“You Are Legends”

Dearest Rachel –

For all that we’ve set plans in motion to swiftly bring Dad back home to be comfortable in his last days, there’s more that needs to be taken care of than the “comfort care” organization can or will provide. After all, they’re basically fully paid for by Medicare, but there are things that Medicare doesn’t cover, and therefore they don’t offer. Essentially, we’re back at the place you (and I, at least peripherally) were a little less than a decade ago, when we coerced your parents to actually start using all that they’d saved up in order to provide for their own final days

I should point out that, despite calling these “his last days,” there’s no particular indication that it will be a matter of days before he goes Home. Yes, what he is going into is officially referred to as “hospice” care, but that doesn’t mean what it used to – or still does to an average layman like myself. Rather than only covering the last couple of days or weeks before the end of a terminal illness, this is meant to ease an individual into that final stage of life. It’s arranged for with more advanced warning – yesterday’s suddenness notwithstanding – so that a patient gets comfortable with his new situation as he prepares for departure. Rather than being a literal last-minute change in circumstances, it’s meant to be a final, relaxed state as the end approaches.

Which is somewhat reassuring, as it always struck me as the sort of thing you place someone in who’s in the last stages of being fatally sick. Dad may be dealing with a shortness of breath that indicates something serious beneath it (and, despite his frequent insistences that he “want[s] to go Home,” I think it worries him; as I’ve said, we don’t fear death, as such, as Christians, but we also don’t particularly enjoy the process any more than anyone else), but it doesn’t come across as a terminal illness per se. But after eighty-seven year, even six months could count as “final days” in comparison. And odds are, it probably won’t even be that long.

That’s what we were being braced for, as a friend of the family who works in hospital social work was telling us last night. Deb was helping us as a family to navigate through the process of arranging daily caregivers to come in and attend to Dad’s needs in lieu of Mom; at her age – not even a year less than his – she can’t be expected to be able to take care of him on her own.

She also pointed out that we might have to do some gatekeeping as word gets out about his condition. Much like with Junior and Nicole, there will be those – and maybe quite a few of them – that want to help out (which perhaps should be encouraged and even leaned upon, to a certain extent), and others that just want to see him one more time before he leaves. “You are legends,” she told Mom, even as she acknowledges Mom’s assertion that they haven’t actually been in church for well over a year (and because of that, there are a lot of new people that have never met either of them). Their position as emeritii, however, precedes them.

So that’s something to consider, now that he will be home soon; they may be getting more visitors than they can handle in the days to come. To be sure, that could just as easily be catnip for a social fellow like Dad; Jenn has mentioned that he claims to be painfully lonely in the rehabilitation center, although I can’t recall him admitting as such to me. Then again, maybe he recognizes that I wouldn’t be able to understand that as well as Jenn would; I’m oblivious to stuff like that.

That leads to another question Deb brought up; for all that it looks to me like he’s in a holding pattern, with no obvious sign of final descent just yet, there’s the possibility that, despite having given Daniel and I his blessings to go, he might just pass on before we get back from this trip. We have to decide how to deal with that; how do we want to be notified, and what do we want to do about that? Thankfully, Jenn pipes up with the thought that things would be put on hold until we get back, however that may be (there’s a fairly long stretch where we wouldn’t have much ability at all to return, honestly).

I still think that our efforts to contact him each day we’re abroad should give him something to look forward to. I get that that seems a little narcissistic to make such a claim. But honestly, he’s been following my/our travels in the past; this could easily continue for the few weeks we’re out of the country. It’s not the same as being there, but it’s the next best thing. And, in a weird way, it does bring things back around full circle from the first trip he took the family on… to Alaska. Why not finish up there as well?

I may be in denial about his situation, honey, but he’s been through so many crises over the past seven years; after a while, it feels like crying “wolf,” except that we know that the wolf will arrive some day. And I get that things can turn on a dime; each day that sent him to the emergency room, and then this past day of setting up for his return, have been an insane flurry of activity. But those days have been surrounded by countless days of a whole lot of nothing, as well. I wonder if he’s not just getting a little bored by it all; even the exercise regimen, as taxing as it is, is tedious. If it’s going to be that way, it might as well be happening where he’s most comfortable – home – and with those he’s most comfortable with.

So for now, keep an eye on him and wish him well, honey. He’ll probably be joining you soon, but that’s ‘soon’ as measured against eternity; I don’t know how it will be for us down here. I’d like to come back to him by this time next month, with a few more stories to tell. Maybe his éminence grise status will bring in helpers and well-wishers by the carload, prolonging his stay here, but I honestly don’t know what to expect. So maybe you could wish us all well for now. It’s clear that we need it.