The Death Path
Chapter 46 - Waiting For God Knows
July 1, 2014 - Suffolk, England
That's what Hospice calls it. And that is what my father is now officially "on".
Got a long email last night from Hospice Nurse Ellyn saying he might have weeks now or perhaps even a month but this was followed today by a panicked phone message from Terri while I was in the car coming back from the vet’s (Mabel limping until we got there whereupon she bounced around the place like a snooker ball and was fine, for £125) so didn't get phone message till I got home.
Daddy's breathing getting worse, Terri said, and there are about 20 second periods where he stops completely.
I rang immediately. Spoke to Hospice Nurse Tammy. The heart-wrenching cries and groans in the background I suddenly realized were coming from my father. Tammy said it’s 24 - 48 hours now, max. She said could I FaceTime, I said yes. And did so, right away, with Alex, our son, next to me.
Huge mistake. Signal not great at that end of the Becket house so we got intermittent images of a father and grandfather in deep distress, eyes closed, crying out—and from the POV of the iPad, giving us a close up of his feet and on then up to his diapers. Christ. Alex and I both horrified and said NO! Not a good idea! We will ring back on someone's cell and please put us on speakerphone.
Alex spoke first, being already an hour late for work, then me. I talked to Daddy about the garden, how beautiful it was in the late afternoon sunshine, how lovely the flowers were looking, what a fine grandson he had, how proud he should be of him, how we are all fine, happy, and doing well, he doesn't need to worry about us, ever, everything is perfect. And that we all loved him. And that the family in Norway loved him.
I hope he heard me. I don't think I can write anymore now. Alex gone off to work in tears, shaken. And I now have to call a funeral home in Massachusetts to give them a heads up in case Daddy goes in the night.
Please please let him just go to sleep and that's it.
I need a glass of something. All I can hear are his cries.
You experience it, and then later hope to only recount and reflect upon the positive. However, it all comes back in an instant, unbidden.
I can feel this on my heart. I was only 35 minutes away, and arrived 20 minutes too late. Cannot fathom the feeling of distance that you and your family endured.
Feels horrible from a distance; strangely it doesn't feel much different when you're sitting right next to them. (And three different well-intentioned knowledgeable people will give you three different predictions about "this is where they are at, this is how it will go." You just have to live with "soon" without having a clear number to anchor that word.)