Kirke apologist

My dad's mom is dying.

This is sort of — when I say that, I'm afraid that it conveys something like terminal cancer, or heart failure, or something terrible that will nevertheless take a few days to achieve its goal (inasmuch as you can say that any of them have "goals").

That's not what I mean.

Thursday, she suffered a massive stroke.

My dad, being who he is, rode with her to the hospital knowing what they were going to say, and at the end —

See, the thing about this is —

Well.

She's a hundred and one, would be a hundred and two in December. December 18th.

Up until, literally, Thursday, she kept all of her faculties about her. My dad could ask her, "do you remember...?" and she would give the year and the day that whatever it was happened.

And one of the things about this was that she communicated that she did not want to have extraordinary measures taken in the event that something like this happened.

So at the hospital, when they went, "we did imaging and..." and began talking about things like NG tubes and limited quality of life, they asked my dad:

What do you want to do?

The paperwork is all there, the advanced directive, everything broken down into neat and tidy bits that sound much simpler on paper than they really are.

What do you want to do?

They asked if he wanted to take her home. To let her die at home.

He panicked at the thought.

There is a facility in the valley that is for short-term care of the kind that she is going to need.

He signed the paperwork, and they took her there.


He called me this evening. "I guess you've heard what happened."

I had, of course, because my mother sent me a brief, business-like text on Thursday after they were told there was no hope.

My sibling followed up this afternoon, with a note to answer your fucking phone for once. Not in as many words, but the intent was clear.

"Yeah," I said. "Mom and [sibling] texted me."

A beat, then: "They said she's not going to get much better."

He rambled for two, three minutes, letting me know what he'd decided, before:

"Do you think I made the right choice?"

...


I am thirty-seven years old. I am going to be thirty-eight in roughly two weeks.

I do not feel old enough to have heard my dad say that, to ask me that. I know he didn't ask my sibling. I know he did not ask my mom.

Do you think I made the right choice?

To let her die. To do nothing; to simply keep her comfortable, lightly sedated, until such a point as she is able to let go.

Was that the right choice?

How the fuck am I supposed to know?


"Yeah," I said. "She's made her wishes pretty clear. I think you made the right decision."


Sitting with that. Do I tell anyone? Do I want anyone else to know? We haven't been close in a long time, but — I mean, fuck, this is going to destroy my dad; she's the last family he has left. Everyone else is gone. What do I say? What do I do?

There is no right or wrong answer, only a certain profound sadness and awareness of how very much I do not want to go back to the valley in winter.

So it goes.


Standing in the kitchen after midnight, kneading pan de muerto so that I have it for All Souls Day, aware that I should have had it on the first, but the first is All Saints Day, and who do I know that was a saint, who died? Sixto wasn't a saint, nor Craig nor Blair nor my aunt nor Tyler. My grandparents weren't, certainly not. My uncle, no. My other uncle, certainly not, though I liked him. My best friend, Royce — I mean, one of my fondest memories of him was driving back from Tillamook at night, listening to him tell me about the time he dropped acid and went to Buckingham Palace, "when I realized that, once I got back to Utah, I wasn't going to be Mormon anymore, so I might as well have a good time" — not exactly gunning for sainthood.

I don't know any saints.

I know a lot of good people who died in ways both horrible and mundane. I have loved a great number of people who have passed on.

I know that next year, when I make the ofrenda, when I do the things I do not tell anyone about, tiny rituals that are too private to share, there will be another name.


Eat the bread. Drink the coffee. Say the names. No one is truly dead so long as they live on in your memory, and you won't forget, will you?

I won't forget.

I promise.