April 2009
25 posts
“It is not unusual for dying persons to experience sensory changes. Sometimes...”
– Signs of Approaching Death, William Lamers, M.D. Medical Consultant, Hospice Foundation of America
11 tags
"Laughing or crying is what a human being does...
Playboy: Another way of dealing with sadness, of coming to terms with problems you can't solve, is through humor. Is that your way?
Kurt Vonnegut: Well, I try... but laughter is a response to frustration, just as tears are, and it solves nothing, just as tears solve nothing. Laughing or crying is what a human being does when there's nothing else he can do. Freud has written very soundly on humor — which is interesting, because he was essentially a humorless man. The example he gives is of the dog who can't get through the gate to bite a person or fight another dog. So he digs dirt. It doesn't solve anything, but he has to do something. Crying or laughing is what a person does instead.
Be careful with your claim.
Dad: You better be careful.
Me: With what?
Dad: With that [looks at my laptop].
Me: With what? My computer?
Dad: No. Your claim. You've got it going there.
Me: What? I'm sorry. What are you referring to?
Dad: Your claim. There had to be something. There had to be something.
Dad: [pause]
Dad: I don't know.
8 tags
"Did [the turkeys] make him happy?"
Me: Dad just called me into his room to point out the turkeys he just saw outside his window.
You: Haha. That is cute
Me: Right. But there were no turkeys.
You: Oh.
You: [pause]
You: Did they make him happy?
“My thinking is off because of these drugs. I know what I want to say, but I...”
– Dad via the phone.
7 tags
“My dad was a logger and there was an old statement: ‘If the lead team...”
– Tom Morgan, as told to StoryCorps.
6 tags
“The day before he died he went to the bathroom and washed his hands. As he...”
– Rita Mitrani, as told to StoryCorps.
4 tags
"I'd give a million dollars to [shit] normally."
After receiving an increased dosage of pain medication, Dad needed another enema last week and the opiates began to bind him up. “I’d give a million dollars to go normally, just once,” he told me.
I just saw the dog net door, tail engorged with tumors and eyes white-cloudy with blindness, standing on the lawn, shaking over a pile of his own shit. He looked confused but...
“Business at the very end of life is messy.”
– As told by bioethicist Dr. Robert Martensen to Terry Gross on WHYY’s Fresh Air.
“My father had [a good death]. He was a systems engineer. In his 80s, he...”
– Dr. Robert L. Martensen in “A Front-Row Seat as a Health Care System Goes Awry: A Conversation With Robert L. Martensen” (NYTimes)
“People spend their last 6, 8 weeks, sometimes months, in this agonizing shuttle...”
– As told by bioethicist Dr. Robert Martensen to Terry Gross on WHYY’s Fresh Air. From the show’s website:
In his new book, A Life Worth Living Martensen presents case studies that illustrate the problems and complexities of American health care system, and argues that safeguarding the quality...
5 tags
“Managing a family member’s end-of-life can be like / as laborious as...”
– Friend, speaking to her experience co-managing her aunt’s end-of-life.
7 tags
"I'll take [caressing death] over pushing paper...
A few summers back I worked on a veterinarian’s farm. There, I helped the vet euthanize a 13-year-old goat. The animal, a family pet, had become long-forgotten by the children who once loved the novelty of its domestication. Arthritis disabled the goat’s joints, and without them it had to use its knees to drag itself along. They were bloodied and worn to the bone.
The veterinarian...
5 tags
"I'm... unaffiliated."
Me: Hi. I'm his son.
Hospice Chaplain: Very nice to meet you. Is he in?
Me: Sure thing. Come on in. To what denomination do you belong, by the way?
Hospice Chaplain: Oh. Well... I'm [pause] unaffiliated.
Me: Good. So is he.
3 tags
“A ‘home funeral’ is a noncommercial, family centered response to...”
– From Undertaken With Love: A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities (D.I.Y. ‘til we die [and then some], right?)
7 tags
“Hope is a precious ‘commodity’ that should never be taken away, but...”
– Malene S. Davis, president and CEO of Capital Hospice, to a Washington Post moderated conversation about the illusion of lost hope and end-of-life issues.
5 tags
“Awful lonely.”
– Dad’s response, after a half-minute-long pause, to the question, “How are you doing?”
6 tags
“Sometimes it gets so I have to reach my fingers in and pull it out. Hard as...”
– William Burroughs’ Junky protagonist on opiate-induced constipation.
6 tags
Scared Straight, sort of.
Friend: How is everything going for him?
Me: Painkillers and constipation.
Friend: Ah, yes. I remember all of that [from when my husband's parents died].
Me: You know, all of the obvious reasons are keeping me from abusing his drugs. He's got more than he knows what to do with. But what's most keeping me from getting recreational is knowing that if I have too much fun, I'll need an enema.
Friend: Stick to the wine, hon.
Me: I'll take a hangover in exchange for a night of pleasure over having to flush impacted, rock-hard shit out of my ass any day. Fuck D.A.R.E., right? They should just make every 5th grader be the end-of-life care-giver for a death-bed geriatric for a week.
4 tags
4 tags
"[The Jews] are a serious people."
Me: I'm going to do the funeral stuff here, OK? Like they used to do.
Dad: That morbid shit? They used to put the mother or father out of some poor kid in the living room until she stank. And that kid had to walk out and see their parent rotting in their goddamn parlor.
Me: So wait... I'm just going to hold the service here. That's all I mean. Do you care where the service is held?
Dad: What the fuck do I care? I'll be dead.
Me: Good. It's going to be a party. I don't like the atmosphere of funerals. It'll be a celebration.
Dad: The Jews have it right, you know. They bury you by sundown. They're a serious people.
6 tags
"I wasn't sad. I was relieved."
About a year ago, when Dad’s health really took a turn for the worse and before I had committed myself to taking care of him, I began calling him every day. There has been only one occasion on which I have gone a day without checking in on him.
Two weeks back, I gave him a call and there was no answer. I called the next morning and again, no answer. Where could he possibly be, I wondered.
...
4 tags
It isn't the drugs.
Dad’s cognitive abilities are now slipping by the day, and I had thought that this was because of the advanced regimen of pain killers the doctor and hospice nurses have put him on. Today the doctor explained that this wasn’t the case, and any slip are more likely related to the spreading of the cancer.
Cancer travels from an organ, into the lymph-nodes, then into the brain and...
4 tags
"I thought it was the coroner."
Me: Hello?
Unrecognizable voice: Yep, hi!
Me: [long pause]
Unrecognizable voice: Yellope?
Me: Uh... Yeah... I'm looking for my father?
Unrecognizable voice: Oh, yeah. He's right here.
Dad: Hello?
Me: For fucks sake - Where the hell have you been? I haven't heard from you for two days. I thought that was the coroner.
Dad: [Laughs] You sick son-of-a-bitch.
3 tags
Freddy Mercury
[Five second long sigh]
You ever hear of…
[Pause]
You ever hear of Freddy Mercury? I think he’s in a rock opera called Queen. I just saw him on the TV. He’s pretty good. I think he’s gay. Give me a call.
Voicemail left by my father in 2002