A blast from the past
This is why I like lj, so that you don't forget shit. Now if I can get lj to find my keys, my debit card and my miiind, I would be made in the shade.
I saw it parked, still and ominous in their driveway as I drove past. A mute testament to the fragile state of the elderly couple that reside there. Both in their 80's, I sometimes lay there at night and worry about them. A phone call told me that Tom had troubles breathing even with his oxygen tank, and was persuaded to go to the hospital for a few days to recover.
He is home now and still I worry.
My homemade chicken soup won't help this, I'm afraid, but I bring it anyway. He is so old and frail now that he walks in a perpetual stoop, his back in constant contorted pain, eyeing the ground like a bum looking for cigarette butts. He had a stroke a few years ago and the wonderful conversations we used to have, he and I sitting in the shade drinking our icy beer companionably, they are no more.
I miss him.
Now he says things like 'hammer' instead of 'apple' and gets so frustratingly angry with himself, he thinks he is quite useless. He is in a way, I guess and if you can't do the farm work on a farm, you are just a liability. Unlike the farm dog that can no longer fulfill his duty, a person can't just take the old guy out for a stroll into the back 30, set a ham sandwich on the ground and when he bends to pick it up, pull the trigger and be done with it. If we were Eskimos, his private little ice berg would have been pushed from shore a few years ago.
When my dad found out he had terminal cancer, he asked me to look after him when the time came that he couldn't look after himself. He was my hero, and I took the job on without thinking. I never realized that it would end up sucking out my soul. He wanted to die on his own terms and at his own time, and euthanasia was discussed and studied and agreed upon. An overdose was the chosen method and us siblings were to help when the time came. He stated that 'when it gets to the stage where I am bed-ridden, that is when I want to die'. The cancer entered his spine and that stage came and went and the line got bumped to 'when it gets to the stage that I can't wipe my own ass'. That line was crossed and he started saying 'well this isn't so bad, at least I have my family and friends and my books and documentaries and movies on tv'. Soon he was so doped up on morphine that he couldn't concentrate on anything and passed in and out of lucidity. That line kept on getting erased and drawn again further on down the road and that road was long and rocky. Nearing the end, he started to get scared of dying and the planned euthanasia was canceled.
He was in Hospice for respite for a couple of days, the ambulance came to get him and he was wheeled out of his house on a stretcher. It was raining that morning and he hadn't been out of his bed for months. Feeling the rain on his face, he was just so happy to be able to experience that. I looked at his oh so familiar face dotted with rain and the lines upon his forehead etched with pain, and I knew that this would be one of the last times that he would be able to experience the outdoors and he was an outdoors type of guy. I went to work after they took him away and one of my co-workers was bitching about the weather, the constant rain. He was a constant complainer about everything and I lost it right then and there. I told him in a vicious tone what had transpired that morning and hissed do not EVER complain about the weather to me again, do you hear me? He stood there in mute shock and turned and walked away as I angrily wiped the tears from my face. And he never did complain again.
I was to meet the ambulance drivers at the house to let them in upon my dad's return. I changed the sheets and lay in his rented hospital bed in the family room all alone and thought man, I don't know how this guy keeps on keeping on. Pill containers numbered a dozen or more, a liter-sized container of morphine looking pretty good to me at this point in my life, a wheeled cart nearby with nursing supplies (MY nursing supplies). The room's window was positioned high up on the wall right by the bed and all I could see while I lay there, was a rectangle of the sky and a branch from a nearby tree.
That was all he saw of the outside world, the seasons changing, the leaves falling from that one lonely branch, the false hope of the new buds forming in spring. For the first time, I read his journal hung by a cord from the bed, about his day to day thoughts. They were mundane and clinical in nature; what the new meds were like, the latest side effects, some tv show he had watched or book he had read. ..the weather from his window. Not one word about fear, about dying, about what was really going on in his head. He did mention the pain, though. He never complained about the terrible pain he was going through and he hated sympathy so much that I dared not ask.
He was in constant pain because the cancer had spread to all parts of his body, tumors that started in his colon spreading out, breaking his shoulder blade, tumors in his lungs, in his spine. He would get relief from the morphine for a short while and then like a cat on soft stealthy paws, that pain would sneak back only to turn into a roaring lion well before his next dose. Pain management was hard to keep on an even keel. One of the entries in his journal mentioned me in passing, as a sort of after-thought.
"She seems a bit upset lately. She'll do okay though, I know. She is a strong woman."
I thought: 'Fuck you dad, just.. fuck you. You have NO idea'. And he didn't, really. On the outside I was all efficiency and on the inside I was dying a little bit every day with him.
As I lay there and thought of all of this, I fell asleep, the house grew dark around me and I awoke to the sound of the doorbell ringing. I didn't know where I was for a moment and I thought later, I wonder if he did that too, late in the night when the pain would wake him. It was the ambulance attendants returning my father to his incarceration. For the remainder of his life (which wasn't long), I thought about that day many, many times. The day I got a secret intimate glimpse into the encapsulated world of a dying man.
He succumbed to his illness at the age of 54, a charismatic virile man reduced to a 90 pound skeleton shitting in his own bed within a year and a half. It has been many years since, and I still miss him. Some people say that I was lucky to be able to say goodbye to him, unlike a swift death that can't offer that choice. To them I say fuck you. I would take the swift fast painless death of a loved one any day. You can only say goodbye so many times. I just stoically slogged on through that nightmare hoping that I would be whole again when I came out the other side. I wasn't, entirely. One day I hope I will be able to die at a time of my own choosing. I don't want to spend my twilight years walking my oxygen tank, bent like a question mark and eyeing the ground like a bum looking for cigarette butts.
I saw it parked, still and ominous in their driveway as I drove past. A mute testament to the fragile state of the elderly couple that reside there. Both in their 80's, I sometimes lay there at night and worry about them. A phone call told me that Tom had troubles breathing even with his oxygen tank, and was persuaded to go to the hospital for a few days to recover.
He is home now and still I worry.
My homemade chicken soup won't help this, I'm afraid, but I bring it anyway. He is so old and frail now that he walks in a perpetual stoop, his back in constant contorted pain, eyeing the ground like a bum looking for cigarette butts. He had a stroke a few years ago and the wonderful conversations we used to have, he and I sitting in the shade drinking our icy beer companionably, they are no more.
I miss him.
Now he says things like 'hammer' instead of 'apple' and gets so frustratingly angry with himself, he thinks he is quite useless. He is in a way, I guess and if you can't do the farm work on a farm, you are just a liability. Unlike the farm dog that can no longer fulfill his duty, a person can't just take the old guy out for a stroll into the back 30, set a ham sandwich on the ground and when he bends to pick it up, pull the trigger and be done with it. If we were Eskimos, his private little ice berg would have been pushed from shore a few years ago.
When my dad found out he had terminal cancer, he asked me to look after him when the time came that he couldn't look after himself. He was my hero, and I took the job on without thinking. I never realized that it would end up sucking out my soul. He wanted to die on his own terms and at his own time, and euthanasia was discussed and studied and agreed upon. An overdose was the chosen method and us siblings were to help when the time came. He stated that 'when it gets to the stage where I am bed-ridden, that is when I want to die'. The cancer entered his spine and that stage came and went and the line got bumped to 'when it gets to the stage that I can't wipe my own ass'. That line was crossed and he started saying 'well this isn't so bad, at least I have my family and friends and my books and documentaries and movies on tv'. Soon he was so doped up on morphine that he couldn't concentrate on anything and passed in and out of lucidity. That line kept on getting erased and drawn again further on down the road and that road was long and rocky. Nearing the end, he started to get scared of dying and the planned euthanasia was canceled.
He was in Hospice for respite for a couple of days, the ambulance came to get him and he was wheeled out of his house on a stretcher. It was raining that morning and he hadn't been out of his bed for months. Feeling the rain on his face, he was just so happy to be able to experience that. I looked at his oh so familiar face dotted with rain and the lines upon his forehead etched with pain, and I knew that this would be one of the last times that he would be able to experience the outdoors and he was an outdoors type of guy. I went to work after they took him away and one of my co-workers was bitching about the weather, the constant rain. He was a constant complainer about everything and I lost it right then and there. I told him in a vicious tone what had transpired that morning and hissed do not EVER complain about the weather to me again, do you hear me? He stood there in mute shock and turned and walked away as I angrily wiped the tears from my face. And he never did complain again.
I was to meet the ambulance drivers at the house to let them in upon my dad's return. I changed the sheets and lay in his rented hospital bed in the family room all alone and thought man, I don't know how this guy keeps on keeping on. Pill containers numbered a dozen or more, a liter-sized container of morphine looking pretty good to me at this point in my life, a wheeled cart nearby with nursing supplies (MY nursing supplies). The room's window was positioned high up on the wall right by the bed and all I could see while I lay there, was a rectangle of the sky and a branch from a nearby tree.
That was all he saw of the outside world, the seasons changing, the leaves falling from that one lonely branch, the false hope of the new buds forming in spring. For the first time, I read his journal hung by a cord from the bed, about his day to day thoughts. They were mundane and clinical in nature; what the new meds were like, the latest side effects, some tv show he had watched or book he had read. ..the weather from his window. Not one word about fear, about dying, about what was really going on in his head. He did mention the pain, though. He never complained about the terrible pain he was going through and he hated sympathy so much that I dared not ask.
He was in constant pain because the cancer had spread to all parts of his body, tumors that started in his colon spreading out, breaking his shoulder blade, tumors in his lungs, in his spine. He would get relief from the morphine for a short while and then like a cat on soft stealthy paws, that pain would sneak back only to turn into a roaring lion well before his next dose. Pain management was hard to keep on an even keel. One of the entries in his journal mentioned me in passing, as a sort of after-thought.
"She seems a bit upset lately. She'll do okay though, I know. She is a strong woman."
I thought: 'Fuck you dad, just.. fuck you. You have NO idea'. And he didn't, really. On the outside I was all efficiency and on the inside I was dying a little bit every day with him.
As I lay there and thought of all of this, I fell asleep, the house grew dark around me and I awoke to the sound of the doorbell ringing. I didn't know where I was for a moment and I thought later, I wonder if he did that too, late in the night when the pain would wake him. It was the ambulance attendants returning my father to his incarceration. For the remainder of his life (which wasn't long), I thought about that day many, many times. The day I got a secret intimate glimpse into the encapsulated world of a dying man.
He succumbed to his illness at the age of 54, a charismatic virile man reduced to a 90 pound skeleton shitting in his own bed within a year and a half. It has been many years since, and I still miss him. Some people say that I was lucky to be able to say goodbye to him, unlike a swift death that can't offer that choice. To them I say fuck you. I would take the swift fast painless death of a loved one any day. You can only say goodbye so many times. I just stoically slogged on through that nightmare hoping that I would be whole again when I came out the other side. I wasn't, entirely. One day I hope I will be able to die at a time of my own choosing. I don't want to spend my twilight years walking my oxygen tank, bent like a question mark and eyeing the ground like a bum looking for cigarette butts.