Waiting these days

Tucked away somewhere, I have a card from my dad's doctor, a sympathy card, I believe, that includes a list of things, five or six possible causes--Alzheimer's among them--for him dying how and when he did. His death started with a painful fall that I've always thought so taxed his systems that it put his very life at risk. After that fall, he spent maybe three weeks in a hospital, "declining," as they say. 

For a few days, I kept a vigil at his side, a time I treasured then and still do, despite the fact that during those hours he never once spoke to me or even appeared to know I was there. He was restless, but seemed not to be in significant pain. 

We were 500 miles from home, and I had classes to teach--we couldn't stay indefinitely. I asked the nurses and the doctors if they could give me any guess as to when the end would come. Neither would or could, they said, because they'd seen old folks in similar conditions rally to hang around this world for weeks sometimes. "Could be tomorrow, could be next month," they said, so we left.

Just a few nights later, Dad died. I'm not given to sour stomachs, but I woke up that night, 500 miles away, something foul in me. Not until the next day, when the phone call came, did I eerily determine my strange wakefulness occurred at about the moment he died. 

Back we went to Wisconsin.

When my mother was 95, her swollen abdomen prompted a trip to the doctor's office, where, after a series of tests, the doctor told her, gently, I'm told, that her body was losing a battle against an aggressive cancer she didn't even know she had. She wasn't upset. She didn't go teary. If anything she was at peace, knowing that she'd soon be going home. 

My sister took her back to the Home. That was all on Friday. On Monday morning, with her daughter in the room along with someone else, my mother stopped breathing. They didn't even see her pass. Just like that, life was over, a sweet, sweet death--no apparent suffering. She left, calmly and without a fuss, bound for whatever Glory looks like. Still makes me smile to think of it.

We were halfway to Wisconsin, almost exactly, in fact, when my brother-in-law called to tell us, that morning, that Mom was gone. We'd been on our way home for a final visit, but I took the next freeway exit and turned back to Iowa because we knew this wouldn't be an over-nighter. We'd need to gather some things.

Not so strangely really, I remember both of my parents' deaths as a joy--death as deliverance. 

My mother-in-law's dying came after years of travail from an unrelenting nerve disease that left her dizzied, more and more incapable of standing, then sitting, then even lying down. She was in hospice care for years, her nurse a perfect angel. When finally the end was near, she was restless, seemed almost frantic. Just what those who die as she did are conscious of is a question no one can answer, but for more time than I care to remember, something inside her determinedly hung on even though she'd long ago made clear that leaving would be a blessing.

On a Sunday night we were there. Her husband was at her bedside, as he had been all day, waiting. It was exhausting to witness, so I told my wife that it might be good to go to church for an hour, to get him away--and good for us too. So the three of us left, drove to church, 
and had just sat down when my wife got the call--Mom was gone. 

Just before we left, I had taken the nurse aside and asked her if she had any guess how long it might be. "Could be tonight, could be next week," she said, or something similar. But she did edge a guess. "I'd guess that by Monday night, your mother will be gone."

Fifteen minutes later, Mom was relieved by peace.

Yesterday, the nurse smiled when I asked the same old question about Dad. "You can't tell, can you?" I said. 

She just smiled. "You just never know," she said.

My father-in-law is not eating anymore, not drinking either. He stays in bed, apparently sleeping. If it wouldn't be for heavy breathing, you could believe he is already gone. But there's sound--no rattle and not choppy--and occasionally something moves: he raises a hand to his face or a leg stirs. He too, as were all of our parents, is very much ready to go. 

Shouldn't be long. But we wait. No one knows when he'll go, so we wait, as he does, I suppose. We wait, all of us. We were alone last night. No call came.

Today is another day. We wait.