THE HOME STRETCH by Cheryl Corson

After the hospice nurse and social worker leave on the Monday after Christmas, Sadia, our first private nurse, arrives at 4pm. It’s been a long three days to get to this point.

There is a drug changing-of-the-guard as my Dad will no longer need most of his drugs, and morphine will take the place of oxycodone, docusate, losartan, and others too hard to pronounce, like ketoconazole. Except my father doesn’t like morphine any more than he liked the other pills, which means when I put all the plastic pill bottles the V.A. Hospital gave him into a plastic bag to take home, it seems to weigh several pounds.

After Dad dies, hospice will come and remove their drugs – morphine, halperidol, larazapan, senna – the extra- large diapers, the plastic pads called “chucks,” surgical gloves, catheter bags, and the hospital bed.

I ask what to do with the pills. The hospice nurse says the CDC says to flush them down the toilet, but there’s no fucking way I’m going to do that. There are enough bi-sexual fish in the Chesapeake Bay. I could sell them to Marion Barry, I guess, but when I have the energy, I’ll empty the bottles, destroy the labels with my father’s name on them, hammer the pills to pieces, and mix the dust with used kitty litter, then take it to the dump. It’s something to do.

Jenny, the hospice social worker stopped by today. She said goodbye to my Dad. He gave her a high-five. We all know that after the week-long vacation she’ll start tomorrow he’ll be gone. And so it is that people do their jobs, and come and go while other people lay in bed dying. And for some, dying takes a while. I’d say my father is in extra innings, and while he’s not eaten any food for about two weeks, his new favorite dish is crushed ice with a few teaspoons of grape juice over it. We call them “slurpies.”

He’s being a good sport. Now that it’s hard for him to talk, he moved his index finger around in a circle last night, pantomiming a request. I was there with Sadia. I guess, “Turn the thermostat up?” No. “Turn the light up?” No. “Raise the bed?” No. He finally laughs a silent laugh and we join him, losing this round of charades. Then Sadia gets it: “Turn on the fan?” Yes! That’s it.
I draw up a menu of common commands he can point to. Now he has a hand bell he can ring so he won’t strain himself calling to us in the next room. We adjust. Each day is different.

His eyes and his heart are wide open, more so than any other time in his life. It’s the home stretch and he’s teaching me the biggest lesson there is – how to face death – how to be fully present, how to lie in bed and shit in a diaper, and be a gentleman to the nurses who change him.

He was holding out on me, but how happy I will always be to have spent these days with him. Never until now would I have called him my hero.