I
learned Wednesday that by this time next week, if all continues to go
as hoped, my 91-year-old father will be able to return to his
assisted living facility, rejoining my mother.
I
learned this in a late-afternoon conference call with his medical
staff at a skilled nursing facility, where he has been for the past
two weeks after nearly a month in and out of the ER with internal
bleeding issues.
At
one point during this sojourn, I had a call from his doctor asking
about how far we wanted him to go with care, should he stop
breathing, or have heart failure. We spoke about DNRs ("do not
resuscitate") orders, should Dad's Living Will kick in at some
point.
We
came to a general threshold for letting go: severe brain damage, to
the point of losing sentience. We hung up, and I have spent the next
few weeks wondering “when?” . . . .
In
those tender, plaintive and grittiest of conversations with Dad of
late, he wondered himself about longevity vs. quality of life. And,
considering my mother's progressive Alzheimer's, he would
occasionally confess, in his rasping voice, that living with his
frail health and failing eyesight (macular degeneration), and
watching Mom drift away, neuron-by-neuron, was not the promise of the
so-called "golden years."
Our
miraculous medical technology has been wonderful for prolonging life,
when intellect and wonder are still intact. But what happens when
life implodes into a world of pain, constant hospitalization and
increasing helplessness?
Worse,
perhaps, what happens when our bodies become earthly tents, sewn shut
by artificial longevity as the mind dies inside?
Our
ability to extend physical life beyond the spiritual, or for the
skeptics among us mortal "sentience," poses moral and
ethical paradoxes seemingly unique to our generation. Life is more
than machinery, more that mere heart beats and another breath, we are
learning.
I
am convinced that no thing, and no one is ever "lost." The
former is a case of science, in that neither matter nor energy ends;
the latter a conviction of faith, perhaps extrapolated into the
metaphysical realm from the physical.
My
mother seldom recognizes me anymore, has lost so many memories . . .
here. But I firmly believe that someday, when the machinery finally
fails, what is left of her here will be reunited with what has
already passed on, There.
So,
all these musings and internal, and ultimately external, debates
about What is Life, and End of Life decisions, seem to pale in those
undiscovered countries of being.
Ultimately,
we “decide” nothing. We may delay the inevitable, but our clocks
began ticking toward the great Transition from the moment of
conception. And, at the beginning -- and the end -- it indeed comes
down to a matter of the heart.
Physically,
and metaphorically.
As
I heard the medical staff conclude that Dad could be returned to
assisted living, and my mother, within a week, something else drowned
out the words.
It
was my father, in the background, weeping, stuttering out how the
news was "wonderful," how he missed my mother, was worried
that she would finally forget him, too, and that he always saw "her
sweet face" in his mind.
So,
“When?”
Not
yet, Dad. Not yet.
