Juxtapositions

Two thirty a.m. The dead of night, all dark and still. Only the occasional swish of a car passing on the distant highway. I went to bed at 9:00 p.m. and woke up abruptly a few minutes ago with sleep too far away to get back to.

I mentioned that Monday was a difficult day for Dad. I didn’t mention that the duty nurse – a new one – forced him to get up and walk around in the midst of all the difficulty. Dad, on the verge of tears, said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have the strength,” but she bullied him into it anyway.

Poor Mom. She sits at the bedside, yellow pink and blue wool slipping through her fingers with a snick of needles as she knits sweaters for Wumbles’ and Creature’s babies. I could tell she was upset – her body kind of hunched over and she ducked her head – but Good Women Never complain was so deeply instilled in her during the days of her youth that she’s incapable of protest.

Quietly furious, I followed the nurse up the hall and tried to explain, in measured tones, that she didn’t know my Dad. “He almost never says he can’t do something,” I said, “But when he does, it means he really can’t and you shouldn’t push him.” I managed to avoid voicing the two words shouting in my head, “It’s mean.”

She gave me the sort of toothy grin you offer a half wit. “I have to keep him moving through the Recovery Schedule,” she said, her prissy little lips primping, “Or he’ll never return to normal from the surgery.”

One of the few good things about getting older is that you can recognize idiots on sight and know when to save your breath.

Dad’s “normal” has involved one thing after another going wrong since his near-fatal brush with kidney failure in September of 2007. He’s been slowly sinking into greater and greater discomfort and a vastly diminished quality of life ever since. And it’s perfectly obvious that he’s now getting thinner, frailer and less present every day. It’s not as if he’s going to go galloping around the block with two Airedales and then leap into the deep blue sea for a free style swim once the Recovery Schedule has run its course.

The Nurse I. episode, combined with Dad’s obvious misery, have resulted in Mom and me deciding to go and talk to the GP they’ve had for nearly 40 years. Dad wants no more medical interventions to prolong his life. We want to remove him from the hospital and make him comfortable in the home he loves. He can look out at the surge and swell of the ocean while listening to the music he loves. And – spring is on the way – we can surround him with daffodils and cherry blossoms while Mom continues to sit nearby and knit baby sweaters.

Death be not proud.