I don’t want to compete for a prize on this, but I will share what I’ve been dealing with this season.
Right after Christmas, my father appeared on his neighbor’s back porch, claiming that people were trying to kidnap him and he was trying to quit smoking. My father, 75, lived in the rambling brick house on the edge of Ravenna, Ohio, that he and my mother bought in 1987, when I was 9. My mother passed away from complications related to lung cancer two years ago, and he’d been living alone since then. His situation had been deteriorating. He had a host of his own health issues, stacked with grief and depression, not a lot of friends, and refused any help my sisters and I offered him. Recently, he had interactions with police due to his poor driving, minor accidents, getting lost, and other things. He forgot how to use his phone and would call me, panicked, after hours of trying to hit buttons.
Alarmed, the neighbor reached out to my sister via Facebook. She asked him to call an ambulance and would meet our father at the hospital.
My father hated hospitals and was a notoriously bad patient, removing his IV and checking himself out of places against medical advice. “I’m fine,” he’d slur after his third stroke. He was verbally and sometimes physically abusive to hospital staff, and latent racist tendencies would bubble up when “that BLACK doctor won’t listen to me.” So of course we all had a lot of anxiety about him being there. I drove out to Ohio the next morning.
By the time I got there, he was in physical and chemical restraints. The nurses were already versed on his behavior and he’d tried to escape a few times. His vitals were all over the place, on the verge of AFib constantly, pulse up and down, blood pressure super high. He wasn’t really aware of where he was or why he was there. It wasn’t clear what had happened. No sign of infection, probably not a stroke, but he wouldn’t lie still for a CAT scan or MRI, so the doctors didn’t know. He was just… Out of it.
My sisters and I took shifts watching over him, trying to get him to communicate. He didn’t recognize us often, would forget things that happened moments ago, and would nod off every few minutes. He couldn’t swallow, so they installed a food tube up his nose. He stabilized, but didn’t improve much.
I spent New Year’s at my sister’s house in Shaker Heights, and over the next few weeks traveled back and forth every weekend. Staying in Ohio for a few days to begin cleaning out my father’s house and get his bills and finances in order. We determined that he would no longer live in that house and would have to go to assisted living or a nursing facility, depending on how he recovered. He showed some progress here and there, participated in physical therapy sometimes and seemed to understand where he was, but still regularly pulled out his tubes and tried to get dressed and leave the hospital, go home. We hadn’t tried to explain about his future, we knew he’d be livid if we told him he was never going back to the house. He would tell us we were dead to him, etc.
But it just wasn’t possible. The house was bad. What his dogs hadn’t chewed up, mice had. There was mouse shit on every surface of the kitchen, even inside the refrigerator. He had forgotten about things on the stove and there were burned crusty masses in pans. He had disordered purchasing that was reminiscent of hoarding–multiple microwaves still in boxes. Drawers upon drawers of socks, many unopened. So many belts, so many reading glasses. Someone had sold him a chainsaw. The battery in his Toyota RAV4 was dead–he claimed that someone had hit the SUV, damaging the rear door, which caused the dome light to stay on, draining the battery. It was just that the switch was left on, and he didn’t know how to switch it off anymore. The passenger seat had a horrible burn from when “the dog” knocked a cigarette onto the seat. The brakes were shot. The other car, in the garage, he had attempted to jumpstart with his riding lawnmower. Let’s not describe the bathroom. I ordered a dumpster and we started to clean it out.
So after about a month, on a Wednesday, we met with the hospital staff and went over his care plan. They were optimistic that he could get better with time and physical therapy, and that he could start on solid food again. He might be able to transfer to assisted living in a few weeks. We said ok and they planned to start adjusting his treatment that Friday. Thursday night, he went into AFib and was sent to the emergency room.
The next morning, when he stabilized, the doctor asked my sister, “is he DNR?” Groggily, at 3am, she affirmed, “that’s what the paperwork says.” The doctor said my father was very sick and there wasn’t much for a prognosis. Following that, the doctor essentially put him into palliative care and ordered removal of his IV and nutrient tubes. No food, no water. Only morphine from then on.
Now for most of human survival we think about the rule of three: you can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. With my father’s poor health, the doctor expected him to pass within just a few days. Again, I drove out to Ohio. As I drove, I said aloud, “I am driving to my father’s death.” My sisters were struggling with it all, we went out to dinner and drank a bit to cope. We sat vigil there in the hospital for days. They brought us a bereavement basket. We got a minister to do Last Rites. He slowly faded. But after 5 days was still going.
Meanwhile, all this shit in the government was happening. My wife and I are both federal employees, and while I was traveling to Ohio every few days she was navigating all the governmental mess and our two young kids on her own. I didn’t have the mental resilience to be there with her, listen to her frustrations and outrage, it was too much. My office decided to order everyone back to the office with only 15 hours’ notice, right after the inauguration, and I had to figure out how to commute from Silver Spring to Anacostia while juggling kids and everything, after being fully remote for two years and not having a desk at the office. So while my father lingered, I decided to go home to rest and reset, to spend time with my wife and kids. That was Tuesday the 4th. I sat in a daze on Wednesday, but on Thursday my wife asked if I wanted to go rock climbing at our gym in Rockville. I needed to do something physical, shake up my brain and body a bit, do something discrete and fulfilling, so of course I would join her. We were just tying up to do our first climb of the day when my phone buzzed. It was my sister. “Guys… I think he’s gone.”
We got bubble tea and went home. I spent the evening with my kids, explaining what happened and that I’d be away for a few days. I drove back to Ohio again that Friday morning. I signed the cremation order for my father. No services, at his request. I wrote his obituary on my phone while I ate lunch at his favorite restaurant. My sister and I sat and sorted through his coin collection (mostly worthless, but some interesting things here and there). We went and filled up the dumpster we ordered with trash and things from his house. We had a bit of a wake, and everyone was pretty well smashed by 6pm. A friend brought tons of food. We watched the Superbowl. Then I went home and took a week off to grieve and rest.
Every single day of this, I rode my bike, outdoors, at least one mile. I did it in freezing rain and drifting snow in Cleveland, I did it in the early hours before getting in the car to drive to Ohio or back to Maryland. I did it in the evening, with fading light, while my kids were getting ready for bed. Every day.
That’s one of the great things about this little competition, it works as an anchor, sometimes. Whatever else is happening, I have to ride a little. It’s good for the brain, good for the blood. Without it I would certainly be in a worse place. Thank you all.
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Anyway I’m carrying my pedal wrench again now.
