Deaths
Dad left us in 2011. It was somewhat unexpected … though is death ever expected? He was declining at home and yet neither Mom nor I realized his condition was serious. It was a home nurse who apparently notified our doctor that something was up and Dad was soon hospitalized.
Cancer was mentioned – lung cancer to be exact – but I never saw signs of it. He never smoked cigarettes and his occasional use of a pipe was given up many decades before. In any case, once hospitalized the decline became even more steep.
Soon enough, with him no longer conscious, it was decided that he should be moved to a nursing home. Mom and I made inquiries at one in New Lebanon – though Mom was not happy with the choice, it was at least close. He was scheduled to be transported there in a day or so.
But before that could happen, a doctor called us and explained that he thought hospice was a better choice. We had no idea he was in that terminal a state. Nevertheless, we made plans and he was moved there the night of May 23. The next day Mom and I visited him in his room. He hadn’t been there a dozen hours.
He was unconscious but calm and we both felt that he was at least in no pain. We thought we had settled in for the long haul, visiting him daily and this sad schedule to be drawn out for months.
A nurse came into the room and I asked where their lunch room was. She said she’d take me there and show me rather than just giving directions. We left Mom is the room with Dad.
I can’t say what happened then but I believe she talked to him, telling him that when he felt it was time to go, he should. We would be all right. I returned and we continued our visit through the very early afternoon.
At one point another nurse and a doctor came in and examined Dad. He was non-responsive. We soon left to drive home and fix lunch. While Mom was in the kitchen the phone rang and we were told that he had passed away. We hadn’t been gone more than an hour or so. We had no idea it was so close.
Bob had planned to stop by after work. I sent him a text message and he visited us at home instead.
I think all of us had agreed that we didn’t want the rest of the family standing around for a death vigil. We each wanted to go in peace and without mourners looking on. For some death is a private affair (but I think we’re in the small minority).
Dad enjoyed life as much as someone deprived of mobility can. He loved sitting in his lift chair, having a nice meal brought to him and watching TV, Like Mom and I, going to bed each night was a blessed event. I never failed to tell him goodnight and that I loved him. He’d always respond the same: I love you, too.
In Mom’s final year she was still enjoying life. He particularly like eating out and we’d go to a local hospital cafeteria for lunch because the vegetarian offerings were plenty and there were ample wheelchairs available to get her from the front door downstairs. That’s not to mention ample restrooms.
We went there so often that the people came to know us. It might have been a bit unusual to use a hospital for a restaurant but we did. It was convenient and the food was delicious and inexpensive.
Other days I’d stop at Bob Evans and bring home potato soup. Or Tom would be here and we’d cook something ourselves.
But by October she was confined to home.
On her 92nd birthday (October 15, 2017) she wrote in her journal “It seems my 93rd birthday because I am always thinking ahead. After a good sleep I am up and ready for it.” She had exactly two weeks of life remaining.
She mentioned that Nancy (Bob’s wife) had sent homemade vegetable soup. Tom brought her a book. “What better birthday that this?” she wrote.
But even eating was becoming difficult and we had no idea what was wrong with her mouth. She worried that the problem might be her teeth. So she ate chocolate ice cream almost daily because it made her mouth feel better and offered easy calories.
“I've been eating well,” she wrote, “and (maybe) it will make me gain weight. Then maybe my teeth will fit better and that will feel much better.”
“I sure don’t want to make another doctor visit and see the dentist.”
I suggested she start using Dad’s walker. “It makes walking so much easier than with a cane,” she wrote. “Because you have a frame and two long rods to hold on(to).”
By October 17th she was getting increasingly concerned with her mouth. “What can possibly be the matter with my mouth?” she wrote. “My gums and teeth really bother me. Cleaning them is hell. I’m eating some things now and pull my cheese and bread into little sections.”
“On top of that I seem to drool. Do I need a bib?”
She came to rely on her chocolate ice cream, a premium brand which caused her to worry about the price.
On the 18th she talked about working her crossword puzzles. She’d spend hours searching for the right word, penciling in ideas and then erasing them. “I get many of them,” she said, “but seldom all of them.”
By then she had finished the Ruth Lyons book Tom brought for her birthday. She planned to dig into May Sarton again. “I love to go along with her and see what she does and how she copes. I’ve read most of this before but I never tire of it.”
Eleven days to live and she was having her hair done. Little was more important. I always washed it and then a neighboring hairdresser came and gave her a permanent or a set. How she looked forward to those visits.
On the 19th she mentioned “having one eye gone”. I do not remember her telling me this or I’d have been very concerned. She was diagnosed with giant cell arteritis and the doctor impressed upon us how dangerous it could be.
She wrote that having one eye blinded “does not help with balance. You feel a little off.”
But she didn’t seem unduly concerned. What mattered more to her was her mouth. “Eating is not easy. My mouth and teeth are a problem,” she wrote in her journal. “They really hurt.”
“What can I talk and write about but my poor body?”
She soaked oyster crackers in soup for lunch and managed a chocolate yogurt for dessert. She followed up with an Ibuprofen.
She was so bothered by her mouth that she became confused about normal actions. “I thought I had lost my glasses,” she wrote, “but I found them stuffed on my eyes just where they should be.”
Bedtime was the highlight of each day. “4:40 PM. Ready for bed. What better feeling to be all done. I’ll be able to crawl into that nice warm bed and sleep for hours.”
On October 20th her writing became haphazard. “I’m up and at it. Not very fast but at least I am trying to survive.”
The next day she mentioned smelling the scent of the pink rose I brought in for her and placed in a vase. “It is in a vase on the fireplace ledge,” she wrote, “giving off a delicate swell smell.”
“It will soon be over until Spring brings it out again.”
Tom and I left for our lunch, not realizing how close the end loomed. “It was a restful afternoon and I don’t mind being here during the day for time alone. In fact I really need it.”
“Everyone needs some time by their selves.”
On October 22 she said, “I laid in my bed after I had my soup. My jaw and mouth are hurting so much right now. What can that be?”
She paid me a compliment unawares at the time. “Thanks Bill!” she wrote. “I never could thank you enough. I wish I had done this for others. But the past is over and I can’t go back.”
Then, “I think today is the 25th but I am not sure. I have had a hard day. Getting up is a big problem. Too much of a heave. All my effort goes into it. What is this horrible disease? It is more than old age.”
The final page of her journal is undated. Her script is becoming difficult to read (and yet it is still better than my own). She’s getting confused about where to write. Earlier she skipped a couple of pages and only noticed it later.
“I wrote the last on some old pages,” she said. “Figure it out.”
Her final entry is about Cracker Barrel. Even with a painful mouth, she’s thinking about food. She wrote about sending me soon. “Any time Bill goes there he could bring us back two orders of zucchini and mashed potatoes. I could always eat these.”
“They are so good if I can chew them and right now I could.”
Thus ends her lifetime of journal writing.
On her final day she is sitting in her brown chair in the living room and we have to call the ambulance twice. She is first taken to the same hospital where we often ate in the cafeteria. We’re worried about a stroke. She is communicative and lies in a bed in the ER. Tests do not show anything. She is sent home.
She is taken to the hospital exit in a wheelchair and when she is helped into the back seat of the car she bumps her head quite hard. That worries me but she says she is alright. We drive home.
Bob has joined me and we help her in the back door in a wheelchair (we have borrowed it from the local fire department). We have no ramp so we have to lift her over the drop to the back porch. She is no longer very heavy.
We settle her back into her brown chair in the living room and plan for a quite evening of rest.
But it is not to be. Though she is talking with us, we soon realize things are very wrong. Finally she says, “I cannot see.”
“You cannot see anything?” I ask.
She confirms that to be the case, She is blind.
Bob holds her up in he chair while I call the ambulance … again.
Mom’s wheeled past the dining room table that has been moved to one side of the room and out the back door. There are two vehicles. Mom is placed in the ambulance and off they go .. . slowly I jump in the second vehicle that trails them.
But in West Carrollton, as we near Rt. 25 on Miami Avenue, the ambulance flicks on its red lights and pulls carefully through the red light. Clearly all is not well. At Rt. 741 a car pulls out even as the ambulance approaches the intersection, ambles north without a care in the world.
We’re heading to Kettering Memorial Hospital this time in Kettering. The ambulance pulls up at the ER as we park. I know already Miss Mary is gone and they’re just transporting a lifeless body inside. I somehow knew she had died in West Carrollton, even though CPR was administered the rest of the way.
When I step into the ER a nurse approaches me and tells me they’re trying to save her. I tell them – as Mom instructed me many times – that she didn’t want any heroic efforts and had signed a Do Not Resuscitate order to that effect. I’m asked if I’m her son and whether I want lifesaving efforts to stop.
I tell them to stop.
We (Bob, Nancy and I) are led to a small room Soon a female minister arrives. Would we like a few prayers to be said? No, I tell her politely, neither I nor Mom are religious and I want everything to just stop. It’s the second time I have to say just stop.
Bob and Nancy leave to view the body. I don’t. I want my final memories to be those that linger.
10-29-17
We lost Miss Mary this afternoon. I’ll have more to say later but I’m going to need some recovery time. She’s been very sick and today just pushed the limit. I’m going to miss that sweet soul for the rest of my life.
© 2021 William G Schmidt
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