The Walking Cane

I've been going to a grief support group at the hospice Dad was in. The social worker who conducts the group claims that when someone close to a person dies, their spirit remains with the person, and they'll find ways to "say hello" to the person left on earth. For example, according to the social worker, I might hear someone use Dad's favorite phrase. Or maybe I'll hear his favorite song on the radio, or I'll meet someone who has the same initials or first name, or, well, you get the drift. Not something I'd heard before, or that I was sure I believed. But...

Dad had a couple of wooden walking canes. He'd collected them since he had a stroke about 12 years ago, and used them when he felt tired or ill. Well, while we were going through his things, we found some books that we thought his best friend would like. So Jack said he'd stop by to get the books.

Jack always uses a walking cane. Well, when he came to the back door, I walked from the living room to the kitchen to let him in. One of Dad's wooden canes was propped against the doorframe leading from the living room to the kitchen, and as I passed by, it fell. I picked it up, opened the door for Jack, and heard myself tell him, "Jack, you know, I think Dad would be honored to have you take his walking cane." I didn't know I was going to say that!

Well, let's GO!

That was my dad's favorite phrase. All you ever needed to do was suggest to him that you'd like to go somewhere with him, and he'd respond, "Well, let's go!" He enjoyed going everywhere. One Saturday afternoon, he and I spent a couple of hours sitting in our seats at Turner Stadium, hoping the rain would let up so the game could begin. Someone had given me a pair of tickets to an exhibition game. The rain only worsened, and finally lightning streaked across the sky - the game was promptly called off. A ruined afternoon? Not in Dad's eyes! No, sir, he spent the day with his daughter, he got to see the new stadium, and the tickets would be honored for a future game. So what was a little rain?

Several years ago, my office had a contest. If we met our sales goal for the year, we were all going to Cancun for a long weekend. If we exceeded that goal by 10%, we would each get to take a guest. Well, I think we ended up the year with 115% of our goal. We were going to Cancun! Hooray!

I had a problem, though. My husband had never flown before and absolutely refused to consider it. He really didn't want me to go on the trip, either; I insisted, though, that I had to go as I was in charge of making the arrangements. A free trip to Cancun! How could I possibly pass that up? I knew if I didn't go, I would not be able to tolerate being in that office afterward and hearing all the stories.

Dad's birthday was the end of January, just about the time we were finalizing the attendee lists. I told him, "Dad, I've got a special present for you this year but you'll have to wait until May to get it." He looked at me curiously. "Would you like to go to Cancun with me for a long weekend?"

"Well, let's go!" He and I researched Cancun, planning exactly what activities we'd do. Dad was 74 at the time, and I know some of my coworkers were afraid he'd hold me back. WRONG! We both thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Within a half-hour of arriving at our hotel, we'd discovered the shopping mall down the street. That evening, we hurried to finish our dinner to catch the bus to the cultural center - we were going to see the Folkloric Ballet! Afterward, we joined some of my coworkers and their guests by the pool. The next morning, they arrived for breakfast just as we were finishing up - our tour bus was due to arrive within a few minutes for an all-day tour of XCaret. We followed that the next day by a trip on a submarine through the Nichupte Lagoon, more shopping, and other activities. Dad wasn't ready to stop until we boarded the plane to go home. Even then, he wasn't tired. If I'd asked him to get on another plane to go somewhere else, his reply would have been - yes, you guessed it: "Well, let's go!"

A Matter of Trust

I am angry tonight. Angry, disgusted, and disappointed. I just came home from driving by Dad's house to make sure everything is OK, and discovered that, for the second time in a week, someone has broken into the house.

Oh, no real damage was done. My brother and I finished clearing out the house on Saturday; basically now there isn't anything left. There wasn't much to take the first time. On Saturday, we discovered that someone had pulled the electrical meter off the carport wall, disconnecting the power; then the front window had been pried open and the thief had taken the air conditioner from that window, the microwave oven, the perishable food from the refrigerator (interestingly enough, the bottle of soda remained), and the riding lawn mower (which didn't work) from the back yard. The burglar had pried off the locks on the two toolsheds in the back yard. So we finished our work Saturday in great discomfort - North Georgia's summers are HOT! - and bought lunch out. We have a contract on the house, and the buyer plans to install central air, so the loss of the air conditioner was minimal - as was the loss of the microwave. We'd planned to give the lawn mower to the next-door neighbor, though, who really wanted to have it; that hurt.

Tonight, I discovered that the burglar had returned for the other air conditioner. Again, no damage to the house - the culprit(s) had entered and exited through the window. Again, the loss of the air conditioner is of no consequence as we are no longer working in the house.

What makes me angry, though, is that we believe we know who one of the burglars is. If we're correct in our suspicions, the burglar is someone we should have been able to trust - and someone Dad had trusted and had helped a great deal. This is how the person chose to repay Dad's trust!

I'd been thinking earlier today about trust. One of the greatest gifts Dad ever gave me was his trust in me. Dad frequently asked my advice if he was unsure about something - whether to quit wearing his wedding ring after Mom died and he started dating again; what to do when he discovered several unauthorized electronic withdrawals from his checking account; what kind of car to buy and where from when his had been totaled in an accident. He trusted me to know what to do and to guide him to the best decisions. Especially during the last few years, Dad had elevated me to what I'll call "walk-on-water" status - in his eyes, I could do no wrong.

One of the last memories I have of Dad is the night I told him that we wanted to transfer him to a hospice. He'd been in the hospital for nearly a month - ever since the day I took him to the doctor and the doctor told me he suspected an advanced abdominal cancer. Dad was recovering from an unsuccessful surgery and had spent the weekend in the CCU; during the night that Friday he'd developed some breathing trouble and was transferred to CCU. The doctor told me that Dad was too unstable for them to determine whether the breathing problem resulted from a blood clot in his lung or whether Dad had suffered a heart attack.

But this was Tuesday night, and the social worker wanted to stop by tomorrow to do the assessment for transfer to a hospice. There wasn't anything else to offer - surgery had uncovered a massive spread of the cancer, and chemotherapy for renal cell carcinoma is extremely rough, even for a young person in good health - and Dad was 81 and very debilitated. I had to tell him. How??? Dad just wasn't talking about what was going on. His doctors reported to me that, although they'd discussed his situation with him, they were not sure if he understood. His pastor would soon comment, while delivering Dad's funeral sermon, that Dad was so calm and so unworried about what was happening to him that the pastor himself had trouble believing that Dad knew. We'd all noticed, especially after the surgery, that Dad was easily confused and rather vague (something I now know is part of the dying process). And we'd never talked much about dying, and I didn't know whether Dad knew what a hospice was. But there was nothing else the hospital could do, and they needed the bed, and...

So I talked to him. "Dad?" I said. "You know when they did the surgery last week, they didn't get that cancer." "They didn't? I didn't know that!" he responded. I knew they'd told him that, but he didn't remember things at all. "No," I continued. "They discovered that it had already gotten too big, so they couldn't take it. So they can't make you well, and they think you should go to a different kind of place where they'll take good care of you instead of trying to cure you. And Tommy and Lisa went with me and Phillip last weekend to see it, and it's real close to where I live so I can spend more time with you, and it's more like being home instead of being in a hospital. And they'll let people bring dogs, so Louise and Jennifer (two of the dearest people God ever put on earth; their story will appear here shortly) are all excited about bringing their dogs to see you."

God only knows how I managed to get through that without bursting into tears. God knows I sure cried enough everywhere else - my coworkers had gotten very accustomed to seeing me walking around with tears streaming down my face, right out of the blue! I continued, "There's a lady who wants to come talk with us tomorrow afternoon about it. What do you think?"

Dad looked at me and said, "It sounds pretty nice to me." A simple statement - but oh! the look on his face! I've never in my entire life seen anyone display so much trust. If I'd stood there and explained to Dad that I was taking him to Hell, I could see in his face that he'd have willingly gone with me. There just aren't words enough to describe what a gift that look was. I'm the older of Dad's kids, and my brother doesn't live here, and I'm just plain the one who takes care of things - you know how in most families, there's one person whose job it is to make things happen? Well, that's always been my job, so most of the decisions during Dad's illness naturally fell to me. And the decisions were agonizing! What a wonderful blessing it was to know that Dad, even through his illness, had such absolute confidence that I would know what was best for him and would take care of him.

And then this person has to go and honor Dad's memory by violating all our trust in him like this! Grrrr!!!

A very ABNORMAL day

Although as reported earlier, the day had begun routinely, all normalcy ended with that cellphone call. When I ended the call, my first problem was simple: How did I get to the hospital? My car was in the shop and my fiance had given me a ride that morning.

Did I tell you yet that I work with the greatest people in the world? Well, I do. Our receptionist also had car trouble that day and wasn't able to make it in. Normally when she is out, I cover the phones. But my boss didn't blink an eye when I told her I had to go. Matter of fact, before I could call Phillip to ask if he could come take me to the hospital, Deedee had arranged for a coworker to take me.

When I got to the emergency room, Dad had already been seen by a doctor and was waiting for test results to come back. We spent a couple of hours waiting, then Dad was released. Diagnosis: Vertigo. Treatment: Some pills to reduce the dizziness, and time for the inner ear imbalance to heal itself. Dad was told to stay home the rest of the week, and he should be fine to go back to his school crossing on Monday.

Only he wasn't. By the weekend, he was complaining that his head was stopped up, and he was using a walker to move around the house. I thought he looked like he'd lost some weight, too, and I asked him what he'd been eating. "Nothing much, I haven't had any appetite." "Dad, you've got to eat something!" I knew that Dad didn't cook much and normally ate out, and I suggested that my cousin Mike, who'd been living with Dad, could go pick him up something. Dad promised to try to eat more.

On Monday, he did go to his school crossing that morning. None of us realized it yet, but that would be the last time Dad worked. That afternoon, he called in sick. When I talked to him that evening, he complained of shortness of breath - so we went back to the emergency room. Although this time they did keep him overnight, they weren't able to make a diagnosis and sent him home the next day. At their suggestion, I called his cardiologist (Dad had had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass about 12 years ago) and made an appointment.

By the following weekend, Dad couldn't get around at all without his walker, and really wasn't doing very well with it. He'd obviously lost a lot of weight - within just two weeks, his clothes looked as if they were hanging on clothes-hangers instead of on him! We bought him some Ensure as he still wasn't eating well, but he insisted that he was feeling better. I was worried, though, and called his internist for an appointment. I was concerned that if we didn't quickly find out what was wrong, Dad would not survive. I thought, though, that it was probably something serious but curable, like pneumonia.

I was wrong. The internist took me aside and told me, "As best as I can guess, your Dad's dying." DYING? Dad? NOooooooo! He continued, "I believe it's probably some kind of abdominal cancer - I thought I felt a mass in his abdomen. Just based on how fast he's deteriorated, my guess is that it's too advanced for treatment. But just to be sure, I'd like to put him in the hospital." Dad had just seen the internist in February. I remember he'd growled because the doctor had sent him to a hospital for some sort of test for anemia and wanted Dad to go to a gastroenterologist, and Dad told me that evening, "You know, he's not half the doctor he used to be. Now all he wants to do is send you to some other doctor." I'd suggested that Dad should go, but I hadn't pushed the point.

We discussed the choice of hospitals. Although DeKalb Medical isn't as close to me as a couple of others, I felt that Dad might be more comfortable there because it was more familiar to him; also, it was closer to family and friends. The doctor told me he'd make arrangements; since he doesn't practice at DeKalb, he would be turning Dad's care over to a "hospitalist" - the first of many new words I'd be adding to my vocabulary. For anyone who's never heard of "hospitalists," that's a general doctor who doesn't see patients outside of a hospital, but treats hospitalized patients who either do not have a doctor or, like Dad, see a doctor who doesn't practice in that particular hospital.

The doctor explained to Dad that he was very sick and he was concerned that he may have a serious illness, possibly cancer. Dad agreed to be admitted, and I was very careful not to meet his eyes - I didn't want him to know that I'd been told he was dying but wasn't sure I could keep that knowledge out of my eyes. It was a long trip back to Dad's house!

When we got to Dad's house, my cousin was there. Of course he wanted to know everything, but at that point Dad didn't know as much as I did, and I wasn't going to tell. I helped Dad get his things together and took him to the hospital. I called my fiance to let him know where I was. Phillip was frantic - the doctor's appointment had been at 1:00, and it was 5:00 when I called. I'd silenced my cellphone when we got to the doctor's office and quietly ignored it since then - I had to be strong for a while, which meant that I couldn't share my knowledge. When Phillip joined me at the hospital, he took me out in the hallway and asked me if I could tell him anything. I looked straight ahead - if I saw any sign of sympathy, I'd have come unglued - and told him, "Dad's dying." His reaction mirrored my own shock.

Finally they took Dad upstairs for a CAT scan. They told me I could go too, but I had this overwhelming urge to get out of there - I couldn't stand not to talk about it any longer. I also knew I needed to call my brother. So we left.

The night before, I hadn't slept well. I had several bad dreams, one of which involved me calling my brother to tell him, "You better come home." That is exactly the call I had to make.

What next?

When I started this blog, I had planned to keep the stories in chronological order - maybe turn it into a book one day. But you know what? I can't. There are so many stories, so many memories, and I don't know which story should go next. And I don't want to forget any of the stories - so if you're reading this, I'll have to ask your forgiveness for the way it jumps around. More important that the stories are there than that they're in the right order.