update

[winterbadger]

Cornelia and I got in around 9 or so last night. Today we went over with Mum and saw Dad. He was barely conscious, sort of looked at us and tried to speak, and then gradually drifted off to sleep. We talked to him for a while, then talked to the social worker on his case and finally to the doctor and the duty chaplain. There isn't much physically wrong with him, other than apaprently some signs of small strokes some time inthe past, but he's not seeming like much of him was there.

The doc wanted to go in and see him (he hadn't yet this am) with us there, but we had to get my mother to *her* dr. appointment, so we took off. While my sister and she went in, I called Neta, who is being simply wonderful and supportive and reassuring. Then we went and got some groceries and were headed home when the hospital called back.

Neither the dr nor the social worker had seen dad before we got there; when they did, after we left, they were astounded by how much he had changed overnight. They called us back, so we came and talked to the SW and the chaplain (the dr had gotten called down to emergency) and got the definite impression that they believe he is letting go. "Actively dying" was their phrase. My sister Victoria is trying to get here ASAP, but my sister (who has seen a fair bit of hospital work as a chaplain herself) is making sure we can get a phone into his room so V can say goodbye if he doesn't last.

This is, without being horrid about it, about the best blessing I think I could hope for. My mother doesn't have the resources, financially but more important emotionally, to look after him at home any longer or to last out a prolonged decline. It sounds cold and hard and bad, but I really think the best thing for him and for her, let alone the rest of us, is if he can let go and just slip off to wherever he is going. I did love him, though he was not an easy man to love, but I think he is mostly gone now, and I'd rather he were able to go forward than linger here.

I'm no one to judge whether he had a good life or not, but he's had a full one, and he's been lingering in body and mind for a while now. I hope that he will be released from lingering and go to whatever place he hoped to, rather than what ever he might have feared.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Comments

[pusscat.livejournal.com]

My paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister all his life, and did a lot of work as a chaplain even after he officially retired. He always said people die when they just can't go on living any longer. It kind of sounds like that's where your father is, and it sounds like you recognise that. I hope the rest of his journey will be as easy as possible. My thoughts are very much with you. xxx