It shouldn’t happen this way. A man works hard all his life, sometimes holding down three jobs to provide for a family of five kids. Losing a spouse within a year after his retirement. As if that matters; it happens to anyone. It comes down to human dignity. Remaining independent until he’s struck down with sickness that eats away at his insides. Wondering if he’ll ever go home again, while he sits in a health care facility where Henry next room over hollers out day and night for "Henry!" Where the aides ask his family to bring more clothes because he messes his daily.
Where for one night, he’s picked up and brought over for what always was his Monday night meal, though he knows he can’t eat much even though it’s his favorite. Where he loses control and slowly, painfully is helped into his son’s house, leaking shit that’s dripping down his pants leg onto the floor in a trail. Depending on his son to clean him up, his daughter-in-law to clean the floors, his clothes. He sits and eats dressed in a woman’s bathrobe while his own shirt, pants, shoes are snuck away and laundered. His son and daughter-in-law remembering they planned to ask him over for Easter, but remaining silent until they can discuss it. They say nothing to him, but decide to ask him tomorrow anyway. They’ll prepare. No one else will take him for that day, because they’ve all been through it. He can’t help it. Everyone understands. It’s the medicine they give me, he says. As if we’re cleaning white aspirin off the floors, off him. I wonder what he’s thinking; I worry. It took him the first two years of his life to learn to control his body, to listen to what it tells him. He’s come full cycle; it’s telling him that. Beginning to ending. Pride is gone, and all he can do is hope that he is forgiven.
It shouldn’t happen this way. "So it goes," says Vonnegut.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Life is a circle. For some lucky humans death comes and steals life away in an instant while walking in dreams. That was the way for my Grandfather. We missed him when he left, his words echo in my mind almost daily. I would like to leave that way. His Son, my Dad, died recently and suffered in a similar manor to your loved-one in your post. It was a nightmare! “Death” should NOT be this way, sometimes daily living is tough{?}. We all carry our own cross. I don’t know why things happen the way they do. I ponder often. I also give Thanks for each day I have and breathe I take. Could it be that what others suffer make our days more complete? Maybe and; So IT goes….
Who understands it, Sallie; I sure don’t. My own parents died instantly (heart attack, my dad) or peacefully (Alzheimers, my mom). It is just the indignity this man is suffering and so much he faces yet ahead in the next few months. All we can do is make is as pleasant and easy as possible for him.
I think the most tragic thing about the last years of life is the loss of independence, and with it, dignity. It makes those of us who’ve witnessed it hope for our own deaths to be sudden, even if it is a shock to the family.
The hardest thing to convince my mom of was that it was okay for us to take care of her. We kept reminding her what wonderful care she had taken of all of us for so long. I like to imagine that helped lighten the matter for her. I’m not sure it really did.