For my dad, Robert D. Cushing

On what would have been his 90th birthday

 

Again Death announces itself with a telephone call.

With my partner John’s death, the call came late, after the fact, with a policeman breaking Death’s news.

My mother’s caller was the nurse at CECA saying she had tested positive for COVID. Death hadn’t taken my mother, but in her frail state, in May’s pandemic peak she couldn’t last long. And I couldn’t see her. I was locked out of the building. The nurses were locked in.

Now another nurse is calling about my father who is 89 with dementia and living at Oak Knoll. He is weak and his sodium levels low. They want to give a treatment, an IV. Death isn’t announcing itself. Seems coy. But I’ve met Death before and not forgotten. I know not to make Death my friend, but neither to fight Death as an enemy. I ask, “When do we consider hospice?”

The response is fast. I am transferred to the social worker immediately who says she will ask if he qualifies. She thinks he will. While I am in a work meeting the decision is made and he is transitioned into hospice care by the end of this Tuesday. We cancel the IV, re-write the treatment orders to make sure no health change will get him transferred to the hospital. Most of his life he avoided hospital. When his prostate enlarged but he lost the language and memory to say what was happening, he landed in the hospital, and the catheter insertion made him scream. I have no doubt he wants to avoid going back.

I ask the hospice nurse what everyone asks the hospice nurse: How long? I couch it with, “I know you can’t exactly say,” and expect no answer. But she is quite forthcoming and says, “Come soon.” Death is moving on the invitation being issued.

My sister Sheila and I talk for the third or is it the 4th time that day? OK, she is making plans to get from NYC to me. She does have a work event the next day and neither of us believe dad will die quickly. He was always late and certainly stubborn. I’ll pick her up at the Hartford bus station on Thursday morning and we’ll go straight to Framingham.

When we arrive, his eyes are clouded but he might be saying his signature, “Oh My God” whenever we arrived to visit. A nurse is there feeding him pureed food. I can guess the brown is beef and the white potatoes. The black patch reveals a dark green layer when mixed. It’s spinach. He wants it. Flicks his tongue, opens his mouth, like a baby bird waiting to be fed regurgitated food by its parent.

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