18 Ask for What You Need

Day 18 - February 6

Hospice?

I imagined Hospice as devout women in habits sitting vigil. In reality they are nurses who work within the public health system. They described two options for father. The first was to enter a Hospice Home where his needs are cared for around the clock and family members are welcome any time, even able to stay overnight in guest rooms. The second was to have hospice care for father in his home. In that case, a family member is totally responsible for his care and a hospice nurse visits once or twice a week. I said to myself, “I can’t do that.”

Over dinner I explained to father, the best way I can care for him, is for him to move into a Hospice Home. Nurses will tend to him, freeing me to simply be there with him. He nods in resignation.

However, the hospice homes only accept two patients at a time and every home in Livingston and Monroe county is full. We sign him up on the waiting lists. Father's dialysis is a further complication. Hospice does not start for father until he makes the decision to discontinue his treatments.

In spite of increasing difficulty traveling to and from dialysis, and in spite of the treatments themselves no longer proceeding smoothly, father is not yet ready to say, “No more.”

I call Harold in Chicago to say I need him. He says he'll fly out that night. I haven’t slept in days, at least not more than a few fleeting minutes at a time. I’ve been lucky when father has fallen--so far I’ve been able to help him up. Managing his care and getting him to dialysis has become too much for one person.

I call the Public Health office and state three simple words. The time for wondering what we might need for father, the time for hesitating, the time for procrastination, is over. I say, “I need help.”

An hour later Dottie calls, “I’ll be there tomorrow morning to help your Dad.” Everything is starting to move quickly.

Melinda calls to ask if Thursday will be a good time to fly out to see Grandpa. She plans to fly back to Chicago at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning. This gives her a few days with her grandfather. I tell her, " Yes, yes, yes!"

A year ago as I called father’s friends about possibly becoming drivers on his dialysis schedule, one of them asked if she could pray for me at the end of the call. I was sitting in father’s kitchen at the square glass table, surrounded by his collection of crystal from Germany and Poland, across from the counter and stove where he baked so many hundreds of pies and cookies. Mother had filled the kitchen walls with all manner of European knick knacks, and the tops of the cabinets, with their chrome appliances from the fifties.

Father never wanted me to throw anything away. One summer a friend had given him a gift in a country basket, perfect for strawberry picking. I had positioned it atop the cabinets between the chrome coffee pot and the whistling teakettle.

As father’s friend prayed for me over the phone, my eyes and my mind wandered, landing on the strawberry basket. I didn’t hear her actual words, but the longer she prayed, the warmer I felt and the more focused the basket became in my mind. I thought of father’s love of berry picking, his childhood collecting and selling the berries with his siblings. I thought of the voluptuous strawberry cream pies he created for his guests. Everything else dropped away except the hushed tone of her voice and this warm feeling in father’s kitchen. As she finished the prayer, I knew this was where father would be, till the end. I told myself it was ludicrous to think I could know this, but I knew, a year ago.

This Wednesday night after dialysis, father and I drive into his parking lot over the lumpy mounds of ice, up to the curb where his neighbors wait to carry him in. David and Gary lift him over the ice, up the stairs, and set him down on his soft blue sofa. They stay long enough for prayer, then father and I wait for Harold to arrive.

Help is coming, pieces of the puzzle falling into place.