A Self-Proclaimed Existence

I look back to april

and to a post I wrote on April 26. At that point, I really thought my grandfather was on the verge of passing on. Little did I know that he would plateau. And plateau he did. Thing seemed good but like all terminal paitents, he slipped a little.
During the last month or so, I would dash over to their house in the morning, help him into his wheelchair and wheel him up the stairs by myself. Usually I'd count the eight steps in spanish or german, just to say i'm trilingual. I'd wheel him to the barish/counter thingy so he could have his breakfast. Then in the evenings, I'd cruise back and take him downstairs so he could get ready for bed. By now he was weak, but he could still stand on his own to make the wheelchair. There was always some witty comment that would cause me to laugh, especially when he referred to the nurse that came as a "squaw."
Mom, my uncle or even my aunt when she came from Nebraska, would take turns sleeping over there to help Gramps up if he got up in the middle of the night. The past few weeks, they've had him on oxygen at night to ease his breathing. On Friday though, he was too weak to even stand. Steph's boyfriend was the one who helped him down that night as I was previously occupied.
Saturday came and Gramps couldn't stand on his own. Dad and I went over and helped him up the stairs. The Hospice nurse came to put in a catheter so we wheeled him back down stairs to the hospital bed. She installed the catheter, so dad and I wheeled him back up the stairs to his favorite chair. Then my pops and I tore apart the hospital bed. We hauled that monstrosity upstairs so he could be in the living room, along with the oxygen tanks plus we moved the furniture around in the living room. At that point, I knew that Gramps was officially bed ridden because he didn't have enough strength to sit up and the pain was tremendous. They upped the dosage of morphine.
Yesterday he had trouble communicating at times. Today, he was nearly comatose and his breathing was becoming incredibly laborish. The pain medicine was going to be upped again as minor movements caused my grandfather inordinate amounts of pain. I was over there at about 3 ish because I was planning to mow but the mower was dead. I went home showered, ran a couple of errands and came back to the house at 5:25.
Today at 5:20, my grandfather's battle with the cancer ended. To be honest about it, I feel relief because it was such a battle for a long time. Longer than what we were expecting after the April diagnosis. Lung cancer that goes to the brain is truly horriffic stuff but his fight was heroic. I just feel as if I was incredibly lucky to spend as much time as we did with him. Everyday after April was a bonus and he even made it to a couple of my softball games because he wanted to see one of his two grandsons play ball since he has been nearly a fixture at all of his children's and his grandchildren's events.
Being the humanitarian Gramps was, a long time ago he had decided to donate his body to science since he suffered from celiac sprue, a condition in which he was allergic to gluten and wheat. Hospice came and got the body ready to be transported to the KU Med Center. Now for some reason that idea gave my mom the heebie jeebies so she decided she wasn't going to be in the house. She went home while most of us stayed there.
To set the scene for what happened next, my grandparents live in a split level house. You walk into the house through the little foyer and on your left is the open living room, then stairs on your right just past two closets up to the three bedrooms and the bathroom that are up stairs. The kitchen is on the other side of the living room. The hospital bed was up against the wall in the living room. Jim told me to call mom and tell her it was over after they had removed the body from the house.
I did as I was told. I helped bring in the food that a family friend went to the trouble of preparing just as Mom pulled in the driveway. Coming out of the kitchen I bounded to my stairs, a place where I always perch during the "gathering" moments of family getogethers. At this point i'm desperately trying to conceal laughter because Jim is being really really bad. He mouths for me to get mom, so I call her over with a straight face under the pretense of asking if there was garlic in the food. She turns to see Jim laying on that hospital bed, stiff as a board, staring at the ceiling with his mouth open. I lost it as did everyone else. I'm slowly sliding down the steps weak with laughter as the rest of us in the living room are laughing. My mom did the only thing she could do and she flipped Jim off with both fingers which caused us to laugh harder. It was a much needed flicker of light in a dim day.

posted by Rusty @ 9:05 PM Comments: 2