Sad he understood

I was so sad that he had to understand. But when I looked into his eyes, I could sense the desertion he felt. I shivered when I walked into his living environment. His wife visited him, but she did not seem to understand. She would talk with all the other residents and fuss over him. Not as a man or a husband, but as a patient, someone who couldn't take care of themselves. She tried to befriend all the other residents and staff. Of course, there was the routine kiss goodbye. She seemed to give no thought to the environment that he was living in or his quality of life. She seemed oblivious to the conditions.

I was not in charge, but I tried to get the establishment to make his living less lonely. He spent days in bed attired in the same bed clothing. He had no routine and appeared always to be alone. Needless to say, this brilliant man faded more quickly than he should have. His opinion no longer mattered, nobody asked him for his advice. In this isolation, you would expect family to run to his aid, he was the father. He had raised his children and had faith in them even when the evidence said the opposite.

I was the only child to whom he was not really a father, and yet I was the only one who shook in the inhuman conditions of his living environment.

As an elder, he was again a child. He was seeing how I felt as an adult staying with my parents for a little while and having to make a contract as if I was a renter and not a family member. Other family members stayed for free. Nobody asked him if he liked where he was living. Even I failed in that regard. Once I was in charge, I tried to visit him more often and started looking into places to move him. There was one rehab home in East Winston, which seemed decent. My mother had gone there twice for rehab. It was clean and they had room. The other clients were interactive, he would not have been spending the day lying in his bedclothes. It is hard to know how much of his behavior was due to his illness. But I knew that all of a sudden he understood what it was like to be powerless over your own life.

The day he went to the hospital for his final journey, I told his care worker that he didn't feel well and had to see a doctor. She told me it was just a cold. She was not very concerned. And then we got the call that they had taken him to the hospital. The family was called. He probably smiled in disbelief and pleasure as lying in his hospital bed he was all of a sudden surrounded by his family. The family that loved him as he was dying. His final hours turned into days. People talked to him, sang to him, and remembered special times they had with him in their lives. The arrival of death brought him the care he was longing for during the last few years of his life. No wonder it took him so long to pass.

He was probably holding on to life to experience the human interaction which nobody had time to give him while he was living these past two years. Hopefully, in death, he forgot all the lessons he had learned the past few years when he had been deteriorating practically alone in his nursing home. Hopefully, as he slipped from this world all he knew was the good times he had had with his family, and the joy he felt having them all around him.