Hospice

The final leg of Dad’s journey, where acts of love and compassion are the preparation for takeoff

My wife doesn’t like fruit.

For real, I mean it. Like any fruit.

Actually, she’ll tell you, she only likes fresh crisp apples and watermelon — in season.

As for eggs, no, they’re not for her. Nor gummy candy. Mayo is her yuck to my yum. Possibly related, or maybe not, she’s also really clean. The house, and the order of things, namely.

You might call her meticulous, with such an artful eye that you won’t even notice the lack of a crumb or the chairs lined up straight as soldiers.

My Wife is with me when I receive Sunday’s call that they have taken Dad to Cambridge Hospital. Spaulding has given up on rehabilitation; they say they couldn’t provide him the medical care he needed. He woke with aspiration in his lungs or a — cover your ears — mucous plug, and required additional oxygen. This after Spaulding’s most unsanitary situation provided him a full month of catching pneumonia and then teeth-kicking Covid. And so with a nose tube feeding him medicine, they closed his door to leave him alone, where he cried, “help, help, help,” to the water torture from an incessantly dripping faucet.

Anyway, I’ll let you in on a little secret:

When the hospital called, we were in Saks, where Sarah was deftly negotiating with customer service to return a pair of pants bought ‘final sale, no returns’.

As usual, her capacity to navigate challenges and get to solutions was artful, if not marvelous.

I suppose, if I were to get mushy on you, I’d remind you that Sarah is of GI Jane lineage. No no, not the short doo or camo vest, but well, more her spirit and…well, I suppose, the…

…and I guess this is where — as a man trialed by marriage for eight years — I recognize it’s time to shut my trap and move on.

After four hours, we’ve got Dad transferred out of the emergency room at Cambridge Hospital to a space upstairs.

The whole time, Sarah’s been talking to him, telling him he’s safe, holding his hand, translating his slow murmurs of speech, which tumble from his subconscious in a broken patter of single words and energy-depleting pushes of sentences. He speaks of death; he asks if he’s already died and at what time. He recalls his wife, Marcy, who he believes was just there and has snuck around the corner, just out of sight (hint: she wasn’t here).

While I may be Power of Attorney — a designation of both honor and burden — Sarah is the one doing the heavy lifting.

• She’s organizing and communicating to a boatload of family, providing updates and actions.
• She’s crisply asking questions of doctors and bringing donuts for nurses.
• She’s calling favors in to hospital CEOs, she’s researching short term and long term care properties like The Newbury, where she’s somehow jumped us up to first on the wait list.

With each new batch of doctor’s there are brief introductions. They ask if I am the son, which I affirm, with Sarah adding, “and I’m the wife.”

A short pause and eyebrows are raised ever so slightly, as it’s assumed there’s some kinky-ass-young-hot-lady-with-old-rich-dying-man-sh¡t going on. By the third batch of docs I’m onto the challenge and speak up, it’s me who is the husband, not Dad, goddamn it.

Relief all around.

The palliative care doctor is arranged to come visit, under the auspices of ‘no big deal’, just another conversation.

Of course, she is wonderful, practiced, in her element, with a carefully prepared process that expresses empathy while enforcing clarity.

Between bouts of tears, Sarah is giving a play-by-play of days, what’s brought Dad to this point, and a thousand other details most would miss.

Sarah doesn’t want Bruce to be alone. She’s inhaling everyone’s grief and turning it into actions; she’s heartbroken for him, and for me. But not for her — she’s entirely selfless.

I keep thinking about my father dying, but really about how lucky it is that Sarah is here to help us through it.

Dad is resting, and mumbles, “but then I can’t fly,” to no one in particular.

He calls out sharply, saying he’s fallen.

He thinks he’s catching a flight, and asks which airline and what time it takes off.

He wonders where we are going. Sarah tells him we’re headed to California, to all sit together by the ocean.

Sarah sends me a text:

“I told your dad that I am so grateful that he is your dad. He showed you what a loving marriage looked like, and he loves his wife so much, he is such a good role model for you. You are lucky and I am lucky that he raised you.”

Dad’s Living Will is clear:

If at such a time the situation should arise in which there is no reasonable expectation of my recovery from extreme physical or mental disability, I direct that I be allowed to die and not be kept alive by medication, nutrition or hydration. I do, however, ask that medication be mercifully administered to me to alleviate artificial means or suffering though this may shorten my remaining life.

Dad is given a small hit of morphine to make him comfortable.

A bed is being arranged in hospice, where he’ll be taken in the next day or so.

And so the plane is at the gate.

And now the Crew is preparing the cabin.

It seems we’re nearing wheels up, with just enough time for Dad to buckle in, kick his shoes off, and close his eyes — so that he may get some well-deserved rest during takeoff.