Two Thousand Sixty-Seven

On Tuesday, last week, I took Ezra for a check-up at a new pediatrician. 

"Okay, family history," the doctor said cheerfully, turning to her computer. "Heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer? Are all the grandparents still living?"

"My dad," I said. "Is not. He died yesterday."

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"It's okay," I said.

***

On Wednesday, last week, I took a train back up to Pennsylvania. 

As I rose to get off, my bag knocked over my seatmate's coffee cup.

"Oh!" she gasped.

"Oh shit!" I muttered. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," she said.

***

A very nice man asked me if I needed help with my suitcase as we boarded the elevator out on the track. I told him no thanks, my toddler weighed more than this, and HE didn't come with wheels and a handle, so I was good. He laughed.

Then he sighed. "And NOW I have to go to work."

And now I have to go help plan a funeral, I thought, but did not say.

Instead, I smiled. "That sucks. I'm so sorry."

***

A couple hours later I was ordering a cake. The baker asked if I wanted anything written on it, or a specific decoration or theme.

"It's...for a funeral," I stammered. "So...probably just plain. Right?"

He nodded. "Simple and elegant. I'm so sorry."

***

People kept stopping by my mom's house to visit -- some of them out of the blue, having come across his obituary in the paper that morning, despite not having any contact with my parents for years and years. I found some of them nice, some of them insufferable, but almost all of them exhausting. I sat on the couch and nodded nicely as they retold their own decade-old stories about loved ones who died, who died after an illness, or suddenly, or at the hospital or at home or in hospice. My favorite was the one who was convinced her dead mother and grandmother were communicating with her via an off-season-blooming of her Christmas cactus. 

I was tired and cranky and terribly sick with a cold and trying to hide the alarming number of false-labor contractions I'd been getting since my arrival from my already stressed-out-enough mom. I'd lost two pounds since my last OB visit and couldn't seem to eat anything without experiencing stomach pains afterwards, so I was generally quarantined to the couch, unable to do much without immediately regretting it. 

So I wasn't in the mood for small talk with strangers, especially small talk about strangers dying, which I couldn't even believe was actually possible, but there it was. Thanks for sharing? I'm sorry I don't remember that time you babysat me when I was five? I'm sorry for your loss? I'm sorry but it's our turn now, so shut up? 

***

My mom kept asking me to pull up my blog on my phone, so she could see the comment count climb. 1,832. 1,910. 2,014. Two thousand and sixty seven in all. We read every single one. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. 

I told her there were hundreds more on Facebook, Twitter and email, too.

"It's so wonderful," she marveled. "What do you even say to them?

"I don't know," I said. 

***

The funeral was on Friday. He was buried with military honors for serving at Fort Knox as a sergeant during the Korean war. It was cold and raining and had even snowed for awhile. "April Fools!" barked the TV weathermen that morning. I wore a dark purple dress, a black puffy maternity parka and cream-colored rubber wellies. My sister and I sat on either side of my mom, who sobbed and sobbed, while my other siblings spread out around us, our faces all frozen in tense, non-crying states, our eyes all communicating the singular thought of OH MY GOD THIS SUCKS.

I stared at the casket and felt dull and numb. And cold. So very, very cold. I decided I just wanted to get through the day without anyone touching me. Or rubbing my belly. Oh, hell, that. And that I would ask my mother-in-law for some pantyhose before we went to the reception.

***

"I want to be cremated," I told Jason back in the car.

"Really?" he asked.

"Yes. Then go on a really nice trip and dump me there, and like, be done with it."

Jason adjusted his grip on the wheel and looked pained. "I don't know."

"Okay, well, how about if I go first, you do whatever makes you feel better? If having a grave to visit helps, do that. Otherwise..." I waved my hand dismissively out the window.

"I really hate this GPS," he said, poking his finger at the map, which informed us we were on private roads with no data. 

***

The reception was lovely. Family friends hosted it at their sprawling old farmhouse, and there was a train table upstairs for the boys to play with and a piano downstairs for them to bang on. And then there was the cake. The simple, elegant cake with plain white icing and no writing.

After each and every bite, Ezra scrunched up his fists and his face and yelled "YUMMMMMEEEEEE." And he greeted everyone he met with hugs and kisses. Noah was shyer, but was on his most perfect behavior, except when he told Ezra there was a bear in the basement and accidentally made him cry. I hadn't seen them since Tuesday, and I couldn't get enough of them. 

All the televisions in the house were tuned to the Phillies' season opener. Ezra wore a little red Phillies t-shirt I'd bought at Old Navy ages before. The Phils came from behind to win in the ninth inning, and everybody cheered. My dad's home (and eventually, hospice) nurse was there, and his general physician and his entire office staff came, after seeing their last patient for the day. 

"I so sorry," people said to me, over and over. But then they also told me how beautiful my children were, and how funny, and how wonderful I looked, and how exciting a new baby would be, and how they promised to help cheer up my mom the next week, and the week after that, once I went home and was grounded from travel. 

"Thank you, " I learned to say, simply, finally. And I meant it. I mean it. Thank you. 

I Should Also Tell You...

...that we got Noah's evaluation results on Monday.

We didn't get them in time for his IEP meeting, but no matter, the school district team agreed that he belongs in the smaller special education kindergarten program for most academic portions of the day, with a few hours in the (gigantic, one teacher and 28+ kids, oh my God) general education classroom, albeit with "support" and regular pullouts for one-on-one occupational therapy for fine-motor delays.

All in all, a very good outcome, with no need for us to halt proceedings with our last-minute evidence and change of diagnosis and THIS WHOLE IEP MEETING IS OUT OF ORDER dramatics.

But yeah. We do have a change of diagnosis. ADHD, or at least several assessment scores that put him at the top of the "very high likelihood" range. Also a word retrieval disorder, and confirmation of a bunch of ongoing sensory-based delays that we already knew about, so like, whatever. Pffft. Bring it. And yet: GAH, OMFG, ETC. 

You guys, I am so tired. I am beat. I read the reports, I shrugged my shoulders, I went upstairs and lay down. I told the ceiling fan that hey, we could really, really use some good and happy and easy around here, and soon.

***

I told Noah about PopPop last week, probably no more than five hours after I knew. He took the news so nonchalantly I might as well have told him "Noah, I'm really sorry, but...we're out of butter." 

And then, a few minutes passed, and he revisited the topic after some thought: "You lost your Daddy!"

"Yes, I did. And it makes me very sad."

"I'd be sad if I lost my Daddy."

"I know you would. But Daddy is fine."

"Can I have a banana?"

"Sure."

And then, after a few more minutes, he coughed.

"I coughed but I'm not going to die."

"No! No you are not. Don't worry, PopPop was a very different kind of sick. The kind we couldn't give him medicine for, or the kind the doctors couldn't make better, and when you're sick we can..."

"Look, this is Harry Potter and he has a wand. See? See his wand, Mommy?"

"Yep. I do. It's awesome."

***

Later, out of the blue, Ezra asked "Where's PopPop?"

He asked that a lot last week, never quite satisfied with our answers, because PopPop wasn't in his chair or in his bed, and where else could he be? Why are we visiting Nana's house without seeing PopPop too? What the hell, you guys?

"PopPop is gone, Ez."

"In da car?"

"No, not in his car. He's...well..."

At this point, every time, Noah would get exasperated with our pussyfooting around the obvious, correct answer.

"HE DIED," he'd say. "HE'S DEAD."

***

One night -- oh, I forget when, exactly, every night has been a blur of grief and/or pregnancy-related ailments, honestly -- I had a headache and was sprawled out on the couch, bleating to the boys to please keep the noise down.

Noah came over and snuggled next to me.

"I'm sorry your head hurts, Mommy."

"Thanks, dude."

"But you're not going to die."

"No, I am not."

"And Daddy isn't going to die. And Ezra isn't going to die. And none of my friends are going to die. None kids are going to die. Or mommies or daddies or brothers ever."

"..."

"Right. Okay. Can I play the Harry Potter game?"

The How

When we got there on Friday, it was March 25th, and he was reading the Kindle I’d gotten him for Christmas. He was in a hospital bed in the living room and looked thin and pale and waxy, but he was reading his Kindle. He told me I looked good, referring to my super-pronounced-looking pregnant belly, and I think I said something dumb, like "you too!" that I immediately regretted. 

But honestly, compared to how he'd look in just a matter of hours, it was true. 

Noah walked in and surveyed the room. “PopPop, you sure are sick, aren’t you,” he observed matter-of-factly.

Ezra, thankfully, did not parrot my pre-visit explanations, but merely stuck his finger in his mouth and requested PopPop make his trademark popping sound with his finger and cheek. He obliged, laughing. Ezra giggled, as delighted with the trick as I’d been as a kid.

We hugged, we talked, we gossiped. He teased me about my hair, which he has not particularly liked since I dyed it red. “It’s looking better!” he said earnestly, referring to the neglected, washed-out, two-inches-of-dingy-blond-roots state it’s currently in.

Jason and the boys left to stay at his parents’ house; I stayed behind to keep my mom company. She slept on a recliner in the living room. I went upstairs to sleep in their room, where I was randomly unnerved by the sight of my dad's verse-a-day calendar, still stuck on the Friday from the week before -- the day he agreed to stop, to in-home hospice, the last time he'd been upstairs in his own house. 

By the time I woke up on Saturday, it had already begun.

***

Death is ultimately cold, but his started out hot. A fever. Sleeping more and more. Confusion. Disorientation. He was saying things that didn’t make sense, reaching for medications he’d already taken minutes before. We thought, at first, that he'd simply taken an extra Benadryl. Yes, that was what was happening. That explained it. Move the medications away from his bedside, problem solved, here's your Kindle. 

His nurse visited and floated the idea of moving him to their full-time hospice facility. He said no.

He asked for a drink but spilled juice all over the place. We blamed the cup. Probably better off with a lid and a straw anyway, right? That's the problem, surely. I went to the store to find some kind of grown-up sippy cup, eventually stumbling upon some plastic sports cups with obnoxious, cheesy sayings on them.

This was the first one I picked up off the shelf:

That bit of gallows humor was too much for even me, so I dug around until I found one with an ugly but inoffensive fishing pier design on it instead.

He never really woke up enough to use it. 

***

I went over to my in-laws to spend some time with the boys. I packed up dinner for my mom and I (Julia Child’s beef bourguignon, courtesy of Jason), but was interrupted by a text message. Come, hurry, something’s wrong, bad, nurse is here again, etc.

I jumped in the car and floored it, called my mom to tell her I was on my way and she asked if I could stop somewhere and buy some liquid Tylenol for my dad’s fever -- he wasn’t awake enough for a pill and his fever was scary high.

“I PACKED THAT. HANG ON,” I shrieked and made a u-turn back to my in-laws and our luggage, where I dug out some generic children’s acetaminophen from the stash of medicines we drag everywhere now and promptly dashed out again.

The nurse tried. He gagged and choked after barely an Ezra-sized dose of a teaspoon. He was on fire, the hottest fever I’ve ever felt from human skin.

She mentioned the hospice pavilion again, gently hinting that it was simply not going to be possible for my mom and I -- neither of us with any nursing backgrounds, nor clearly especially level-headed in the face of a medical crisis -- to keep him comfortable and pain-free at home from this point on. He was so out of it, she said, it was unlikely he’d ever really even figure out that he’d been moved at all.

My mom worried about money because their insurance would only cover a five-day stay. The nurse assured her that arrangements could be made, that no one was ever turned away from their facility for an inability to pay, etc. 

But I could tell she knew already. It wouldn’t be more than five days.

I hid in a coat closet and called my sister, crying because we didn’t want to go against his wishes, but oh. Oh. Oh. We can’t do this. I can’t do this. Mom can’t do this. It’s happening so fast.

Finally, I rationalized that Dad’s wishes to “die at home” were more about not being alone and having us there than the actual physical spot on the map. Hospice meant my mom could stay by his side as his wife and not his caretaker or nurse, for the first time in years. Other people could handle the ugly, more indelicate parts of the dying process. He would understand, if we could fully explain it to him. Which of course, we couldn't.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” my mom said.

Everybody got on the phone except for me. I sat next to him and held his burning-hot hand. I pressed his thumb into some molding compound so I could get a necklace made with the print, but his skin seemed melt right through without leaving much of an impression.

 

***

Jason rushed over so we could follow behind the ambulance to hospice. I remembered to put the stew in the refrigerator but would later realize I left two entire containers of milk on the counter. 

The hospice facility had TVs, a library, DVDs, CDs, a kitchen stocked to the gills with drinks and snacks and comfort foods for families. I saw a small playground outside. I drank some coffee and ate a chocolate pudding cup. Jason asked my mom if he could buy her dinner and she wanted fast-food hamburgers and French fries. He went to Wendy’s and brought us both back exactly that, plus Frostys.

It was exceedingly quiet. Carpet instead of tile, couches and recliners instead of vinyl waiting-room chairs. No machines save for oxygen, no drapes or beeps or boops or needles or vital sign checks. The nurses didn’t wear scrubs. They all looked like people I’d be friends with in real life, and I loved them immediately. They also did not administer any more Tylenol, explaining that the usual ways of administering it to an unconscious patient were too risky for my father and would only cause more bleeding. They turned up the air conditioning, took off his socks and put ice packs under his arms instead, which eventually brought the fever down enough for my dad’s eyes to open and for him to nod a bit when offered pain medication, which was rubbed directly onto his gums.

“Does he know where he is?” my sister worried and texted from afar.

“I really don’t think so,” I responded, at a loss to adequately explain the waking-sleep state he was in.

I made another run back to the house around 11 pm to get my mom her toothbrush and a change of clothes. When I returned the nurses had set up a bed for her on a cushy recliner, but told her she could climb in bed next to him if she wanted. “We’ll be here if you need us. But not if you don’t.”

***

I went back with Jason to his parents’ house and slept like shit. My mom texted in the morning that Dad was asking for me, which seemed beyond belief, and frankly, honestly, exhausting. Was last night a fluke? Did we overreact? Move him too soon?

Was this rollercoaster never, ever going to end? 

And was I actually admitting that I kind of hoped it would? 

I arrived and he was awake. He couldn’t talk, but was mouthing a few words and trying anyway. He recognized my face and voice. I called him Daddy and told him I loved him, and he struggled to say it back so I said it for him. I know. I knew. I always knew. He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. I promised we’d take care of my mom and Jason would take care of me and we’d all take care of the babies and everything was fine. Everything was fine.

He clutched my hands. He rubbed my arms. He touched my face. It was the most desperately perfect moment ever.

***

His eyes weren't open much longer after that. His legs twitched and his arms pulled at blankets and clothes and his oxygen cannula, which he’s worn for three full years now. He was breathing through his mouth -- a noisy, harrowing-sounding breath, full of blood and secretions -- and the nurse said we could probably go ahead and turn the oxygen off if he kept pulling at it, because he wasn’t getting anything anyway.

We pulled it off. There was no difference. I reached over and hit the power on the machine, plunging the room into silence, except for the sound of that terrible, death-rattle breathing.

***

My sister called in the afternoon and I held the phone next to his ear. At the sound of her voice, his face twitched into an unmistakable smile of joy. For just a second, then back to peace.

***

We had to leave. We HAD to. I’d gone through every possibility I could think of, but the fact was we had the final day of Noah’s evaluation on Tuesday morning and rescheduling meant we went back on a months-long waiting list for another open spot.  His IEP meeting was in a week and we wanted the results. We couldn’t miss it. Jason couldn’t get many more days off, I didn’t have childcare for the afternoons, it would take time to make arrangements for later in the week. A hospice nurse whispered that she could babysit the next day, on her day off, but the boys were clearly struggling with the situation and the lack of routine and I flapped my hands around helplessly until my mom grabbed my shoulders and told me to go home, it’s okay, she understood, and hell, he’d understand. Go take care of your babies.

I asked for a few minutes alone to say goodbye. I repeated everything I’d already said that morning. I kissed his head and shrunken cheek and tried to ignore his open mouth, which was seeping with blood from his gums, tongue and cheeks. It was hard to see, but hard not to as well. 

This time, he didn’t respond. His body was still holding on to a vital function or two, but honestly, he was already gone.

I left the room and immediately started sobbing like never before, as the not-exactly-earth-shattering realization that I wasn’t going to see him ever again hit me with the force of rush-hour traffic, oh my God, oh my God, it's not fair, it's not fair.

***

We got home in under three hours. I didn’t unpack. I took a bath and went straight to bed.

The phone rang at 3:10 am. It was March 28th. And it was over.

***

I cried for awhile. And then I didn't. And then I did, again.

Then I added a dark-colored maternity dress to my still-packed suitcase and bought a train ticket to go back up to my mom's house, again.