Continuing the theme of the last post, here is a bit on the other end of my father’s life:

After they retired from the farm, my father found a way to live for 28 more years. Most of the credit goes to the informed and watchful care of my mother, who went back to school at 57 to get a nursing degree. He spent his retirement much as he had spent his teenage years, minus the drinking. He walked downtown every day to play cards and play pool, mowed the lawn and watched television. I am almost the same age as he was when he retired and that sounds horrible to me, but it suited him. Finally, in his mid-eighties, all his health problems caught up to him, till his world revolved around the dining room, which held his lift chair, the commode, his hospital bed and the dining room table. Once a week I would get him into the bathroom to sit for a shower. The demands of his care became more and more onerous till we worried for my mother’s health. She was losing weight, not sleeping well and developing a hernia from helping my father.

The three brothers had a good talk as we walked off Christmas dinner, 2005, to discuss the matter. What could we do to help our mother more, or get our father to the nursing home he needed for his advanced care? Earlier during the fall of that year I had been visiting when my father had broached the subject, “Marian, you need to put me into a nursing home. Taking care of me is killing you,” he said in an anguished voice, and then he looked to me for support. He had waited until I visited so that he would have a chance to make his case. Though he was obviously scared at the prospect of a nursing home, he felt he needed to take a shot at lessening the load on my mother.

My mother looked as if she had been slapped in the face and responded before I could say anything, “Why in the hell do you want to go to a nursing home? They won’t take half as good care of you as I do. You’ll just lay there wishing someone would help you. No one can take care of you the way I do!”

“I know that, dear, but taking care of me is wrecking your health. You have to put me in a nursing home so you can get a break and get some sleep,” he said with tears in his eyes.

Not a chance. My mother’s life was made normal and meaningful by caring for Lester, and she was perfectly willing to shorten her life to do it. She gave six or eight reasons why the nursing home was a bad idea, from poorer care, to the expense, to how it would really be harder on her to drive back and forth to the nursing home. Neither Lester nor I could say a word. With that background to our Christmas conversation all the three brothers could come up with on our walk was that we would all try to help my mother more. It was her right to shorten her life to take care of Lester.

A few weeks later I got a call from my mother about 6:30 in the morning. Of course the first thing you say after an unexpected phone call at that time of the morning is to ask, “What’s wrong, Mom? Is Dad all right?”

” Bobby, get in your vehicle and come here right away. Your Dad had a (very short pause while she weighed her response) a kind of seizure. Come now!”

I kept asking questions while I threw some clothes on but continued to get evasive replies, so I hopped in my pickup to drive the 35 miles to Webster, where my parents lived. About halfway there I called back to ask whether the ambulance was there yet and my mother replied: “Just don’t have an accident! We will talk when you get here. Hang up the phone and watch the road.”

I drove 80 mph in the early morning light without seeing another vehicle the entire way and burst into the house breathlessly, “Where’s the ambulance??? Where’s Dad?”

“Just sit down Bobby, so we can talk.” And as I walked over to the hospital bed to sit down I saw my Dad in the lift chair, deader than a fucking doornail. He was a greenish gray color as the blood was draining to lower points in his body. My mother handed me a stethoscope and instructed me to listen to his chest.

I did, of course hearing nothing, and turned towards my mother, “He’s dead, Mom, there’s nothing there.”

“Nothing at all? Ok, now we can call the ambulance. A few weeks ago he went into a diabetic coma. I revived him, and he was more angry at me than I can ever remember. He said he was ready to die; I needed to be able to let him go, and he made me promise never to resuscitate him again If there’s no sound from Lester’s heart the coroner will just pronounce him dead peacefully and the ambulance crew won’t feel they need to perform CPR. Dial 911.”

The ambulance crew bustled in a few minutes later, and sure enough they immediately pronounced him dead. They told my mother and me to wait in the kitchen to spare us the sight of them manhandling him on the gurney, but it was unnecessary by then. My father’s spirit was gone and he was a sack of potatoes. My mother and I did the business we needed to do, called the immediate family and sat down at the kitchen table in exhaustion.

“That’s done. But now what will I do?” my mother asked.

I can only dream of being as tough as they were. It’s a lot to live up to.