Orphaned at 39

~Dylan Thomas~

It was around 3 a.m. when I was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. I had gone to bed earlier that night, if achieving sleep at all, fully expecting this call. Even being woken up abruptly, I knew all too well what this nightstand clamor meant. I sat on the side of the bed gathering my composure, as I prepared to pick up after the third ring.

"Jon," began the voice on the other end. It was Susan, the charge nurse at the convalescent home where my father had spent nearly all of the past five years of his life. "I'm sorry, he's gone," she continued. I clenched my fist hoping that it would, in some way, release any additional strength that I might have left in me. "This one was easy, he went in his sleep. Your father didn't suffer at all." In a broken voice, I thanked her for the call, and the kindness that she displayed in a most difficult circumstance. As a charge nurse at a medium sized nursing home, and a constant viewer of death, I felt that she must get lots of practice with this particular task. But even with the confirmation of the painful finality of his death, somehow her use of the word "easy" comforted me. It seemed as though she had learned her difficult and non-gratifying craft well.

At about four o'clock the previous afternoon, when I had received the initial call from the nursing home explaining his deteriorating condition, I was somewhat skeptical. After all, it was almost three years earlier when I had received a similar call from the facility, and then spent a weekend mentally preparing for my father's passing. My dad, a tough guy, on that occasion had defied all of the medical experts, and went on to live for another thirty-one months. During his convalescence, as the days and weeks turned into months and years, he continually displayed an unsurpassed will to live. A strong life sustaining fortitude such as his, put to good use as a result of being shipwrecked on a deserted island, or while lost in the mountains, had always made sense to me. However, his display of such a hearty will to live while a permanent resident of a nursing home was always bewildering to me. After all, my father was wheel chair bound and, consequently, forced to wear adult diapers. Also, in one final insult to injury as a result of repetitive bouts of pneumonia, my father was fed through a gastro-intestinal tube. For these reasons, when I took the 4 p.m. call I wondered if this time might be different. I simply felt that his unwavering determination to live might have finally been overcome by his physical inability to carry on.

In the nearly two months since Christmas, I had seen my father lose interest in the things that, even in poor health, had always appealed to him. His beloved, The Sound of Music videotape, his "Big Bands" audio musical tapes which I had recorded for him, and the Seattle Supersonics basketball games that I would watch with him in the home's TV lounge, had all lost their luster.

Following the afternoon call, I began to telephone the nursing home intermittently throughout the day in order to monitor his condition. Even though for the past five years I had visited him four or five times a week, it was important for me to see him once more before he died. But only if it could be done on my terms. After everything that we had been through together, I did not need to be with him when he took his last breath. Having experienced the death of my mother when I was young, I knew what needed to be done for myself. When it comes to dealing with the death of a loved one, I am not looking to be with others in some bizarre group orgy of pain and suffering. When I am involved with the death of someone for whom I care a great deal, I fly alone. If he were still alive late into the evening, I would go and pay him a final, solitary visit.

At 10 p.m. I drove the few miles to the home, entered the unlocked front door, and then quickly made my path, via a side hallway, to his room. The two nurses at the front desk had watched me enter, but knew better than to even recognize me with a wave or smile. During his nearly five year stay, I had developed a reputation at the facility for my zealous attitude regarding my father's care. Having taken care of him in my own home for seven months, I knew the difficulty of the job. But with a professionally trained staff, state-of-the-art health care equipment, and a tab of over $4,000 a month, I expected his care at the nursing home facility to always be perfect. Although I was continually polite and respectful to the various employees, when I found lapses in his care, over a period of time most all of the caregivers at the home had felt my wrath. In this situation, I am sure that they did not know what to expect from me.

When I arrived at his room, he was non-responsive, as I had been told he would be. Even though I had tried to picture him in this manner, I do not think that any imagination can accurately depict the look of impending death. I am not sure if our minds will allow it. Mine certainly would not. My father was lying on his left side, facing away from the door, and laboring severely for each breath. Most people who die in a nursing home do so of complications from pneumonia or respiratory failure. For my dad, this too was imminent. He was discharging saliva and mucus from his mouth and nose, and his eyes were securely closed.

The daily acute care provided by the nursing home had been completed, and the facility was virtually silent for the night. All of the residents had been put to bed for the evening, and the only people moving about were a few orderlies who spend the night checking on the residents that might need the special attention of care apparatus monitoring, medications or trips to the toilet. I closed the door, and then sat down next to his bed. However, I knew that this visit would be short and, with mixed emotions, my last.

During my time spent in college, I developed some enjoyable friendships. One of my best college buddies worked for a funeral home, and the job provided an upstairs apartment as part of his employee benefits. When the gang would assemble there to drink beer, play cards or watch Monday Night Football, sometimes a macabre discussion would evolve among us regarding the dead people lying downstairs. After a few weeks of those types of conversations, one late night we eventually wound our way downstairs to view the lifeless forms of past human existence. To us young, carefree and macho "frat boys", these bodies were simply nameless carcasses that had meager, if any, emotional impact on the group. A guy who was electrocuted while carrying a length of irrigation pipe, another fellow who had died as a result of a construction accident, and several "old" people. It was party first, then go look at dead people, and then it was back upstairs to party some more. As it became more mundane, we began to descend the stairs to those slumber rooms on a weekly basis. But the true impact of death, as a personal experience, was a long way from our cumulative lives.

Regarding my father's circumstance, this was the first time that I had been this close to a death in progress. It is an extraordinary experience and, as I was learning, one of sheer loneliness. No one can go through it for you. Other than the strained sounds of his rhythmic breathing, it was eerily quiet. My father, at least from a normal human standpoint, was not cognizant of his surroundings. However, as I sat next to him, I wondered if he was aware of my presence, or if he was finally in touch with another