SIDEBAR: Visiting day at camp with SOS was great. More about that later.
On Saturday evening, I spoke with SOB about ULOB’s status. It was critical enough to get in the car at 6pm, after a long (and wonderful) day with SOS at camp, to drive 5 hours home to New York City.
End of life can be harsh, unforgiving and terrifying.
Today, I met SOB at the hospital at 10am-ish. I had packed my gym clothes, planned to stop by the office, see Dad and get ready for a Sunday late afternoon wedding.
But ULOB didn’t look so good. I felt a foreboding aura.
Life in the hospital continues to move along, no matter whose heart is still beating. At 10:30am, in his room, the intercom interrupted my panic. “Mildred, please call the nurse’s station. Mildred, please call the nurse’s station.”
After SOB called POULOB to say that things were looking grim, I decided to walk around the corridors of the hospital, for “fresh” air. A disturbed woman was walking around and I thought I could help her by pointing her to the other side of the floor — the Addiction Unit.
SIDEBAR: I later learned that what I surmised was a drug issue was actually the absence-of-psyhotropic-drugs issue.
She found her former girlfriend’s room. But the putative father of the former girlfriend’s baby was there as well. Apparently, the disturbed woman had put her former giirlfriend in the hospital. Upon seeing the boyfriend/ex-boyfriend, the woman grabbed a mop as a weapon. When that weapon was taken away, she reached for a glass vase and threw it at the former girlfriend. And then another. SOB was within range and I could not get to her — there was a battle line between us. Security, the cops, crazy calls from the jilted woman threatening to kill the ex-girlfriend patient followed. “She’s coming back. She ain’t stupid. She’s psychotic. Why you think I broke up with her!”
And, in a room in the midst of a war zone, lay my uncle not so gently dying of complications from a fall. His lungs were full of fluid and no antibiotic was helping. He was not lucid.
12:00 noon: “Mildred, please call the nurse’s station. Mildred, please call the nurse’s station.”
SIDEBAR: Who is Mildred and why is she MIA? And why did her parents name her that?
ULOB’s breathing became increasing labored. Sometimes he looked like he was in sheer terror and I told him to squeeze my hand, and he squeezed so hard that I felt faint.
Other times, I think he was in a different time and place. At one point, I said, “Am I Elsie?” referring to my mother, his sister. He nodded and calmed a bit. He had happy memories with Mom.
But mostly there was desperation at not being able to catch his breath. Regardless of the oxygen in his nose and the medicines coursing through his veins, ULOB couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe easily and couldn’t shake the pneumonia that developed in his lungs. He was in a death spiral.
1:00pm: “Mildred, please call the nurse’s station. Mildred, please call the nurse’s station.”
Mildred, for G-d’s sake, please answer the page or quit. You have been AWOL for hours!!!
POULOB arrived in the time it took for my to drive from the middle of Cape Cod to Stamford, Connecticut. (3 hours.)
ULOB perked up when POULOB came. POULOB didn’t want to understand the severity of the situation. She wanted to know what to tell his friends when she went dancing tonight, as ULOB and POULOB often did.
SOB, POULOB and I took turns holding his hands and reassuring him.
3:30pm: The ex-girlfriend patient was at the nurse’s station retelling the story to anyone who wanted to hear what happened. Needless to say, many patients in hospital garb with open flaps were in the hallway to hear the story that proves life is a carnival (i.e., a freak show).
5:00pm: “Mildred, please call the nurse’s station. Mildred, please call the nurse’s station.”
Really, Millie?
5:30pm: ULOB had some chivalry left in him. He didn’t fall of the cliff, as it were, until POULOB left.
SOB and I held his hands and whispered gently in his ears that we loved him and he was safe as his breathing got shallower, and as he got less agitated, thanks to modern medicine.
6:00pm: “Shia, wakey, wakey!!” ULOB’s roommate was asleep for too long and needed some exercise. Earlier, another inmate had come by, looking to be amused by the man who talks to himself. But Shia was sleepy, sleepy.
Note to self: if there are no private rooms, go to a different hospital.
In the cacophony of the world, ULOB’s breathing got slower and the blueness of death was in his fingers.
Slowly, gently, quietly, ULOB left this world living life on his terms, except for these last ten days.
Time of death: 7:15pm.
Rest in peace, Uncle Larry.
