HOSPICE AGAIN

bullhead


A time or two a day I hear myself say, We don't do schedules here. We go by whatever is happening at the ;moment. Each day is unique unto itself. I can't forecast the next minute, certainly not the next day. I can't even make a guess about the near future. I like it like that. Friends ask me what I'm going to do after Jr. Stay at home is all I know, if I can say I know that. Many think I'll be hit pretty hard when Jr goes over yonder. I don't know. I don't expect it will be too bad, as I'm used to it already. I'm not in denial about why I'm there.



Any time before Jr became feeble I'd have had a problem seeing him go, but now that he can only lie in bed and drift in his mind that isn't his mind anymore, and gradually waste away, a cell at a time, I believe I'll be glad to see him go. My tears might be tears of joy that he finally made it. It's my belief his soul will go straight up like a rocket. I have no concerns for what he'll find on the other side. There's too much light in him for his soul to be drawn to the dark.


I like that we have no schedule here. I like being entirely in the present with no thought of what may be next. I like the Iris DeMent song, Let The Mystery Be. Finally, at a time in my later life I've learned to let the mystery be. Accept what is, as it is, with no need to question and try to figure out why. Like non-expectation, it clears the air somehow, like a candle flame. It's expectations that create disappointments.



I'm still reeling from what I expected of the medical establishment and facilities. It turns out I expected rational behavior, some sort of integrity, truth told instead of lies, a tweak of real caring instead of overdone fake caring, that it be about something besides money. The nurses at the hospital who met the above criteria left the hospital to work for Hospice.. Strangely, what I automatically expected of he medical profession I found absent there, but present in Hospice. What I figure is the medical profession is bound by so many regulations they can't act rationally or with integrity and dare not tell the truth, because the truth might get the facility sued.



Classic case of disappointment following expectation. By the time we'd been through the hospital, the 2nd nursing home and all the service agencies, I wasn't about to allow my friend to spend his last days and nights in their prisons of indifference. They were all determined to get him out of his home and into a prison for the old. I was fighting them all the way along, making it clear they had his dog to deal with and the dog was growling with hair up on the back of his neck.



By the time we connected with Hospice I heard myself apologize in the beginning for my attitude, explaining that the medical profession created my attitude, and if I say something smart or get short about something, it only means that attitude hadn't had time to fade away yet. But there was no mistaking one for the other. Hospice is practical. It's all about good common sense. They're totally upfront and honest about everything. Their integrity is the highest and money is not the motivation. They're funded by grants and donations. The Methodist church provides unlimited free ensured to everyone in hospice care. That, in my way of seeing, is Christian behavior. Offering money that's 'for the Lord's work' goes a whole lot better there than in gold-plated toilets for Tammy Baker, if you remember that particular fraud among so many.



The biggest difference I see between medical profession and Hospice is in how I have felt in relation to each. Before Hospice, when I was fighting off the social service agencies threatening continually that if this isn't in order and that isn't in order, he's going to a nursing home. Constant threat of nursing home. I've been reading a lot about China lately and much of what they put us through was pure Communist Chinese. Living under constant threat. I got to where I called Social Services Soviet Services because of the Soviet attitude, the threats, if you don't.... And if you do....



Perfect reversal when Hospice came into the scene. They said no to nursing homes, hospitals, ambulance rides to the emergency room against his will for no good reason and expected to pay for it, and the threats ended. Instead of threatening, Hospice assists. They offer assistance, help that we need, when it's needed. Nobody comes on with the attitude I-know-more-than-you-do, even though they do. I still maintain that in a truly civilized society, all nursing homes would be Hospices. In Norway the prisons are nice apartments, no barbed wire, no machine gun turrets, no insurmountable walls. They provide education and psychological counseling. The people they return to society don't return to prison. That's civilized.



After all the Me decades we've been through, where a large majority of people think everything is about them, it's refreshing to talk with and be around these people from Hospice, who are each one truly wonderful people, whose focus it the people needing the help they can provide. I have an idea that a lot of people who go into nursing home jobs and hospital jobs are motivated by wanting to help people. That seems to be the first thing to go when one takes such a job. But with Hospice the satisfaction of helping others grows instead of diminishes. I'm glad it's not connected with the medical establishment or government services. If government took it over, it would be just another Soviet Service. Threats instead of help. Hospice gives me hope, the kind of hope that says the future just might be better.

BETWEEN INSIDE AND OUT

the door

The only thing I can say today is I don't understand anything. Of course, that's a given, but I don't always believe I don't understand anything. Today I believe it. Hospice nurse told me this morning the cells and the blood are feeding the body now. Jr's eating himself. And surviving. I told her I'd formerly believed what I'd always been told so much it's common knowledge that after 3 days without water you die. He's not dead. He's up walking around with the walker, something he's not done in quite a long time, and today I watched him walk about 6 feet without any aid.

He talks clearly with a seemingly clear head. It's like he's coming back to life. I think of him as the Cat Came Back, a funny old-time song about somebody trying to get rid of a cat. Thought he was a gonner, but the cat came back. I especially like Wade Mainer's recording of it. Some call Jr the Come Back Kid. 3 times before now he's been at death's door looking in, and came back. Now he has absolutely no nutrition inside his body and he's more clear than before, can get up and walk around, understand what is said, even recognize people who come to see him.

He sleeps better than he did before too. He quit taking any pills for 2 days, felt no pain, slept well and came to life. Today he was blaming the medications for his decline. Interesting analysis, but I tend not to go along with it, which is meaningless, because he has always, to my knowledge, known his own body and feelings better than anyone else does. I don't even try to figure out what might be wrong with him any more. He tells me and he's right. He's right in that pain medications block his intestines and he needs laxatives regularly to keep the plumbing flowing.

Yesterday he ate half a Burger King Spicy Chicken and drank a sip of water. Today he had a few ounces of apple juice and a little candy bar kind of thing for the hospice women who came to clean him and check out his vitals, which are always in perfect balance. I quit expecting where Jr is concerned long ago, so I go about the day expecting nothing from one minute to the next. Whatever happens is what happens, and it's always a surprise.

I called one of his friends, who grew up on the next farm and walked to the same school together, yesterday to alert him to Jr's condition and to give him a chance to talk with him. Jr was particularly lucid yesterday and I wanted Joe to have a chance to maybe have his last conversation with his lifelong friend. Fiddler Johnny Miller I mean to call too. Johnny needs to know. At the same time, I don't know what to tell them when we talk. I told Joe he'd been 4 days without water or anything, and 9 days before that with only an ensure a day. He's still living and clear in the head, can walk with the walker again.

I can't get emotionally worked up over any of it. Any way you look at it, I'm prepared for an any minute demise, though the nurse told me this can go on for weeks, the process of the body eating itself. It seems like a crazier'n hell way to me to leave the body, but I reckon it's his choice. He might not call it his choice, but nobody else is doing it to him.

All day today I've been in a bewildered state between one pole and another, not even wondering what's going on. It's more like awe that Jr has shut down, ought to be dead, and is up and about like he was months ago. The mental clarity is what gets me. Every day I sit and talk with him for awhile. Today he was sharp as he used to be. He talks about being lazy, sorry, all he can do is sleep. I tell him to sleep as much as he wants to. He's sleeping now like he never did before, and without the pills to help him sleep. Of course, when he's sleeping good the phone rings. Every day.

I can't have a nap for the phone. Every time I fall asleep, the phone rings. There are times I'd like to unplug it. Only problem is, sometimes it's hospice nurse, and I want to always be open for those calls. Back to expectation. I don't expect to have a full nap without the phone ringing anymore. I do feel strongly that the teaching I'm getting at this place on my spiritual path is about expectation. I find I approach everything better without expectation, like when I walk into Jr's house. Whatever I go into now, I tell myself, no expectation. Receive it for what it is.

I was talking on the phone with a friend a couple days ago I've not seen since I've been staying at Jr's. We usually have lunch once a week and air our thoughts of the week. I mentioned I was enjoying Obama's Audacity of Hope (I love the title--2/3 of the reason I'm reading it), and he said, 'I already have 2 things against him. He didn't receive the Dalai Lama. He gave in to China.' I didn't have anything to say. I'd prefer China leave Tibet alone too, but it's not happening any time soon. China takes Tibet to be a province of China. They have the army to enforce it. I also believe there's more to it spiritually than meets the eye. Like it took what Nazis did to Jews to create Israel.

Tibetan Buddhism is a potent religion. I tend to believe God saw it was time for all that energy balled up in the monasteries of Lhasa and the rest of Tibet to spread out all over the world like dandelion seeds with parachutes. Emory University in Atlanta has taken in the Dalai Lama and gives support to a Tibetan monastery in northern Georgia. All up and down the West Coast Tibetan lamas have landed as well as throughout our country and Europe.

I hate it that China is so belligerent about Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama, but that's China's problem. They're the ones that will pay. Running the Tibetans off their homeland is not a crime without a penalty. I trust divine justice will work there as it does everywhere else. I don't see any point in provoking China with a forced few minutes of hi-how-ya-doin and a photo op. That the Dalai Lama has a place in Atlanta is good enough. No need to get China excited over a mere photo op. They have their own concerns. Like Steven Seagal says, 'Ya gotta admit, God has a strange sense of humor.'

I keep on wondering what God has in mind for Jr. Like what did God have in mind for Job? I know God doesn't dislike Jr enough to put him through all the agony he's suffered in his life. I can't help but have a feeling Jr is a veiled advanced soul who chose to experience suffering this lifetime for the fast lane on his path. I'm honored to know the man.

THE LAST DAYS

bovine fashion statement

Today was the day I felt was the last day to get in touch with Agnes Joines to say it doesn't look like I'll be able to participate in the Hillbilly Show this year. Practice is Friday night and the show Saturday night. I want to be a part of it, because I love it, but no matter what happens with Jr between now and then, I can't go. I'll watch the movie.

Today is the 4th day in a row Jr has had nothing to eat and nothing to drink. 9 days before that he had only an ensure a day. I'd always heard that we can only live 3 days without water. Maybe Jr is setting a Guinness world record on how long he can make it without water or anything. His external reasoning is, if he drinks something he'll have to pee. If he eats something he'll have to shit. And he doesn't want to do either one any more. This morning he said his mouth was dry. I suggested merely a sip of apple juice to wet his mouth. No, it'll go right through me. Water? No. Ensure? No.

Several days ago I did a little barking to hear my head roar, to at least attest to myself that I made an attempt to get something in him. Yesterday and the day before, when I offered him an ensure, he said, 'What's the use?' Meaning he knows he's dying, there's no turning around, so why hang on. If his heart won't stop of its own, he'll help it along by taking nothing in to keep the body going.

Some of my friends are asking how I'm doing, got to think about myself. I'm doing fine. Because I'm not thinking about myself. After last week's stress peak, I've settled considerably. When I feel the stress now, it's over as soon as I get solved whatever caused it. Like last night I woke in the night to him calling me. He'd set out to walk to the bathroom with the walker. He went to the floor and sat there for some time, he said an hour (a period of time longer than a Southern minute that can be any amount of time). I lifted him up to the walker and let him shuffle back to the bed as I held him by the ribs. When he was settled back in bed, I went back to sleep easily.

I'm really not having a hard time. Once in awhile I get frustrated, but that's everyday life. This doesn't mean I'm in denial about Jr's any day demise. I don't see any need to dwell on that yet. My role is to keep him comfortable and in good spirit. That keeps me comfortable and in good spirit. A candle burning keeps the air clear--I don't know how that works, but it does. I've kept one burning in his room the last several days, initially to keep the chamber pot odor down, but find as a benefit it somehow clarifies the air. Reading helps a lot, talking every day on the phone with my friend Carole helps even more.

Support offered by my friends and others means as much in intent as action. Writing the blog helps in that it's become for this period of time something of a journal. I'm journaling. Another one of those good new verbs like googling. Blogging, another of the new verbs, keeps me grounded.

I'm so used to it in his place that I am at home there as much as at my house with the cats. I do miss the cats. No question about that. And they miss me, but I see them daily and they don't go hungry. Curiously, 4 times now, I've woke in the night believing TarBaby was beside me. The gesture of my hand reaching to touch him wakes me and he's not there. Strange feeling. His presence was strong in my sleep. Also, in the dream of his presence, I'm in my own bed at home. When I wake, I'm on the floor in Jr's living room. It takes a second for it to register what's happening. If I were a cat, I'd shake my head til my ears buzzed like hummingbird wings.

It's a time of waiting, for all of us concerned. The nurses know it, I know it, everyone around Jr knows it, Jr knows it. Ross is already starting to show the stress of his fear of life after Jr. It's not an easy time. My inclination for prayer is to lift his spirit from the body and love him for eternity. I'd actually like to see his response when the light comes for him.

I won't ask for it, though, because I don't know what I'd be asking for. I'm happy to have had the opportunity to help Jr Maxwell be able to drift away in his own home, in his own bed, in his own time.

TOLERANCE

cosmic chagall #2


The word tolerance has been in my head quite a lot yesterday and today. It started when a Republican friend asked what I was reading. I told him Obama's Audacity of Hope. Friend rolled his eyes, inwardly to himself, not as an aggressive gesture to piss me off. I already knew we were poles apart politically. When men are together talking politics I tend to let them talk, and I listen, because I love to hear what they have to say when it opposes my own point of view, within reason, not going so far as to pay attention to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich's talking piglet.



My response to the subtle rolling of the eyes, or look inward, was to say, 'He's a brilliant man.' First thought was to say mind, but I wanted to emphasize that I respect him as a man, not just a mind. In McCain country, I'm not ashamed of respecting the kind of intelligence that got a kid through college and law school at Harvard on scholarships he earned by himself. I can't help but respect that kind of intelligence. I couldn't do it. He has a wife of equal intelligence.



What I've been looking at as an adult with some political awareness, living among people who think very differently from the way I think, is the tolerance between us isn't even tolerance. Too strong a word. I can't say I tolerate them, because tolerate implies something objectionable, like the dingings and buzzes cars make to let you know you opened the door or haven't fastened the seat belt. That's tolerance. My friends who think differently from how I think politically is like nothing. I like the people I like for a whole lot more reasons than agreeing with me or seeing as I see. We're not made like that. We're individuals with free will, even when we don't want to be.



If any two people in America would name their 10 favorite songs the same, it would only be by random chance, one in Utah, the other in Massachusetts, and they never heard of each other. I don't know about identical twins. The fact is, if I ever met someone who thinks exactly as I think, I probably wouldn't like that person. We tend not to care much for the people most like us. Like you need to meet so and so--you have so much in common, seldom works out. It tends to make me wonder what the person who said it believes about me. That's where I end the thinking on the matter, because that's where it jumps off into the inexplicable, the never to be known, the best not to know.



I'm sure it is tolerance for many to have a black man in the White House, like it is tolerance for many to have a white man in the White House. I'd say most of the white men I know believe Rush Limbaugh has something to say worth hearing, when I see him a propagandist and nothing else. He was the mouthpiece for the Gingrich Revolution, aka Reagan Revolution, the white man's last stand. He's still making noise, in William Faulkner's words, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.



Three times I spent a few hours in a car with someone listening to Limbaugh and never protested once. That's tolerance. Except when Limbaugh said, 'anyone sleeping at this hour of the day [11am] is a pervert.' I commented out loud, 'What about people working the night shift? I'm surprised he didn't say pree-vert.' No response. The driver was practicing tolerance, too, letting me get away with making a rational point and him not telling me I'm an idiot.



But on the whole, my friends and acquaintances disagree politically with, I agree with in a lot of other ways. Some of my best friends are Republicans. I find it funny that among the people I like best, the majority are Republicans, pre-Reagan Republicans. Reagan Republicans I have a difficult time tolerating and they have an equally rough time with an unrepentant liberal. We just don't talk about it. We know to stay off the subject of politics and practice it very well. They think I'm a 'Big Democrat,' when the fact is I'm an Anti-Republican.



It actually galled me to have to vote for Gore. I'd have preferred to give my vote to Ralph Nader, but the Bush 2 threat was too strong. Of course, they lost in every way it can be figured and took it anyway. But that's history. They took the arrogance white skin to the absurd extreme. It wasn't just the people of color and white women that put a stop to it. A lot of white men voted for him too. Not all white men take Limbaugh for a brilliant mind, or even an average mind.



Since the years of politics by the Gingrich method of divide and conquer, Democrats and Republicans continue to speak and be friends. In America before Gingrich, there was actually more tolerance than after. Reagan only won by 1% of the vote. But since the power in the American people said enough to division, intolerance, taking from the workers, giving to the rich, and keeping-the-niggers-down; now the Limbaugh (Gingrich) message, kill the monkey.



What I see is the American people want tolerance, even Republicans do. The attempt to do away with tolerance turned back like a boomerang and struck the sender. I like having a President not ruled by denial, which turns out, it seems, to be a white thing. Black people have never had the privileges that bring about denial. The black people know that when we say racism is over, it isn't so. Jews have known It can happen here. But it is our particular American tolerance that ultimately wins despite setbacks along the way, such that though It came close, It did not happen here. A black President is evidence American racism is weakening considerably.



I did not like the Nixon-Reagan-Bush years eating away at our civil liberties like piranhas on a Big Mac. It was worth it, however, to see the American people come together and say, Nevermore. That's not us. We already had a Civil War. We don't want another one.



A friend who recently moved to the mountains of rural California from Atlanta, said of American racism last time we talked on the phone, the South likes the people, not the race. The north likes the race, not the people. He said the Northern way is the California way. Of the two, he prefers the Southern way. I'd have to say the same. How many times I've heard in my life, he aint no nigger, he's a black man. I'd like it to be such that we're all just folks, skin color an identity like fingerprints. Everybody is fine with we all have different fingerprints, so what's the big deal about the shade of pigment in our skin? Since it's not that way in the world at large, I can have it that way in myself by living what I believe.