The Last Bed

I knew it would come eventually. Dad's had a bad heart since way back when I was in college, when he started having heart attacks, and he’s had two just this year.  Add to that his many other health problems and 85 years of living, and we knew his time was coming.  But I guess things can still sneak up on you.

On a Tuesday, Dad had been upstairs to celebrate Adam‘s birthday with us. It was so sweet, and he had stayed a long time. Thursday he hadn’t felt up to coming upstairs for Thanksgiving. By Monday he was on hospice. 

When the young fellow from the medical supply company came that night to set up the adjustable hospital bed, I couldn’t help but think about it being the last. The last bed Dad would sleep on in this earth life. 

I can’t imagine how many there have been; Montana where he was born, a dozen or so stretching from San Diego to Northern California, and many more around the country used on trips, a few in Mexico even, not to mention Mother Earth, his mattress and pillow for a hundred nights under the stars. 

He didn’t use it long. 

I had been sleeping on a borrowed cot in his room for a few nights to be close for when he needed me. The first few days were a struggle, as we worked on balancing the medication to relieve his pain.  One day in particular had been terrible.  He was in so much pain, and though as a doula I am well trained to physically deal with someone in this state, my words failed me.  Digging deep into my mental tool kit, I came up empty.  When a mama is in labor,  I tell her the pain will be gone in less than a minute, and then she can rest.   I tell her that soon her prize will be here, and the pain will be gone. I remind her the pain is worth it; it's bringing her new joy to her waiting arms.

I had no carrot to dangle, no promise of relief, no light at the end of the tunnel for my dad.  We just rode the waves of his pain together for hours, me trying every position and comfort measure I knew, him tolerating it for 30 seconds or so before needing me to switch it up.  When the hospice meds finally came though, I had collapsed in relief to see him settled and pain free.

On his last night, by 3am I was well worn out.  Guy and I had sat up with him for hours into the night, listening as his breathing became more and more labored, but still he fought on.  He didn't want to go, and he was working hard to stay.  I finally began to fade and longed for my cot, but I couldn't let myself be that far away, so I pushed it up to the side of dad's bed.  I laid my head on his mattress and held my hand on his arm.  I whispered to him, "Dad, I'm so tired.  I am going to take a little nap. I'm sorry if I'm asleep when you need to go."  I drifted, listening to his heavy, rhythmic breaths.

An hour or so later, I suddenly awoke.  Strangely, Guy, who was sleeping in the recliner near by, woke as well.  It was the quiet that had called us out of sleep.  "I think he might be gone," I told Guy, feeling my dad's skin, but noting how warm he was.  I couldn't be sure.  When Mom passed, she would only take a breath or two every minute for a while. He might still be here.  Ellie and Tessa had wanted to be there when Grandpa left, so Guy went to get them.  As he headed out of the room, Dad moved his jaw a few times, and I calmed at the awareness that I had not been asleep when he left.  I sat holding his hand, staring, and waiting for the next breath.  

But there was none.  

That movement had been the last thing he would do in this life.  The hospice nurse told us later that it is quite common.  "The will to live is so strong," she said, "they try to take just one more breath."  By the time the girls came in with Guy, I said simply, "He's gone."  I had tried to feel for a pulse and listen with the stethoscope, but it's hard to know if you are just in the wrong spot, or if the silence is exactly that; silence.

Dad passed away in the hours just before dawn on Friday, barely four days after his bed had come.  There is something so strange in that kind of silence.  And things tricked me in the hours after.  Dad's overweight dog has quite a snore, and it kept fooling me.  I would reach to touch him as I passed his bed. My drive to care for him kept calling me back on duty.  

The sweetest nurse came and tended to my dad before he was taken away, and once he was gone, the silence was one you could actually see.  The beds were empty; his own bed, and the borrowed bed that had been his last.

A few days later, I helped carry that last bed, in separate pieces, out to the equipment truck.  It was the first of many things that have left his little place where he spent the last three and a half years.  For me it marked the moment strangely.  This bed, a harbinger of death, moving on to be used again, a universal wave running through it, connecting us all to that someday-end; that, the last of our many beds.

It's strange having Dad gone.  We moved here to be with him, and our days were structured and run by the clock that was set to his schedule.  Every time I looked at the clock for weeks since he passed, it was with the haunting habit of checking for dad's next need.  

His silence is so strong.