Life and Death

It's 9:51 p.m. on Easter Sunday evening. Husband and I arrived home from Iowa today in record time. I think it was 6 hours and 10 minutes or something very close to that. I accomplished a LOT of knitting on this trip, which I am very pleased with.

The trip was...good...all in all, but it had its moments. First of all, it started much later than we had planned on. We were going to leave on Friday morning at 10:00 am, so as to arrive home shortly after 4:00. However, my uterus had different plans and decided to leave me curled in a ball on the bathroom floor for nearly an hour, where it took 800 mg of Ibuprophen and a 15 minute intercessory prayer from my mother to make it behave. I fully believe in the power of prayer like I never have before. Thanks, Mom.

Anyway, we left town around 11:30, and got home about 6:05. The trip down was exceedingly uneventful, which basically is a good thing, however, we decided to take the free car, since, even though it is 18 years old, it has 33,000 less miles on it than our good car! But, the "Service Engine Soon" light came on while we were driving east on 494 towards 35W. Didn't think much of it.

Saturday morning, we pulled into the driveway with Mom (coming back from a trip to the nursing home to visit Grandpa) and Husband noticed the free car had a flat tire. So, since it's Saturday at about 11:44am, we have 16 minutes to find a place to fix the flat, before we're stranded in Iowa until Monday! Luckily, the feat is accomplished and the tire is fixed. However, we are not finished with the trials with Mr. Free Car. Later than night, when Husband tries to move it so that my dad can pull his car out of the garage, it decides not to start. Repeatedly. Luckly, Husband is a farm boy and knows how to handle a cranky car. He gets it moving and we are able to drive back safely to Fargo today.

Now, I need to back track.

Mom had to put her dad in the nursing home a few weeks ago. Up until then, he lived in Des Moines/Ankeny all his life. He now resides in Dumont, which is the little, tiny, dumpy town about 5 miles from their house, where she works. He has dementia. He has congestive heart failure. He cannot control his bowels, because he refuses to eat most days. He has always been a very strange man; difficult to get to know, easy to get frustrated with. I haven't seen him in probably 4-5 years, which is sad, but not having much of a relationship with him, I didn't care all that much, unfortunately.

But, I felt that since we were in town, we should go and pay him a visit, knowing he could be completely dingy, or super crabby or whatever. What I was not prepared for was what I saw.

I walked into the Dumont nursing home with my husband and my mother. I'd been in the nursing home a million times, having worked at the local pharmacy as a teenager, where I had to deliver meds from. I could see him laying on his bed from a distance. I recognized the light blue jeans which he always wore with a large belt buckle and a western-style shirt tucked in - you know, the shirts with the pearly buttons. He was asleep on his bed. It was about 11:15 am, and his lunch was sitting untouched on the tray near the bed. He was a waif. Never weighing much over 140 most of his adult life (that I had known him), he looked as though he'd probably lost 20-30 pounds. His skin was splotchy, and I could see his veins in his forehead. They were very prominent. He was breathing heavily. He looked so small, laying there sleeping.

Mom approached and touched his leg and said, "Hi Daddy, we came to say hello." He didn't stir. She took off her coat and put it in the chair. "Hi Daddy, are you going to wake up?" He made a noise. His breathing became more labored. He kind of opened his eyes, but he wasn't awake. This went on for a few minutes. I was thinking, "Let's just leave the poor man alone - he's obviously uncomfortable and is probably escaping the pain by sleeping." I turn to walk out the door and he opens his eyes and looks at me. I said, "Hi Grandpa," and waved with a smile. He didn't really see me, or at least it didn't seem like it. He closed his eyes again. Then he stopped breathing all together.

"Good God," I thought, "is he going to die right here, right now?" It was so strange. He didn't breathe for at least 10-15 seconds, which seemed like an eternity, and then he sneezed - twice. That woke him up enough for him to register that he had visitors. Mom said, "Look who's here." I said, "Hi Grandpa," again. He looked at Chris, "Who's that?" (He'd never met Chris.) "I said, this is my husband, Chris." Chris said, "Hi Bill." Then Grandpa launched into something about the car and is Chris old enough to drive it, and he's only 51 himself and needs to get his license renewed (a common conversation topic), and how we'll have to get your dad down here...and I didn't follow most of it. Mom could understand what he was saying, and I found out later, he was asking if I had his car, because she had once mentioned something to him about giving it to us, which they had (it's the "free car.") He also said, "Something's wrong. What's wrong with me?"

Anyway, somewhere in this strange, 30 second conversation, he closes his eyes again, and starts shaking, something that apparently happens because he's starving himself. I said to Mom, partly out of pity for him, and partly out of my own uncomfortableness, "Let's just let him sleep." I didn't know that sometimes it could take him a half hour to wake up. Had I know that, I would had stayed longer, because it seems that he knew it was me standing there.

So, we ended up leaving. He opened his eyes once again after we'd left the room and I think he saw us standing in the hallway. Then he just kind of stared off for a few seconds, and then he closed his eyes again. Then I felt bad, like we'd abandoned him. It was awful.

We spoke with the nurse for a minute who said all he'd eaten that day was a snack cup of pudding, and half a cup of coffee. Makes me wonder if they ever give him water.

We got back in the car and I didn't know what to say. It was horribly sad, even though I didn't ever have much of a relationship with him and even though I hadn't seen him in years. I could still hear his voice inside when he talked - sounded like my grandpa. I cried later, at the sad sight I'd seen. This shell of a human, who used to be a functioning being, is now reduced to a nursing home, where they monitor his bowel movements, and feed him pudding, like a child. His wedding ring was on one of his fingers; pictures of his first wife (my maternal grandmother, whom I never met because she died the year before I was born, when my mom was 26) were in the room, along with his old dog Tiki, and me and my parents. The legacy of a life not well-lived. It was a sad commentary.

I didn't know if I should try to go back today before we left for home. I didn't really want to go. It was so horrible to see him like that, yet, I felt I'd deserted him yesterday, mostly out of my own anxiety. Yet, Mom maintains that he didn't really care that I was there at all - he didn't even say hello, he just asked about his car. Yet another telltale mark of the selfish man he always was. I'm wondering if he had a personality disorder that made him the way he was - unsociable, hard to get to know, strange, unloving. I guess we'll never know. I don't even know if I'll see him in Heaven someday. Mom said that when she was a young girl, they joined an Evangelical Free church and one day some of the men from that church came and took her dad away for the afternoon and when he came back, he never drank, smoke, or played cards again, or at least for a long time. Not that those are the marks of a saved individual, but something happened. I know for a fact that he's been mad at God for a long, long time, wanting God to take him so he wouldn't have to live anymore.

None of it makes any sense, and none of it makes me feel better.

However, there was life on this visit, too. Not just death.

The earth was awakening from the winter - there was green grass (something we've not seen in Fargo since September...). There were crocuses (croci?) blooming near the front steps. The pussy willow was starting to show its little fuzzy buds. The tulips were pushing their leaves thru the dry soil. The lilac was budding. I found hope and beauty in this. Interesting how two opposites can exist in the same realm, so close to one another. Inside the nursing home, where my grandfather lays, dying, outside, the earth is showing signs of coming back to life after a sleep thru the cold winter. "Both, and" as Carla Dahl would say. Not, "either, or."

The last time a relative of mine died, I was in the 5th grade. I was sad. It was my Uncle Harold. But I felt detatched at the time. I suppose that's how a 5th grader deals with it. But now I have to watch my poor mother take care of a father who never acted caring towards her, who only gave her anguish and rude words. How difficult that must be, yet I know she can't leave him there. The bond of a parent and child. Survives nearly anything.

I hope Grandpa goes to Heaven.