Death

About Three Weeks


I don’t know if the hospice nurse was pressed for this time frame or she told just mom, but I got a semi-frantic call from DNOS.

“Did you talk to Mom?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know? And you are coming?”

“It was a couple of hours ago and she sounded awful. Dad didn’t sound too good either, but neither of them mentioned my coming now. Why?”

“The hospice nurse told them it will be about three weeks. Mom is wiring money to C.B. I think she should just buy him the ticket though.”

Let’s step back from this conversation for a moment to note that even though she is panicking in a mild way, she still remembers, and comments, on C.B.’s tendency to not use money sent to him for its intended purpose. And I won’t argue with her assumption. If anyone could eff up the opportunity to make amends with his dying father, it would be C.B.

I point out to her that it is much harder to buy an airline ticket for someone these days because mistakes are hard to fix. It will be better to just send money. I don’t remind her that C.B. will only bring more tension to a situation already fraught and if he doesn’t get home in time, it will make things easier for the rest of us.

“So are you telling me I need to come this weekend?”

“I don’t know. Mom said she was going to call you.”

And so the lines of communication begin their inevitable breakdown. Mom and DNOS are not on the same page.

“Well, Auntie and Cousin are visiting today. They are probably still in the middle of the visit. She’ll probably call me later. I’ll talk to her regardless of whether she calls me or I have to call her.”

I then went on to explain that any decision needs to wait until after Dad sees the doctor tomorrow. The doctor appointment on Wednesday revealed that fluid is indeed building up again and Dad mentioned to the nurse today he is feeling pressure on his chest. The likely scenario is that the doctor will suggest draining the build up or simply letting the cancer run its course. Whatever Dad decides. This will decide things for me too.

DNOS didn’t have much to say after that especially when I pointed out to her that I couldn’t come and hang out for weeks on end. I have a husband and child and even though they would survive without me, it is too long to be away given the stressful nature of everything. Rob, BabyD and I are still raw from our earlier losses. We worry too much about each other as it is. Throw distance in and the recipe is ripe for disaster.

This was not what DNOS expected to hear. She also did not expect me to ask her if she was really prepared for what is coming. It’s not easy to watch someone die. Dad’s death is not a hypothetical in the far future thing. It’s here.

Later I spoke with my mother, she had questioned the hospice intake nurse about the time frame. Wednesday Dad’s doctor took him off all his medications including the blood thinner which has essentially kept him from having any further strokes these last two and a half years. That has been running through her mind and today it occurred to her that this was done because Dad didn’t have much time left. Time that could be measured by weeks instead of months.

Mom was surprised though to hear about DNOS’s call to me. I was not surprised to learn that communication from now on was going to resemble a game of telephone.

The bottom line is that I don’t need to go right now.

But that time is coming much sooner than I had originally guessed and I guessed shorter than three months to begin with.

Stage 4


When cancer has metastasized to sites beyond its origin, they call it “stage 4”. In my dad’s case that means that the tumor in his lungs has either grown into the heart muscle or aorta or that the size of it and the effusion it has caused warrant the dire level.

In any case, he is 81 years old and already suffering from pulmonary disease and severe osteoporosis. He would not survive cancer treatment. They are discharging him from the hospital tonight.

When I talked to my mother, the lung specialist had just left, and the nurses were getting Dad ready for discharge. They don’t waste time. Mom sounded very matter of fact. I remember that tone. I used that tone a lot myself. I still use that tone when I talk about Will’s illness or death. I have cultivated it and it can be a very useful barrier.

I have tried to remember what it felt like that day, the one nearly five years ago now, when the doctors gathered in that tiny exam room just off the lobby of the neurology waiting area in Iowa City and told me that Will was going to die.

Only that is not what they tell you.

They give you the name of the disease. They tell you that it has no treatment. They tell you that things will progress. Sometimes they have a time-line. Mostly they try to exit the room as soon as they can.

The day they told me that my husband was going to die, my Dad was in the waiting area watching BabyD, who was truly a baby then – just fifteen months old. I was too angry to cry. Angry with the doctors for not knowing more about what was wrong so they could answer my questions. Angry with Will for hiding so many of the early symptoms of his illness from me. Angry that I was alone and too grown up to just throw us all in Dad’s car and go home with him.

And my Dad said nothing. He didn’t chastise me for my reaction that day. He didn’t judge me like so many people would in the care-giving and widow years to come. He just helped me get Will and BabyD to the next waiting room for more tests and then to the parking lot and our vehicles for the trip back to our house in Des Moines that would never be our home.

Aside from my Auntie, Dad probably was the most consistent supporter I had during that time.

I asked Mom how he was doing, but I could hear him joking with the nurses in the background. He is quite the flirt when he is in the hospital.

I wonder what it feels like to be told you are dying when you were dying already. It’s like double-secret probation in a way.

Later when I talked with Rob, I told him that I feel worse knowing he has cancer and is dying then I did knowing he was just dying of the pulmonary fibrosis. And it doesn’t make sense because we all knew he didn’t have much time left anyway.

The doctors say a year or less which is nonsense. Even Mom saw through that evasion. And the doctor balked at hospice. What is it with doctors and hospice? Why do they wait so long?

I called my Auntie. I left a message for CB. DNOS called me, and we talked a bit. Mom told me not to come yet, but I think she is still in shock. DNOS agreed and is going to use her professional connections to get the real scoop on Dad’s condition. It pays to have a social butterfly sister who used to work at the hospital lab.

I asked her how she was.

She said, “Fine.”

But she choked on it a bit and when I asked again, she told me she would call me later after she knew more.

DNOS would have made a pretty good NOS.

No More Hump Day Hmming for a While


The muse of hmming, Julie, is recovering and regrouping after Ike and so it may be some time before I inflict introduce another Hump Day Hmm for consideration. However, it has been a day or two since I put up a fresh blog piece and my life has not been that static, so I have decided to provide a bit of an update.

I am still working on the short story known as Kumari. It has garnered 4 reviews on the critiquing site and although not a single one of them had any idea what the story was really about (my bad totally, I know, and I am working on clarification), I did get some advice that was useful and have employed it to the betterment of the story.

The main complaint I received about Kumari is that the character isn’t likable. Not even a little bit. And hurray! That is what I wanted them to think but apparently the main character has to be likable or at least redeemable in order for the reader to want to read at all. I discussed it with my writing group last night and was reminded that I am the author and I need to stay true to my character. She is not likable but how could she be? She was raised to be indifferent and callous. Further, the point of the story is to do more than entertain but to make a reader think.

Thinking is asking a lot of readers these days. We are a society that expects to be entertained as passively as possible. No deep thoughts allowed. But I don’t think that sci-fi/fantasy should be mindless. It is a genre that was meant to allow authors to explore bigger issues and moral questions. 

So I am focusing on clarifying and beefing up existing content and we’ll see what happens next. One reviewer thought there was potential for a very dark story. Perhaps this is my Apex submission after all, eh?

Speaking of Apex, they are having their annual Halloween flash fiction contest and I am entering. The theme is “election horror” and I have a nice little piece that I tried out on the writing group last night which they liked. Of course, they are Canadians and it isn’t hard for anyone native to here to imagine the U.S. as a den of evil and conspiracy.

I have also been occupied with monitoring the condition of the family down south these last two weeks. And if we had a color code system we would be orange-ish.

CB had another mini-meltdown and I spent numerous hours on the phone trying to talk him off the paranoia ledges he sometimes talks himself up onto. He apparently spent a few days harassing our folks to the point that Dad had a breathing episode and Mom was in tears. I think I may have put a spot to that for the time being.

DNOS has informed me that when Dad dies, CB and Mom are my responsibility. She will handle the arrangements and BabySis. In other words she will take the easy stuff and I will be left to deal with crazy and exploding. It’s a good thing I used to teach public school. That was a typical day for me once.

That was a while ago and Dad has failed quite a bit even since we last saw him in June. He can barely exert himself physically without bringing on severe shortness of breath due to the demands movement place on his body. 

And I can hear the disinterest in life now in his voice. He told DNOS recently that he is “tired of making decisions”. 

My Dad, the ultimate Virgo, is tired of being the boss? That is so not good.

Rob has asked if I need to go down there now. I am playing a wait and see on a daily basis. If you had asked me even last year if I wanted to be there for the end, I would have said no – thank you  – but no. Deathbed vigils are hellish in an out of body experience way. The days or weeks leading up are torture because it seems like every fiber of your being is on red alert with sirens blaring.

But now, I feel a bit differently. Mom and DNOS are ostriches. They will not see or ask or do unless someone points it out to them. The truth is that I am the only one in my family who morphs into Action Girl when it is crunch time. I was born with the crisis management gene. I might fall apart but not in the middle and not when it counts. I always come through when it counts.

Now here is the kicker, the evil selfish daughter in me doesn’t want to put my life on hold to go down. I have things falling into routine now. I am starting my first writing course at University in two weeks. I just got elected to the board of directors of one of my writing groups. I am auditioning for another contributing writer gig at a women’s group blog I read. I have a couple of firm writing deadlines coming up – one for a workshop with real publishers who are reading and giving mini-interviews and critiques.

It’s not a convenient time for my Dad to decide to die in other words.

I am such an awful person for even thinking it, let alone writing it down. But my Dad would get it. When he was traveling back and forth from Des Moines every week to help me take care of my late husband, he confided to me that he would help as long as he was needed but he felt he was missing out on his life and the things that were important to him as a person. Not dad or a father in law. A person.

I talked with Dad this morning. It was the kind of distracted conversation I used to have with my late husband when the dementia was starting to set in for real. The voice was weak and breathy and gurgled with phlegm. My late husband finally succumbed to pneumonia. There are more painful ways to die but suffocating has to be one of the most terrifying and I am speaking from my experience watching my late husband and from my own dealings with asthma.

Once you’ve watched someone die, you can’t undo it. Erase the images. Ignore the truth. Pretend that it isn’t coming and there are things that need to be done in advance.

I took a long walk today. About 4 miles down and back from J-berg to the gymkana fields. No one was burning trash or leaves today and I didn’t encounter dogs. I have come to the sad conclusion that I can no longer run. Having just recovered from a painful bout of achilles tendonitis in both ankles, I just can’t risk damage. Power walking with the occasional jog and yoga it is. I don’t experience the same sense of freedom though and I will miss that.

And that’s all folks.