Elaine had made arrangements to visit her sisters in Dallas, Oregon for lunch today and I told her I’d sit with Dad so she could go. It was four hours that I got to spend with Dad, perhaps for the last time since I’m flying back to Tucson tomorrow.
After Elaine left, Dad slept for a while, and when he woke up, I decided to see if I could get him out in the sunshine for a little while. It was a warm day and I thought he might like a new view and some fresh air. I got him into his wheelchair and pushed him out onto his deck. There was a large umbrella set up out there and Dad said he wanted to be in the shade. As it was, he had his hand shading his eyes from the bright light. It’s so dark in the house that his eyes had a hard time adjusting. The grass was green and flowers were blooming, birds were singing, and the sun was warm, but after a few minutes, Dad said he wanted to go back inside so I wheeled him back in.
When Mom took me to the farm market last Saturday, I bought several honey sticks and I took a couple of them over to Dad’s house. Mine was peach-flavored and his was rootbeer-flavored. I had taken mine so that I could show Dad how to do it. I cut the tops off and told him to sip it like a straw. That wasn’t working for either of us because the honey was so thick, so I suggested he tip it up. That still didn’t work for him, so I started pushing the honey out of the tube into his mouth. When I finished, he told me that he has never liked honey, but this wasn’t too bad. He loves rootbeer, so I’m assuming that’s what made it tolerable for him.
Then I sat down in front of him and said, “Dad, I want to talk with you about something. Every time I say ‘I love you’, you say ‘Thank you’. Just once, I’d like to hear you say that you love me.” He said, “I do love you! It has never come easy for me to say it, but I know Elaine would like to hear it too.” And I said, “So would Lauryn!”
He asked me if I saw the kids that were playing around him. I asked him how many kids there were and he said, “Two or three”. I told him there were no kids there and he admitted that he figured they were a hallucination. I moved him over facing his favorite spot on the couch, made lunch, and sat down in his spot with him in front of me. He again asked me if the kids were climbing around on the couch. I asked him if they were boys or girls and he said they were boys. He said the funny thing was that even though they were jumping all over, they weren’t knocking anything over or wrecking anything. Then he said that there were words on the wall behind me. I asked him what the words said and he said that he couldn’t make most of them out except for the words, “Blue shed”.
I made lunch for us and sat down facing him at his bedtable. He said he feels like he’s on a trail and he just hopes there’s a place for him to sit when he can’t go any farther. I asked him if there was a light at the end of the trail and he said, “Not yet.” That started him talking about heaven and hell. He said that he used to think of hell as literally having fire in it, but most of the places where it’s mentioned say that there will be torment. Only one place mentions torture. He said he thinks the torment is mental, that it’s all the regrets people have. That’s as good an explanation as anything I’ve ever heard before. He told me to look up the Greek word for torment, and the definition had something to do with being twisted. It made me think of the truth being twisted into lies like the kinds of things I believed when I was seriously depressed. I know that when people tried to tell me the truth, I didn’t believe them. I could see that being an unending cycle for a person in torment and that would certainly be hell for me!
Dad said he’s not so sure about what heaven is like. I told him that I think my stepmother, Sandy, and my older sister, Sherill, will be there waiting for him, but he said that he thinks the only heaven will be when the New Jerusalem comes to earth. Until then, he thinks he will just be resting and there won’t be any connections to anyone. He thinks it will be like being in the womb alone. He postulated that if all the believers through the ages are in heaven (his definition of it being on earth at the time of the New Jerusalem) it will be crowded. How sad to think that he doesn’t expect to have a connection with anyone when he dies. I hope he’s pleasantly surprised when he gets there!
Dad ate some fruit and a bite of the leftovers I warmed up and then pushed his plate away. He said that eating is just a nuisance to him now and he has no appetite. That was one of the signs we were supposed to watch for. Then he went back to sleep and slept until Elaine got home. I was telling her about his hallucinations and she said he’s been doing that all weekend. That’s something that hospice had warned us about when they first registered him a month ago and they left some medication to help with that. Sleeping most of the day is another sign that the end is near. Earlier, I had asked Dad why he doesn’t want to use the hospital bed. He said that it represents the end to him. He knows that if he lays down in the hospital bed, he won’t get up again and he’s not quite ready for that yet.
After Elaine got home, I was getting ready to leave and I gave Dad a hug and a kiss on the forehead. He appeared to be asleep, but when I hugged him, he said, “I love you!” I was surprised and told him that I love him too. I thanked him for telling me that he loves me. I will always have that to remember him by!
When I got back to Mom’s house, she asked me what I wanted to do, hoping that I would say I wanted to play Scrabble, but I told her I needed to start collecting my things and packing. I was working on that when I happened to look out my bedroom door…
Mom says she’s going to miss playing Scrabble with me. I know she wants to get in as much Scrabble playing as she can before I leave, so I stopped packing and went out to play a couple of games with her. I had my laundry going and Mom started our sweet potato in her little toaster oven. By the time we had finished our second board game of Scrabble, my laundry was done, so I invited her to come in while I got it packed. I’m leaving the heavy sweaters that I brought with me until Mark and I come back in late April. I doubt I’ll be needing them in Tucson.
While we were in my room, Mom’s phone rang. She ran all over the house looking for it and by the time she found one of her phones, it stopped ringing. That got Mom and me on a phone hunt. She has 2 phones that she keeps in different parts of the house, but we couldn’t find the one that was supposed to be in the dining room. I tried calling it from my phone and I walked all over the house listening for it, but it wasn’t in the house. I called it again and walked out into the garage and then out to the backyard, but it wasn’t in either of those places either. Finally, I called it and went out into the front courtyard and I heard it ringing. I followed the sound until I found it sitting on top of Mom’s brick wall near her front gate. When I brought it in, she remembered having taken it out there and setting it down while she did something out there. She is going to try not taking it outside the house anymore.
I got out a couple of plates and Mom and I started putting our dinner together. She had made a veritable feast for my last dinner here. She made a sweet potato for us to share, some asparagus, and cut up an avocado. I noticed that 2 more uncooked sweet potatoes were sitting in a bowl on the counter. I said, “Didn’t you and I buy 2 sweet potatoes, one for each of us to eat? Where did the third one come from, and why did you only cook one of them?” She grinned sheepishly and said she must have bought another one and forgotten to put both of the ones we bought into the oven. I know that Lauryn and her family don’t eat much in the way of vegetables, so I hope Mom gets the other 2 cooked and eaten before they go bad.
After we finished eating, I pulled out Bananagrams and told Mom that since we played her favorite game twice, it was time for us to play 2 games of my favorite version together. She grudgingly agreed. I like that you don’t have to keep score with it; you just play until the first person finishes. Also, I don’t mind if Mom keeps playing after I’ve finished. I like to help her find places to put her remaining letters.
Then Mom toddled off to bed and I came to my room and called Mark. Mondays are when my quilt and craft group at church in Tucson gets together. Mark has been joining them this year with his own projects. He told me that all the women told him today how excited they are that I’m coming back. It will be good to be back! I have spent my time here doing what I can to help my parents, and it’s been almost a month, but now it’s time to get back to my husband and my own life.