They say you should write about things you know…

In loving memory of my Dad who died on Tuesday, aged 85.

xxx

She'd known it was coming, after all Charlie was old and had been enjoying failing (his words, not hers) health for several months, but this was her final link to her past. To the circle of life that she would never now experience.

Silent and still, even as her thoughts swirled round inside her head like a maelstrom, she sat in the soft light of morning watching her father drift gently away knowing that if she'd still had a beating heart, it would be breaking right now.

If she'd been able to cry, she would have quietly sobbed for the man who had loved her from birth to 18 and then unquestioningly accepted that although he would grow old and die she would be forever young. Forever stuck at an age that knew no physical or mental deterioration. Frozen in time, for the rest of time.

She sighed and shifted in her chair, a habit she'd gotten into years earlier when Billy subtly reminded her one day that humans moved. Inwardly she smiled as she thought about her father's BFF's concerned comment, made one day when they'd gone to watch a Mariner's game. Billy Back, good friend, now at peace in the arms of the Great Spirit. Somewhere in the Happy Hunting Grounds.

Everyone else that mattered was gone too.

Renee had died eight years earlier from cancer and Phil was killed three before that in a freak boating accident. But in each case, Bella had only been able to watch from a distance as they'd passed, unable to show herself to her own family.

As agreed, Charlie had told Renee that she'd died from a tropical disease on her honeymoon and that Edward had followed soon after from a broken heart. And much as it had hurt her so much to hear about her Mom's reaction to the news, she knew it had been the right thing to do. Renee didn't know and had never found out about Renesme, it would have been too complicated and keeping her existence secret too had been for the best. The Volturi really didn't need any more reasons to investigate the Cullen clan.

As she looked at her father, Bella noticed little things, those that she didn't need her vampire vision to confirm.

He'd been freshly shaven.

His moustache groomed.

His eyebrows tamed.

They'd even put his teeth in which gave her back some of the man that had faded in recent days.

And his vital signs had picked up slightly, from next to nothing when she'd walked in minutes earlier it had reached a more hopeful level - his heart rate had increased three fold and his oxygen levels had spiked.

"Hey, Dad." Bella whispered, coming back from her musings to the present as she caressed the back of her father's bruise-stained hand, careful of the morphine drip that had calmed him over the last day or so. Looking over at the syringe that held a tube that went directly into his arm she knew she would be eternally grateful for the drug that had settled him and taken away the fear and pain that had been so much part of his life for the past week or so.

"I'm here, Edward and I are both here. Say Hi to Mom for me when you see her, will ya?" She added, choking slightly as she said her piece.

"And I'm sorry if you're leaving me because you think I don't care any more. I do, I really do... and I'm sorry that I haven't hugged you so much recently." She added sadly as she recalled yelling at him in frustration for not trying harder to bounce back, get up and move about after his last fall.

"S'ok, Bella." she heard Edward say gently, he knew she'd been upset after her outburst less than three weeks earlier. "He knows you didn't mean it, any of it." he added "Tough love, Sweetheart. You were just trying a spot of tough love."

Bella nodded at his reassuring words "I'll always love you, Charlie. Forever and that's a promise." She added as she leant down and kissed then caressed his snow white hair, thin from age and genetics.

Edward stood on the opposite side of the bed, holding Charlie's other hand, pretending to breathe as he shifted occasionally. He glanced over at his wife before looking down at his father in law and noticing how young Bella's father suddenly looked, even as his breath started to falter.

Not long, now. His inner voice whispered as he willed him to breathe again.

Edward looked over and gave her a look "You okay?" he asked her silently as he knitted his brows with concern. He knew how difficult the last few days had been and yet how brave she had been when Charlie had moaned out or wept like a baby, begging for the pain to go away, for everything to stop and just let him go... and now that the morphine was working its magic and he was sleeping peacefully, the ending so very very near, everything seemed dignified and... perfect. Just as they had both hoped.

"He's gone cold." Bella whispered, haltingly as she looked over at the monitors that were now barely registering again as she willed Charlie to breathe again.

"I know, Love." Edward replied.

There was no final death rattle or words of great import, like they always do in the movies, as the two vampires watched Charlie Swan take his final breath then slip from this world to the next.

Seconds, minutes or hours passed and neither moved.

"I know I'll never know where you've gone to Dad." Bella whispered, eventually, as she carefully stretched out his fingers and pressed them gently down onto the bed "So I can't say 'until we meet again'." She added as she gazed at his lifeless form "so I'll just say Goodbye Dad."

Charlie Swan, 16/2/1966 to 11/2/2051