From Monty Python and the Holy Grail…

Man #1 collects the dead during the plague, pulling a cart: “Bring out your dead!” 

Man #2 offers a body for the cart: “Here’s one!” 

Person #3 being offered to the cart: “I’m not dead!” 

#1: “He says he’s not dead.” 

#2: “Yes he is.” 

#3: “No, I’m not.  I’m getting better.”

One day, my dad is completely out of it..very little movement or communication.  Then, SURPRISE, he’s communicating.  This morning, Mom says, “Let’s bake some cookies today!”  Dad says, “You can do it, I’m not.”  I say to him, “You don’t want any cookies?”  He says, bluntly, “NO.”

The brief banter over, I supply liquid morphine to ease his pain.  We’re told about once an hour is OK.  We’re only at once every four hours right now.  A consistent cough is happening now, and he’s no longer comfortable laying in bed.  He’s moving around, obviously in some distress.  We talk to him, and he responds, “Don’t ask me anything.” He wants us to leave him alone.  My Mom doubles down, reading from a magazine about cookie recipes.  He doesn’t like it when she asks him “How does that one sound?”  He groans.

I rub cream on his legs.  His skin is loose around his legs and I can barely feel a muscle.  His femur is the dominant shape as he lays on his side.  I can feel his bone just beneath the skin. “My leg hurts,” he says. As I put the cream on his skin, I notice that it looked completely normal, smooth, a single color, as if he was 30 years old.  It’s a very strange, counterintuitive moment.  How is he dying when his skin looks like this?  It’s clear I don’t know much about the human body or this process.  By contrast, his arms are covered in dark blue and deep red blotches, the skin stretched thin, almost translucent on his hands and arms.

After that initial flurry of activity and energy, we sit in the bedroom and notice he’s out, sleeping again.   His breathing a bit more ragged, a bit more forced.  You can see his rest is fitful, and he’s more uncomfortable in bed.  Still, he rests.