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Getting into the Spirit of Dying


I spent a bit of the morning Friday placating DNOS and our mother. It seems that the first official visit from the hospice nurse was not a rousing success. Mainly because Dad refuses to die peacefully and without being irritating.

Oh, did that sound cold? Here’s something colder yet then, as I listened to first my sister and then my mom describe the nurse’s visit and the ensuing argument it caused between my folks, so much so that when the nurse left DNOS lectured them on decorum, I realized for the first time really just how incredibly annoying and oblivious to the world I had been myself back in the care-giving and early widowhood days.

At one point as I reassured Mom for the tenth time in as many minutes that she was indeed relevant and important, I wondered if I had sounded that shrill and peevish and if people were rolling their eyes at me as I poured out my frustration over the phone to them.

Well okay, not eye rolling, but certainly more than one person had to have wondered if I would ever be a sane member of society again.

From this distance I can see all sides to the slow disintegration that is taking place. Mom is feeling overlooked as caregivers often do. She has needs as real as Dad’s and she thinks no one cares. Dad is feeling pushed to the grave, which is absolutely not what is happening, but I can see where his resistance is coming from. A couple of weeks ago he was dying someday and now he is dying sometime really soon. It is an adjustment and he feels the loss of autonomy more keenly than he has since he was banned from driving last spring. This is his passing and he is going to give the orders. He isn’t thinking about Mom too much right now and she is hurt by this. DNOS then is in the uncomfortable position of mediating their struggles.

My parents have never been stellar communicators. Fifty-two years has brought them great insight into each other but no great wisdom as to what to do with the information beyond tormenting each other. My sister would rather be peeled like a grape than involve herself in confrontation. Her modus operandi is too simply tell the parental units what they will be doing.

“And you are going to back me up,” she ordered as we spoke, “don’t you tell either one of them anything different.”

Four times I assured her that I was in total agreement. I don’t think she  heard me anymore than Mom did when I spoke with her later.

God, I must have been just the most awful person to run into back in the day old days. If I was even a tenth as deaf or petulant, I can imagine that my number was constantly being screened on phones everywhere.

And I know this is all just a phase. Eventually a person comes back.

Dad is probably the most even keeled of the three. He is driving DNOS crazy with his impromptu dictations of funeral arrangements. So far he has had her write out a list of personal items to be given to certain people, informed her that he would not have individuals eulogizing him at his service nor did he want any sort of digital picture display. DNOS has had to take down the pallbearer list, not the funeral home that Dad prefers above all others and be told that picking out the casket was her job.

Last evening she got to take the two of them to the wake of my Uncle Erv’s wife who passed away last weekend. I don’t like my uncle at all. He was a sharp tongued guy with no inner censor who looked me up and down when I was about fourteen and told me,

“I can’t believe how fat you are.”

Still, I felt badly for him when Mom mentioned how incredibly lost he was when she and my Dear Auntie visited him the day after his wife died. She had taken care of all the details in their life. He couldn’t even find their checkbook. They were married for sixty some years.

When I mentioned that I was surprised that she was driving them to the wake, I got,

“Well who else is going to do it?” rather peevishly.

I had actually suggested to Mom that they skip the wake and just go on Saturday with Dear Auntie, but wakes are huge social events. There was no way that either of my parents would miss an opportunity to mingle.

The only good news that came out of the phone at me today was that Dad was stable. The fluid is building but slowly, so there is no need for me to fly down right now. I can’t say that this disappoints me at all, but DNOS is clearly desperate for me to come, judging from her tone, though Mom knows perfectly well that my arrival is not going to let her off the hook as far as caregiving. I won’t do that again for her.*

Rage against the dying of the light, isn’t it? We have that done, I think.

*About six weeks after Will died, Dad had some surgery. He had a growth in his rectum and they thought it might be cancer – it wasn’t – but I was required to come as it was my spring break. Never-mind that I had a thesis due on the 1st of May and comps to write. There were complications and Dad ended up in ICU (ironically right next door to his brother’s dying wife – fun times) and I was the one doing hospital duty while Mom worked and DNOS went about her life. It was unfair of them to stick that on me. It will not happen again.

It’s a T-Shirt for T-Shirt Friday


Does anyone recall my tales of staining wood for our new deck? I stained a small forest of boards for Rob to use. Triple-coated them in some cases.

Well, the deck is built and Rob decided that another coat of stain was called for as the wood was quite green and hence thirsty.

And then he asked me to do a second coat. And then a third.

Today’s photo is one of my painting shirts. Nothing special save the memories of outside white stain and many, many coats of it.

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.