Epistle 8: The Man Who Cried Death
February 28, 2017
As your faithful scribe of the dying times of my mother and father, I am sending you another missive.
Before this, however, I must tell you the circumstances which plunged us headlong into this learning about the amnesia which surrounds death in dominant North American culture.
On February 23, 2011, Thomas Patrick Coleman, son of Johnny and Bridget Coleman, both immigrants from the land of Emerald Green, set out to celebrate his 82nd birthday. He laced up his brand new golf shoes and went to his favorite golf course. While teeing off on the fourth hole, he had a heart attack and died en route to the hospital.
Thomas was a man of great service. His memorial service, held on St. Patrick’s Day, was a fine tribute to a life well lived. As a labor union leader, he organized grave diggers, movie clerks, and other people making minimum wage. He was a mentor to many people as they sought a better way of life.
Not having thought much about death prior to his, I found the subsequent teachings to have been steep and expensive. What follows is the latest chapter in this learning.
It has been four months since I last described my father’s status. As I look back at the other epistles, I seem to have been crying “death” for quite some time.
To most, his death is not obvious - he is not dying of anything; he is just withering away as all living things are destined to do. His movement out of life has been slow, graceful, and methodical. The changes have been subtle and gradual.
Currently, he no longer gets out of bed and has lost bladder and bowel control. When he talks, it usually comes in one of two forms: 1) lots of questioning about where he is, with no ability to grasp names and 2) lots of references to odd or unusual circumstances.
Listening carefully reveals a poetry of sorts…yet you need to know about his life and believe he is slowly being gathered in by his old people to hear its beauty.
His still eats breakfast and sleeps 20+ hours per day. His vitals (blood pressure, blood oxygen, and pulse) are an interesting lesson in the body’s wisdom. Over the past four months there have been times when his blood oxygen and pulse have been very low. Each time, his activity level has slowed, and these metrics have recalibrated into normal limits.
When his pulse went into the low 40s for a few weeks, I contacted the palliative care doctor - by email of course. I was dumbstruck when he called immediately and asked if I wanted my dad to get some tests for a pacemaker to be installed. He quickly back-tracked, and mused that the tests might kill him…
Grief-filled moments abound. I will recount two of the most poignant. Early in February, before his 91st birthday on February 14, some of his writing emerged out of the piles, as if by magic. One was of an active imagination, an inner dialogue with his inner muse; the other a gratitude list. Both were written six years before, in advance of his 85th birthday. We both melted into a pool of tears as I read them.
What was most humbling for me, however, was the week I changed the diapers of both my father and my granddaughter, and then seeing her walking on her own as he became bedridden. Finally, she beginning to have names for those in her life, while he can only refer to people as “her” and “him.”
On my granddaughter’s last visit to our house, she arrived while Wendy was out. It was such a sight to see her walking around the house on her own, calling out “Winnie, Winnie…” Oh, the tears will flow when the day comes that she finds a name for me. For now what will suffice is her saying “hot, hot” as I tend to the fireplace.
The best part of writing for you is that your faces jump off the page…Then it becomes easy to remember the times we had learning together, and that we are here sorrowing side by side.
Brian