

[Clockwork444]

Dude i know exactly what you mean when he was in a coma. My mother died at 10 and she was in a coma for 3 days. She died of cirrosis of the liver and crohn's disease. She was laying there and responding to nothing. They were waiting for her to die. when my brother or i would come to her side, she would tear up and i could hear her throat gurgling. one time she grabbed my hand incredibly hard and i just sat there and cried. i was ten fucking years old man, and the same thing happened. The worst part is..... she was waiting for us to come before she let go. Your dad did the same thing. I think he was waiting for you to get there, to tell him its ok. He needed to have you all there one last time. My mom waited till 15 minutes after we left to die. We went home for clothes and were going to stay the night with her (assuming that would be it) and she died while we were gone. The nurse was my buddies mother and she said she waited until she couldnt hear any voices and she heard my mom die. I think in this world we really do have a choice in death. I have seen this quite a few times and its not just a coincidence.

Sorry for your loss dude. You seem like such a smartass on here but you really wear your heart on a sleeve. Thats pretty damn bold in my book. Its harder to care than not, and its even harder to show it to complete strangers. I wasnt a religious man until i started seeing death often, which seems like it started too young and shows no signs of slowing down. Keep your loved ones close, your friends close, and hell keep people you cant fucking stand around too maybe someday they'll change. I will be praying for your mother and your family too. Dont grow apart always stay together thats what dad would want man.

[FatChibs]

That was tough to read, my condolences.