Stubborn and persistent, sometimes beyond the realistic end, I telephoned Pop four times this morning, as is my custom when he doesn’t answer at breakfast.
Hollowly, the ringing went to10 times. I imagined I heard someone trying to pick up the receiver. But nobody did.
Maybe if I let it ring to15 times, I theorized, Pop will regain his focus and pick up.
He is there, in his bed. But he is not there.
Clinging to the faintest thread that yesterday’s long-dreaded scenes were ephemeral, I wasn’t ready to surrender.
After talking to four of my five sisters yesterday, I probably should have.
He did not know any of us, and that was a thumping first.
A month and a day before his 94th birthday, Pop’s had mind betrayed him — for the last time? — and left him.
For those of us who are more optimists than realists, his mind melted overnight, although surely the condition has been developing incrementally, inexorably.
Eight months after entering a nursing home, the Papa I grew up with is gone.
Before dawn on Sunday, nurses found him wandering in a corridor where he had fallen.
He fell three times last week.
Now he is wearing an ankle bracelet. But I can’t ask him how it feels. The question does not register.
When Pop and I rang off yesterday, I said, “I love you,” and Pop said “Goodbye, doctor.”
The Kind-of End
“He is well ready to go,” said my oldest sister who shared one or two lucid moments with him yesterday.
Once, she said, Pop awakened and had one of those darting moments of evident comprehension. “I like your wig,” he told her. She laughed and said “Thanks.”
My sister was driving my 94-year-old stepmother home yesterday after a shaky non-verbal visit with my father.
My stepmother is ready to take her own leave. “I don’t understand what God is waiting for,” she said, impatiently.
Letting Go
As a family, we probably have counted Pop out 20 times in the last number of years.
Being greedy, I hope he has one more comeback in him.
