For the most part, I’m “over” my sister’s bullshit. Nothing else happened. She didn’t say anything, of course. I just mean: Her coming over to see my father, the denial and the rabid, solipsistic, gaslighting grin she wears so professionally. What can I do to change it? Nothing. And so the most logical, rational response becomes letting it go, at least to the best of my ability.
Britney just left. She got here Saturday around 5:30. It feels like she was here for a week because time does a weird, new dance these days, as I’ve written here before. It’s akin to Covid 2020 Time: Slow and syrupy and exhausting. A day can feel like both an hour and a week simultaneously.
Britney and I had a “good” time together, though, despite everything else. I “good” in quotes only because, you know, my father is dying, so I can’t help but see everything through the contextual lens of that reality. But I’m supremely glad she came, of course. She’s family now, really, even though we’re not yet married. We walked the dogs several times. Went thrift store shopping on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara (she found a nice jean jacket). Did an epic fast-paced urban hike up in the hills above my folks’ house a la Las Alturas; the views were incredible. We hugged and kissed and held sweaty hands and discussed my father, death, family, my writing, her career, our future, moving to the Bay Area next year, her teenage son and his girlfriend, Santa Barbara versus Lompoc, etc.
We spent large chunks of our time with my father and mother in my dad’s “death room,” chatting with them, looking at old photos on the digital picture frame, discussing the past. I’ve been feeling very close with my father during this time; like a worker-bee I just want to be near him all the time. We’d decided not to do an actual nature hike because I didn’t want to be gone for three, four hours. I wanted to remain nearby. Easily accessible. Anything could happen right now.
This afternoon we took the dogs out to another neighborhood—they’re getting old and can’t do too much elevation—and on the way back we decided to stop by Trader Joes and get some groceries. We needed eggs, green beans, fruit, etc. I got a call from a random number I didn’t know so I let it go to voicemail; I generally don’t answer unless I know who it is; I always figure if it’s important they’ll either leave a voicemail, text or call back again later. They left a voicemail. It turned out to be the vet who’d sent a sample of my mother’s dog Romey’s tumor growth cytology a few days back at the Urgent Pet Care clinic. Good news: It came back negative for cancer. I told Britney and we jumped for joy; my mom had been devastated, already assuming her dog had Melanoma, which was adding brutal insult to injury along with already losing her husband.
We got the groceries and left, excited to return. When back, we set the grocery bags down on the counter and walked down the short hall, popping our heads into the open doorframe.
“Mom, good news,” I said, shaking my iPhone at her. She stood up immediately and came over, looking at me with desperate hopefulness in her warm hazel eyes.
I played the voicemail on speaker-phone. She burst into tears, shaking with gratitude. She kept saying, “Oh my god; oh my god; oh my god.” She was absolutely thrilled, and that me Britney and I overjoyed. At least we’d conquered one thing. At least one potentially terrible outcome had been, for the time being at least, avoided.
*
An hour later my dad said he had to go #2 (poop). He wanted to try to walk to the bathroom using his walker, as he’d been doing until a day or two ago. But he’d grown significantly weaker over the past three days, because of no food intake. We stopped feeding him liquid food on Friday, after the hospice nurse said it was making his gurgling and coughing worse, and making him need to pee and poop too often. Besides: The man is trying to die; why feed him? We are giving him water.
The last day he walked was I believe yesterday; honestly, as I said, the minutes and hours move sluggishly and bizarrely, like slowly blooming flowers. But that was a telling experience. For the first time in 22 months, he struggled to sit up in the bed; he swayed ominously when he walked; he nearly fell several times (I walked right behind him with my palms against his torso’s sides; once the wall caught his body, thank God); and when he had to sit up after finishing with the toilet, he could barely do it and with a ruthless physical strain emanating verbally as a half-coyote-call scowl. And in the end: He didn’t even poop.
So this time we brought out the commode, which he’d been avoiding for months at this point. It was a herculean effort to get Dad up, turned around, and on the commode, but my mom and I did it. We gave him the room. He pooped. I took the bag out and down to the trash downstairs in the garage. We got him back in bed. He was exhausted. But his oxygen level was a stunning 95. (Even though he was struggling to get full breaths and was winded, a sure sign of the worsening tumor.)
*
Not long after this Mom got a call from Hospice. It was about forms we needed to fill out for the drug we were going to most likely give Dad so he could end his own life. (What a bizarre statement. Still feels totally surreal.) The woman talked to us about the drug—it’s a thin powder and he’ll inject it himself into his stomach feeding peg-tube. We’ll prepare it for him with water. The legalities can be accomplished in 48 hours. I will pick the drug up at the CVS when it’s ready. Dad isn’t going to take the drug right away. We’d expected (and had been told) it’d take two weeks due to needing two doctors’ witnessing etc. But it turns out one is their own doctor so we just need Dad’s oncologist via Zoom. The oncologist just has to meet with Dad and confirm that he really wants to die. Easy enough.
Right now it’s strange because Dad, since my sister and the family stopped by two days ago, seems quite “good.” He’s profoundly weak and frail. His organs are slowly shutting down, of course. He hasn’t had any food since Friday. He’s been on and off morphine the past 4-5 days. But he’s in fairly bright spirits. Family visiting helped. Britney being here. People. Distractions. Podcasts. Audiobooks. We thought he might just sort of fade into a drugged state, into Morphine Slumber Land. But he hasn’t at all. He’s mentally sharp as a tack. Still no pain, though there is some discomfort. So it’s odd; it feels like a perfectly healthy man in his mid-70s who happens to be my mom’s husband of half a century and my father is going to pointlessly end his life with our hands clutching his as he does it.
But of course that’s not really what’s happening. Real life is often stranger than fiction.
Anyway Mom and I talked to the hospice lady on the phone for maybe a half hour. Mom cried when the woman asked how we were doing. She said to my mom, Let us know if you want a nurse on hand for any of this, and for the administration of the drug at the end, when he’s ready, if you want to be a wife and not a caregiver for a while. But my mom said she felt the biggest gift she can give to my father is the validation of his choice of ending his life by mixing up the drug for him, preparing him for his own demise, his own choice of liberation. He of course has to administer the drug to himself; we can’t do it for him.
We asked my father when he might want to take the drug. I was direct: Would you take the drug now if you had it? He said no; he wouldn’t take it now. He said at this point he feels pretty decent overall, but he’s aware of his exhaustion and physical weakness, and of course he grasps what’s going on inside his body, how it’s breaking down hour by hour. He knows pain is in the very near future. So the drug will come in a few days or a week or whenever we get through that process and it’s just an option. Take it, don’t take it: It’ll be there.
The concept, the image of my mother and I holding his hands as he injects the drug and then talking with him, crying and saying goodbye—of saying final permanent last words to the man—is woefully brutal to ponder. But it is probably going to come to that, or something very similar. Maybe it’ll be days. Maybe a week. Maybe two. We discussed Father’s Day; it’s June 18th. We doubt he’ll be here by then but who knows.
My sister says they’re coming back next weekend, Saturday again I think. She really wants to meet Britney. Britney is planning to come the same day again as well (also Saturday) but after work, so around 3pm. So we’ll see if we can make that happen, for them to meet. I’m a little scared of it, to be honest: I think what’s most likely is that my fiancée and my sister will get along quite well. And that terrifies me, because my sister is…my sister. She’s the queen of superficial externals. She can get anybody to like her. But inside she’s rotten. This is my own insecure bullshit; I know that. Let Britney have her relationship separate of me. I know. And I agree. But still. My fear is there.
It’s such a damn weird time. It feels like Mom and I are just barely balancing upon the head of a pin somehow, hardly holding onto the edge of reality. We’re doing this odd dance wherein each hour is its own universe. Things are unfolding naturally on their own. I have no idea what tomorrow will look like, or even an hour from now. Today we changed his dressing for his stomach peg-tube, which emerges from a hole in his gut. There was new, mysterious fresh blood, never there before. Mom thinks it’s from the cancer. His recent stool was black. Also, Mom says, blood from the breaking-down body organ tissue. But Dad says No Hospitals. No matter what. This is the point of hospice. Comfort. He’s comfortable. Morphine does the work here. We circle and flit around him like needy animals, trying our best to help. Wanting to be around him, like bees buzzing round the hive. I admire my father now more than ever before.
Buzz buzz buzz.
The implicit grief here says it all ....