We got the call at 2:30 am this morning. Dad was sinking, the hospital said. They’d had to switch him on to a CPAP machine – not your garden-variety home-use portable unit, but a massive face mask that delivered maximum oxygen. Even the regular oxygen mask wouldn’t keep his levels up to where they should be; they dropped like a stone the instant the CPAP was taken off, and he hated the CPAP. He was fully aware of the consequences of taking off the mask; the hospital staff persuaded him to wait until his family could be there. The problem was that my sister, who is the sensible, reliable one, and has pretty much moved into the parental abode and taken care of Dad ever since the problems started in November, took the opportunity presented by my unexpected presence and went out of town for the wedding of the daughter of some close friends. We tried calling, we tried texting (the one good thing that came out of this is that my Mom now knows how to text), we tried screaming to the heavens, all to no avail.
It turned out that my sister had put her phone into airplane mode for the wedding ceremony, as any good guest would, and had simply forgotten to take it back out again. Can’t blame her, as this had to have been a fantastic event – all those fun people from college reuniting for the first time in years. I hope to hear all about it at some point in the future. The hospital staff gave Dad some meds so that he could relax and rest, so we watched him sleep for the rest of the night, hoping and praying that my sister would get the message on time. Occasionally he would cough; sometimes he would rally to the point where he would try to take the mask off. We grabbed his hands and stroked his hair and told him “not yet”.
The CPAP came off almost the instant my sister arrived. Dad refused even the regular oxygen mask, and we sat and cried and held his hands and stroked his hair some more, and he coughed his dreadful croaking cough until his body finally gave up. Dying is a horrible thing to watch. Dad’s end was a lot less peaceful than he deserved.
The hospital overlooks the cemetery, and as we emerged into a bright but chilly late-spring day, I was taken by memories of the funeral of my best friend’s dad. It was a graveside service in that same cemetery, about this time last year, also on a glorious but chilly spring day. It was a lovely service, with some gorgeous music, but the best part came afterwards, and very few people were aware of it. In their younger days, both my dad and my best friend’s dad starred in a number of local productions of Gilbert & Sullivan Operettas. The woman who usually sang the female lead in those productions was there at the funeral, and she told me and my dad afterwards that all she could think of the whole ceemony was “matrimonial devotion doesn’t seem to suit her notion, burial it brings…” Yum-yum and Ko-ko sang “Here’s a Howdy-Do”, with an appropriate silence for the deceased Nanki-Po to sing his lines from on high. She will have to sing it solo this year, almost exactly a year later.
My best friend called me when she arrived in town today with her son and daughter-in-law. There’s a concert tonight, Bach’s B-Minor Mass, and it’s being given as a memorial to her dad. We remarked upon the fact that there’s a certain symmetry to my dad’s passing on the day of her dad’s memorial concert, and that today is so much like the day of his burial last year. The concert, unfortunately, was sold out; it was only after it started that Mom discovered that my dad had bought tickets to it despite the fact he has been quite deaf for many years.
We don’t know yet what we’re going to do with Dad’s funeral. The main thing, of course, is the music; the minister will take care of everything else but the decor of the space where the ceremony is held. Mom would like something G&S, but something Dad had actually sung. I don’t know if he’d ever done “The Yeomen of the Guard”, but the song that sprung most quickly to my mind was “is Life a Boon?” Of course, for church-approved but still Gilbert & Sullivan-related songs, “The Lost Chord” struck me as the most appropriate, and one that Dad would appreciate, but I must admit I brought the subject up after a good dinner and a champagne toast (Perrier-Jouet) and it was shouted down before I could explain the significance. I will try again when all are less emotional and I have some of our chosen musicians to back me up.
Meanwhile – and this is kind of funny – my immediate family (my husband, my two sons and me) – will go home in the next day or so and squabble about who gets to give the eulogy, because, yes, we all want to do it. The obituary has already been taken by my brother-in-law.
Dad, we love you, and we will all miss you so much.
Idle Thoughts of a Half-Empty Nester 