I am off and on sad watching my dad slowly wind down. I'm also happy....laughing at his wit and humor, at him waking up with a joke to share, a kind word for his nurses, always thinking of how to bring a smile to the room.
"How's your pain today, Ted, on a scale of 1-10"?
"It's just enough to be miserable" he says....
Dad is the last of the grandparents. We've been through this journey 3 times before...I've had the honor of being with my mom and with "Papa" in their final moments. I've always said it's a gift when your parents allow you to stay close, to bear witness, to comb their hair, feed them, watch their struggle to see their sheer will and determination. With dad, to see his stubbornness slowly eroding but peaking out every so often.It's an odd place of limbo for us. Should we stay? Should we go? When we're there we're thinking about here and when we're here, we're thinking about there...
It's a gift to help usher them into their next phase as they ushered us into ours.
I know it's closing in...He weaves between sleep and wakefulness, between confusion and lucidity. One minute very present, the next moving his hands like he's at work oh so long ago, talking about "calibrations" and "getting it right" and "must solve this problem".
He stopped eating over a week ago except for the lemon sherbet that he loves so much...His nurses cant' believe his resolve, his resilience. Oh, I can! He's bounced back from disaster so many times before that I half expect him to be sitting up and eating, watching a favorite show next time I walk in...but I know it isn't that way this time. My heart is heavy. Yesterday he grabbed my hand and said " I think I'm dying....I hope I'm not. I don't want to die" I wish he weren't.
When I told him I had to go home for a bit to do some work and then return, he says "where am I going to go?"
I love my dad.
I'm grateful for the gift.
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