My beloved Piers,° I thought I couldn’t stand it when you were gone. Until I finally found that you aren’t gone. If you so much as prick your finger, I bleed.
° And this morning I found that you already knew--had you read labuonastella?
° My coffee scum--still the Christmas gift Starbucks Blend--immediately settled into an arrow piercing a body; later, when it had run and dried it was the Pelican pecking her breast to feed her single chick her own sustaining blood.
° But it wasn’t dry when I drove in to the nursing home.
° I had to see for myself.
° Mother was very alert, trying but unable to speak, reaching feebly with her jointfrozen arms, obviously conscious that something was bad wrong.
° Of course, by now the tranquilliser is nearly out of the system. Forehead not hot, unable even to develop a fever now.
° I repositioned her, raised the bed, offered her water. Two or three times her lips moved to sip, one time she even bit the edge of the cup. In half a dozen tries I got perhaps a tablespoon of water into her mouth. It all dribbled back out, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Wet her tongue.
° The roommate’s tv blaring (why was I so prudent, why not a private room? My brother’s reminder: Mother actually benefited from the oversight of her more mentally active roommate. But why didn’t we ask for a private room six months ago, when we signed onto Hospice?
° Again, not a rhetorical question. But this time I know the answer. After 3 ½ years of Medicare and Medical and Blue Cross Insurance shiftings and dodgings, after 3 ½ years without any meaningful information, I mostly and my brother partly had lost all faith in the Medical Establishment. Remember FEMA, remember Katrina? That’s how our rulers do things. American health care is just Katrina FEMA on a giantly wasteful and mentally deficient scale. And doctors are too busy. And doctors are too omnipotent. And medical science is too backward.
° And in the end, the doctor was right and I was wrong. But up till then the Mexican Medicine Man in Overton had been ten times righter than the Gringo Medicine Men in Kosciusko.)
° No chance of a private room now. Mother must die listening to the braying of game show hosts and network hucksters. The charge nurse offers to play Mozart cds quietly at bedside.
° The charge nurse listens listens listens--”As soon as your mother’s agitated spells last more than a few minutes, we’ll start placing the morphine drops under the tongue.”
° Brother and sisterinlaw come in. I fall through the floor when the undertaker is mentioned. I say nothing. No dying patient will ever hear me admit it, if I have to yammer and yammer till I blither.
° But they’ve been gathering pallbearers--every male family friend of Mother’s age is either dead or weakly--and relatives’ phone numbers, and sorting fotos for the display table.
° And freshening up the dress.
° And arranging for the last hairdressing.
° And selecting the casket.
° Lord help us all if I had to do those things.
° But if anybody can out cheerful yammer me, I’d just like to hear it.
§§§§§
° In the back of the mind: why not IV antibiotics?
° In the back of the mind: are we murderers to follow the advice of everyone who’s ever said yes to them, are we murderers for drawing the line absolute at the feeding tube?
° All decided negatively years ago. Let it go let it go. Too late soon.
° Your Giac.
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