Shells

Later this morning I will drive my stepmother over to the nursing home and we will watch my father's shell slowly drift away from this physical life. 

Watching him go is deeply sad but it is clearly his time to go.  Watching the aides and nurses who care for him treat him gently with love and affection has moved me to tears and made me thankful for people who can do this kind of work because I cannot.

Watching my stepmother beg him to speak, or to give her a kiss, or to take some water or ice cream is wrenching.  She knows she does him no good when she tries to anchor him here, but she can't do anything else.  She doesn't want him to be alone so one of us is always with him, but when she leaves I tell him to let go.  I tell him his grandchildren love him, that I have always loved him and that my children and I will always honor his memory. His eyes widen when I say that.  Hearing is the last sense to go but I don't know what sense he makes of what he hears. 

Yesterday was Mother's Day and a particular trial by fire.  My stepmother was convinced Dad was going to die on Mother's Day because her grandfather died on Mother's Day and May 11 was her first husband's birthday.  She went in to the nursing home at 7:30 a.m.  We convinced her to take a break around 2, when I sat with him, but then she was right back there at 4 p.m. and insisted on staying until 9.  And might have stayed longer if she thought we'd let her. 

She would  be at the nursing home now, but last Sunday, in the midst of all of this, she fell, breaking two fingers and fracturing her pelvis.  We don't think she'll need surgery but she's getting a CT scan right now.  So you see, stress has been our middle name these two weeks.

I hope and pray he will go today.  He has been three days without hydration, he has a low fever and his breathing is rapid and shallow.  But he is, or was, a physically strong man, and he is afraid of the end, so he will fight it as much as he can.  And because we honor his life and who he was, in all his strengths and flaws, we sit and watch and wait.