It was a fairly mild Friday, Jan. 11, 2002, when my Dad was released from the local hospital and sent home to die. My sister and I drove him home from the hospital, just about two miles from his house and while we were driving, he suddenly said, "Hey! It's Mike's birthday today!"
Mike is my husband and was delighted to hear that my Dad remembered his birthday on what, for most people, is a glum day – being sent home to die.
My husband's father was not a nice man and mercifully died in April of 1971. My own father, the best of the best, became a surrogate father to my husband and trusted him implicitly. He asked Mike to shave him while he was in his last weeks, to take him on drives and talked to him constantly about God and Jesus. For someone who was not even baptized until he met me, it was imperative for Michael to learn what he could from someone as deep into his faith as my father.
That bond and spiritual teaching changed my husband forever.
We quickly got Dad set up with a hospital bed and all the "stuff" one needs when sent home with renal failure. Caregivers were hired and thankfully, we truly liked all who cared for our Dad.
My poor sister suffered through all of this. Dad leaned on her heavily because she was the family caregiver – with him 24/7. It's not an easy job no matter who you are caring for as I would later learn.
If there's one thing I've learned through my father and my sister's dying process is that no matter how nice or mean you might be before you start dying, most people go through a lot of personality issues and changes.
Dad relied on Pris and had for many years, while I was still his baby and the one he fully trusted for wisdom. My sister found that frustrating. I have never understood why he decided I was "the one who must be obeyed," versus Pris, who had looked after him for nearly 10 years. However, I could say the same thing to him that Pris did and he would scorn her advice and take mine!
I could get him to eat when she couldn't. I could calm him when he began having difficulty breathing. In the end, it was I who could get him into that hospital bed he dreaded so much. Meanwhile, he would push her buttons to the max, frustrating and mentally challenging her. That stress probably contributed to the heart attacks she had just after Dad passed on, and had he been fully aware he was doing that to an already sick daughter, he would have been horrified by his own behavior.
However, I truly believe that during the dying process, we become unaware of our own misbehavior at times. Perhaps it's a simple hormonal or chemical change in the brain, where we decide we're dying anyway, so the gloves come off. In a sense, misbehaving becomes the thing we can do without consequences.
Dad remained unfailingly polite to everyone else, he just got more mischievous with Pris. An example follows:
Pris hated cooking, yet in her younger years she was very good at it. But remember that she suffered the debilitating stroke eight years earlier and had been on a severely restrictive diet ever since – so cooking all that comfort food for a dying man who, after requesting something and she would make it, often decided he didn't want it after all.
I could walk into the house, get her into another room and he would happily clean off his entire plate.
Still, we all drew comfort from the three weeks and 2 1/2 days we had with Dad before he passed. The three weekends I spent with him were delightful. One night out of the weekends it was Pris, Dad and I and we had a great time sharing family memories. We visited as best we could, we knew each moment was precious.
Dad drew up into the strength of faith he had. He also benefited from regular visits from the Bishop of Western Missouri, the minister of our church as well as numerous retired clergy with whom he was friends. His beloved parishioners added to a steady stream of visitors over that three weeks. He was brought communion every Sunday, and right up to two days before he died, he was still making sure the other sick and dying in the parish were receiving their communion.
It can't be easy to relinquish your physical care to others. We're all proud, every one of us. Simple acts, such as toilet duties, showering/bathing, brushing your teeth, shaving and caring for your nails is difficult to place on someone else's shoulders.
But we did it.
My sister and I dealt with all those things for Dad and he appreciated it.
It's all about making your loved one comfortable and feeling loved.
Two nights before Dad passed, we knew the time had finally come. We'd had a horrific ice storm the previous Tuesday (Jan. 29, 2002) and many in town were without power by Thursday, including our Dad's house. The caregiver went above and beyond the call of duty and took Dad and Pris to her house 20 miles away where she had electricity for Dad's oxygen and heat to keep him warm.
It couldn't have been easy to get an 87-year-old man on oxygen, out the door, down the two steps and into a car – sounds simple – but everything was covered in several inches of ice at the time.
Nevertheless, that dear woman got them into the car and to her house. She kept them for two days until the power came back on. By Saturday night, they were back at home, but Pris hadn't slept in days and was furious because Dad was insisting she stay. It was her night off and she stomped off to her house, leaving me with a father who was refusing to eat. For her.
I sat down and spoke with him and he announced he was hungry, immediately digging into his food. The overnight caregiver came and we settled in for what would be a long, rather humorous night.
Dad was up and down and up and down from his bed to his recliner and back again for hours. He had refused to get into his hospital bed on the theory that he would die if he lay in it. Despite his faith and excitement to see Jesus at last, his human traits kicked in and he decided he wasn't going to "go."
At one point, he was in his recliner and I on the couch dozing and he asked to get up and go to bed. The caregiver and I each took a side and started walking him down the hallway. I told him, "Dad, you woke me from a dream about you."
"Well, dear," he said, "it must have been a nightmare."
That familiar sense of humor was still intact.
Ten minutes later he wanted out of bed and into the recliner. We went to get him and he turned to me and said, "I want to go downstairs for breakfast,"
I replied, "Dad, this is a ranch house, there IS no downstairs."
To which he quickly retorted, "Then I want to go upstairs!"
It was like this the entire night. He sure kept us entertained. And every single time he got out of bed he would look at me and say, "Elizabeth, I had your mother warming my backside all night you know."
I had no doubt Mom had been there by his side. Even more interesting was Dad's choice of the phrase, "warming my backside." After Dad passed, I read a number of Mom's letters to him in which, in the very early years of their marriage, and he was traveling, she wrote of missing him at home with her, warming her backside.
That Sunday night was difficult for Dad. He'd had a number of visitors come by all day to say goodbye. This group included one vestry member who had been a close friend the entire time Dad had lived here. She claimed she hated being around the dying and I had to shame her into visiting him because it wasn't about "her" – it was about him.
I never could understand people who let these things get in the way of doing what is right ... they avoid funerals or hospitals because they fear them or despise them or it makes them uncomfortable. It is NOT about them. It's about the person who is sick or dying.
That goes for people and their pets too. I once knew a woman who had to take her cat, one she professed to love so much, to be put down. I went with her and she turned to leave. The vet asked her if she wanted to stay and comfort her pet? "No," she replied. "I can't handle watching my pet die."
I was horrified that she'd leave the already shaking cat with the vet, no familiar human by the cat's side. I offered to stay and she refused to let me stay. Actually, that whole scenario still haunts me to this day. Some people aren't meant to have animals.
God constantly challenges us to do things that are out of our comfort level. It's never about us – it's about others. We are commanded to take care of animals, just as we are to take care of each other.
Taking care of my dying father was clearly out of my comfort level, but both Pris and I were up for the challenge.
Dad didn't sleep his last full night. But he didi manage to entertain us plenty. Every once in a while he would demand I fan him.
"What?" I asked.
"He wants you to fan him," replied Pris.
"Why?" I asked. "It's the dead of winter with two inches of ice outside."
She shrugged and said, "He's hot!" (this is another not uncommon part of dying – being hot and wanting air flowing)
So, we fanned our father. We helped him go potty, we washed him up, we joked with him, we sometimes prayed with him, but that made him nervous. Nothing like your two daughters praying over you when YOU are the priest.
The next morning the nurse came from hospice (Kansas City Hospice - superb people by the way), and told us he had about a week to live.
Dad then asked me for a big chunk of the fresh lasagna I had made the day before and happily sat down to eat it in his favorite chair.
He was still able to sit up, eat and have a short conversation, though he occasionally was out of it. Renal failure means the fluids are backing up in his body and that affected his lucidity at times.
I knelt by his chair and told him it was time to let go and go home. Hospice was always clear with the family that often a patient needs to be told it's OK to let go.
Dad stopped eating and stared at me with the most intense look I'd ever had from him and nodded.
"I love you Daddy," I told him.
"And I love you ... very much," he replied.
For a man who had a most difficult time hugging and telling someone that he loved them, this was like music to my ears.
I kissed the top of his head and went home.
Later that evening, I had dinner and two glasses of wine. Not having slept in two days, but being keyed up, I felt I needed the boost to get some sleep.
It worked. I went out like a light for all of one hour. At 11 p.m., I was awakened by the phone ringing off the hook. It was my sister.
"Liz," she said. "Daddy is dying now."
"What?" I asked. "I thought the nurse said he had a week to go."
"You told him it was OK to go before you left today," Pris said. "He took you seriously. He's been in a sort of coma since about 5 p.m. His fluids are backed up and he's restless. He won't allow anything to touch his skin."
Dad had what is commonly known as terminal restlessness. It is, to me, the worse part of the dying process and there will be more on this later in this series.
"You need to come," said Pris.
I told her that I'd had two glasses of wine just a few hours earlier. She totally understood, but she also knew me very well.
"You don't have to come Liz. I won't blame you if you don't," she said. "But you will never forgive yourself if you don't come."
She was right.
I got up, brewed some coffee and showered – managing to get the effects of the wine out of my system – and cleared my head for the drive to my father's.
I can still remember turning down the street my Dad lived on. The only lights on in the neighborhood were at his house – and every, single light was on.
I went immediately to his room and found Pris hovering over him and the caregiver at the end of the bed. Pris informed me that Dad had been calling out to two of his late sisters all evening.
We each took a hand and spoke to him. I told him I was there. Pris said that even though he'd been speaking to his deceased sisters all night, he was otherwise in a coma and unable to speak to us.
Nevertheless, Dad proved her wrong. Within a few minutes, his eyes flew open and settled on my face for a moment and then Priscilla's. He squeezed each of our hands, closed his eyes and let out one last breath.
In one last comic moment, all three of us scrambled to find a pulse. We didn't find one and were puzzled by it, having been so used to it being there. But, after 87 years, 2 months and 28 days, Dad's heart had stopped beating.
My beautiful, wonderful Daddy was gone. I knew he was seeing the face of his beloved Jesus at last. He had told me nearly a year before that I was not to be sad for him, because he had lived his entire life for Jesus and to live with him in eternity. He couldn't wait to get to heaven.
Well, he was there at last.
One journey was over, but the next long and difficult one lay ahead for my sister.
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