Are You There?
Saturday, August 24th, 2019
I was running a few errands before leaving to go see Dad. I did not want to go. It would be my first trip back since the Publishers Clearing House debacle. Midday on Saturday, my phone rang. It was my sister. We text each other most of the time. Whenever she called, it usually meant something was up. The mailman was delivering Dad’s mail when she noticed that Dad had not picked up his mail for the last 3 days. She contacted the neighbor. The neighbor called the housekeeper. The housekeeper called my sister. And now my sister was calling me. He had not answered his phone since I talked to him on Thursday. His front door was open, but the storm door was locked. The lights were off, but the drapes were open — he always closed them at night. The neighbors beat on the door, but he did not answer. The housekeeper is the only person in town with a key and she was out of town.
I dropped everything, packed for a week, and sprinted across Illinois. I expected that when I arrived, I would go in and find Dad dead. My heart was pounding in my chest. I knew that if he were not dead, he would be mad that I entered his bedroom. It was a necessary risk.
I arrived at about 3 pm — the time I had originally been planning on leaving to go to his house. I let myself in. I found his bedroom door locked. I unlocked it with a screwdriver and went in. Dad was asleep. He woke up to greet me. He said that he would get up and get dressed. He stunk like he had not had a shower in a month. I suggested that he might want to take a shower too.
I checked on him an hour later. He was in the bathroom and I could hear the shower running.
A bit later, I found him back in bed. He was sound asleep, but he smelled clean. He woke up to tell me that he was still tired and was just going to go back to sleep. And then he did.
Sunday morning
I got up early and went out to the cemetery. At Mom’s stone, I greeted her as I usually did: “Hi Mom”. I went on, “Dad doesn’t look good. I think he’ll be joining you shortly.”
Dad was a night owl his whole life. That got worse after he retired in 1991. He would often stay up past 2 am and get up by around noon. Since Mom died, and even several months before, we knew to never call before 2 pm — chances were good that we would wake them, and they did not like that.
At 2 pm, I woke him up. He was still very tired. He greeted me. We talked for a few minutes. But he did not get up. He did not want anything to eat or drink. And then he went back to sleep. Dad’s been sleeping a lot for the last few weeks — often as much as 18 or 19 hours per day — but not even getting up when I was there, that was new.
He told my sister that he was only going to drink his milk. That could be problematic. It was obvious that he had not been drinking his milk for a while. Most of the milk in the house was out-of-date, and some of it was so sour that it was lumpy. But he had more than 4 gallons of white milk in the refrigerator and another 4 gallons of chocolate milk. All of it, except for a one-half gallon of white milk and one-half gallon of chocolate milk, was out-of-date. For weeks he has been having trouble swallowing liquids like Coke or Root Beer and milk if he drinks it too fast, but food has been going down okay. I tried to get him to go to the doctor and get it checked out. He refused. I told him that he would die if he did not get this swallowing problem looked at. He told me I was wrong. I told him I would call an ambulance and he said “NO”. He explained that he has “just got phlegm in his throat making swallowing difficult”. And we all know by now, Dad is always right. Arguing with him is a worthless activity.
Sunday evening. I woke him up at about 7 pm. He greeted me. We talked. He was lucid. He wanted some white milk. He guzzles it, and just as I start to feel a bit of relief, the milk comes back up and comes out his nose. “Dad, we need to go to the doctor. We need to know whether this swallowing problem is treatable.” Dad says, “NO”. He tried some chocolate milk, water, and then some Alka Seltzer because he attributes his swallowing problem to phlegm in his throat. I explained that I suspect it is a blockage in his esophagus and we should go to the doctor. “NO”. He thinks he knows more than the doctors. Then he went back to sleep.
I recognize the symptoms of a blockage. I, like Dad, and his mother before him, have a hiatal hernia. If I am not careful when I am eating, I can get food stuck in my esophagus such that nothing goes down or comes up. Often, I can clear it myself, but if I cannot, then a trip to the ER is the next step. I have had several esophageal dilations to help resolve this issue, but I still end up in the ER every few years. I spent the evening in the ER one Sunday night in July 2019 after returning home from Dad’s house for this exact problem.
Dad was at a new level of skinniness. He hasn’t been on a scale in more than a month, but my sister and I doubted that he even weighed 100 lbs. Dad was so skinny that when he laid on his back, his hip bones stood up above his stomach like the wings on a 1959 Cadillac. The top of his stomach was just 3 inches off the mattress. That means that all his organs are crammed into that little bit of space that was shared with his spine. I suspected that his hiatal hernia was strangling his esophagus and that was why he could not keep anything down, or his stomach was so compacted that it could not accept food. Either way, without medical attention, he was not going to survive this. But really, he did not want to.
I was supposed to return home, Sunday evening, but he was too sick. I could not leave him.
Monday, August 26th
Monday morning, I visited the local hospital. I wanted to know what resources were available for a dying 89-year-old man who had not been to a doctor in 5 years and whose doctor had since retired. He was actively refusing all medical intervention. They told me that there were no resources available until a doctor signs off on it. No doctor would sign off on any treatment without a medical evaluation and so far, Dad was refusing all medical care. They gave me the name of an adult sitter that could stay with Dad when we would not be there. Dad would still fire the sitter in his more lucid moments. We knew that.
Monday afternoon: 2 pm. I woke him up. He greeted me. He wants some milk. We repeat the exercise. But nothing stays down. He is really weak now.
Hello? Who’s There?
In the afternoon, I had some extra time. I was visiting Mom’s grave. I was talking to Mom like she could hear me; like I had faith that she could hear me. I was upset about Dad. I was kind of asking for her help — like I thought she could help me. I was very tired, very anxious, and unsure of what I needed to do to help him. And then out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a man standing there. He was not more than 20 feet from me. He was standing beside another headstone. I got a clear image of him in my mind — a medium height little man in his mid-60s wearing a tweed jacket and a matching British driving cap made from a similar tweed-like material. I was startled because here I was talking out loud to my Mom who was buried right there, and this guy is just standing there. He was close enough to hear what I was saying, but far enough away to not be completely obvious that he was there.
For a moment, I felt embarrassed. I turned to chat with him, and there was nobody there. I felt silly. My mind must have been playing tricks on me. I was alone in the back of a 60-acre cemetery. It was very peaceful, and cheery. The sun was out bright, and the birds were singing. But I was talking to my deceased mother. That was kind of eerie in and of itself.
When I talk to Mom, I am usually pacing. So, I was moving around quite a bit. And then I saw that man again. Twice more in-fact. I caught him out of the corner of my eye, from different places around Mom’s grave, but when I would look in his direction, he was not there. He was not a person that I recognized. I did not know who he was. I did not feel threatened in any way.
I was asking Mom for help with Dad. I was really upset. My sister thought that I may have seen an angel sent by Mom to comfort me. And then she added, or it could have been a demon. That sent shivers down my spine. We kind of left it at that.
Tuesday, August 27th
The next day, when I had time, I returned to the cemetery to visit Mom. When I am in town, I try to go every day. I get a great deal of comfort by being there. The presence of the man, yesterday, was still fresh in my mind. I did not see him again, although I looked for him — carefully trying to be aware of whatever I could see at the edge of my vision. Instead, I noticed the headstone near where I had seen him standing. It was the 9th anniversary of the death of the man buried there. More shivers ran down my spine, and again as I write this.
The rest of Tuesday was uneventful. Just more of the same. Wake Dad at 2 pm, then again at 7 pm, and try to convince him to go to the hospital, or to eat something.
Tuesday night, close to midnight, I went to Walmart to look at baby monitors. My sister and I were thinking that we could use a baby monitor to listen in on Dad — at least we would know when he was up, or if he had fallen, or whatever. So, there I was, perusing the baby monitors when this woman walks by. We smile at each other and say “Hi”. She was very friendly. And then I saw her a couple more times in different places around the store. I found her smile to be comforting because I was distraught. She looked to be about 30 years my junior, so she was not somebody that I had gone to school with, in that small town. She was seemingly just a kind soul. I needed that right then.
Wednesday, August 28th
On Monday, I had scheduled the adult sitter to come in and do a quick “medical” evaluation on Dad. The sitter was not a doctor or a nurse, but she had enough experience as an adult sitter for the elderly and hospice, that she could at least point us in the right direction. By lucky happenstance, we learned that Mom & Dad’s friend and housekeeper was friends with her. We asked the housekeeper if she could introduce the sitter as her helper for the day.
The housekeeper and the adult sitter arrived at about the same time. The moment the sitter walked in, we both recognized each other. It was the woman that I had seen at Walmart the night before.
We took her into Dad’s bedroom and introduced her as the housekeeper’s helper for the day. It worked. Dad was none-the-wiser. She was able to evaluate him. She gave me a lot of information, and she thought that he was far enough “gone” that we could call for an ambulance at any time and override his wishes. She did not think he would survive much longer. But still, so long as he was lucid, so long as he was refusing, we were not going to get him anywhere near a doctor. Without a doctor, there would be no hospice, no “sitter”, and no help.
I discovered that he has been getting up when I was not around to go to the bathroom. This was not a surprise since he was not going to the bathroom in the bed. Dad was extremely stubborn his whole adult life. I was surprised because he had not consumed enough over the past 7 to 10 days to need to go to the bathroom and his strength was mostly gone.
I was afraid that he would fall. On one such trip back from the bathroom, he started to fall from a full-upright-standing position. I caught him mid-fall, put him back upright, and then watched as he almost fell twice more. He got mad at me — even raising his voice in a belligerent tone — for trying to help. He was not aware that he was dying. He just thought he had the flu or something. He repeated, over and over and over again — no hospital.
The Death Rattle
It has been at least a week since Dad had any food. It has been a week since he declared to my sister his hatred of food. We doubted that he weighed anywhere near 100 lbs. I heard him gurgling in his sleep. I listened at his bedroom door, for a while, as he slept.
Then I heard it. A loud clacking sound. Looking around, it was coming from him. It continued for many minutes. It did not take me long to realize I was listening to his death rattle. I freaked out and called my sister. They had been planning on coming to Dad’s house on Saturday, but they immediately moved their trip up and left on their 17-hour-drive early Thursday morning.
When I got back to Dad’s bedroom, he was awake. I suspect that he went to the bathroom while I was in the other room talking with my sister on the phone. Dad had been sleeping for 116 hours of the last 120 hours. He was still lucid when he was awake. He still thought he was in control. And his brain was still working — poorly — as it had been for the last two dozen weeks. Now, he was starving too. It had been a full week without a meal, and no more than a few ounces of various beverages managed to get past the blockage. I was watching my father starve to death because his dementia-addled brain could not comprehend that he needed to eat to stay alive.