A Day in the Life

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Many people ask me, "how’s your dad doing?" I hear it many times a day. It is the way people show they care and, as I wrote previously, I am truly humbled by that. But there isn’t a good answer. I usually say, "he’s dying." Is that too much reality or not enough? I mean, we’re all dying. It’s just that most of us have things that are more important to us. Things that define our existence more accurately than that, especially since that is one thing - the one thing - we all have in common. For him, it is his most defining task at hand. And as we are learning day by day it is not a quick process.

So allow me to bring more reality to my answer. He is eating, though only enough to maintain a certain comfort level. He sleeps a lot. Probably more than your typical newborn. I would guess 20 hours a day give or take. It is hard to gauge because sometimes he is awake for very short periods and sometimes he’s awake but not quite engaged with his surroundings. He can converse but it wears on him quickly. And as I have said a number of times, he isn’t really altered. If you’ve ever woken him from a sound nap and talked to him before he is totally aroused (as I have many times in my life) this is what he is like most of the time when he is awake. In that sense he seems almost normal. He manages the occasional "Roy-ism" but not very often. He can have visitors but don’t expect any stimulating conversation. This is how he has been since returning from the hospital - which is marginally better than when he went in two weeks ago.

He isn’t ambulatory at all. This is by far the biggest change most people would see in him since returning from the hospital. He is now totally dependent. Oddly enough I don’t find that to be the biggest change. Before going into the hospital he got himself out of bed and dressed every morning. That and getting himself to the kitchen table to the continental breakfast that awaited him was exhausting. It took a while to recover. After which he would read the morning paper. As my brothers and sister can attest, this is a long-standing morning ritual. Woe to the person who misplaced the newspaper or even failed to reassemble it in its proper order. And that is the biggest change in my father. He doesn’t read the paper - or even watch the news anymore. He has lost his interest in the outside world. He has traded in his stock.

The last three years in particular have been marked by bouts of pneumonia that usually result in a lesser capacity for activity than before. A "stair step" type of decline. He’s done with that. He’s reached the last step. How long he will stay on that step is completely unknown to anyone. But he isn’t interested in sustaining it. The next acute problem he has will be his last.

There’s a line in "Shawshank Redemption," a movie we both enjoyed, that says "Get busy living or get busy dying." I have known people that seem to go through life in a way that seems to be focused on their demise. A long, drawn out march to their own death. For a man that has faced his own mortality more times than anyone else I know - on and off the battlefield - this has never been my father's way. For over 87 years he has been in the business of living. Now that he is in the business of dying it doesn't really seem appropriate to talk about how he is so much as how he was. Not because I'm anxious to have him in the past tense.  Because no matter how long he lasts like this it will never be "how he is."