With Dignity
on Jan 17 in Blog Post by johnhornor
This weekend my father, at 72, had an accident. He’d been sick, some sort of upper respiratory infection with terrible – and I mean absolutely ghastly – coughing. So, he was heading back to the guest room in his house to take a nap (which he does for about 4 to 6 hours a day – yes, my father sleeps as much as a big cat, which is kind of a warning sign) and he starts coughing. He can’t catch his breath because of the coughs and ultimately, he blacks out, pitches forward nearly breaks his nose. He wakes up and my mom is rolling him over onto his back and trying to staunch the gouts of blood flowing from his nose.
Monday nights are dinner-at-the-parents night. I take Rojo and The Grunch over there, we order pizza or cook burgers or do taco salad. Sometimes my wife comes. Sometimes not.
Last night, it was taco salad and my dad presided over the table with two black eyes and a nose skinned raw and oozing. He looked like shit and was in general miserable. He disappeared after dinner and when I looked for him, found him in the living room sitting alone in, if not the dark, a very low lighting situation.
I tried to laugh off his injuries with the normal jokes – “I bet the other guy looks worse!” – but he wasn’t having it. Just as dour and depressed as I’ve ever seen him. Ever since he retired at 66, he’s been destitute. And these last three years have been hard on him; he’s had a heart attack, he lost the lease to his duck club of 40 years, and he sold his interest in his cabin, aka Whiskey Tree, due to legal conflict with one of the other members. Grappling with the natural deterioration of his body has been hard and these other blows have really sapped him.
So, with black eyes, nose oozing red, he sat in the dark and said to me, “I’m just tired of living.”
“Don’t say stupid shit like that,” I said. I’m not fluffing the conversation here – at this stage in my life, I can call my dad out on histrionics. He’d do the same to me. Or, at least he used to.
He quickly backtracked, told me that he’s just exhausted from his sickness and now with the injury, doubly so. I let it pass. But damn if I’m not gonna be on his ass. In fact, my sister and I have planned a little project for him. Hopefully we’ll lure him out of his depression.
Then last weekend, I came across this video. And it makes me furious at my father for being so lackluster and depressed when there’s folks out there fighting real battles and trying to give their final days meaning and dignity. I’ve always loved Terry Pratchett’s books, but now I’m quite taken with the man.
Will let you all know what develops.
Terry Pratchett – Choosing to die from Lisette Leona on Vimeo.
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So Random
Get Some Books, Y’all
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Let us know if the project works.
Pratchett has been a favorite of mine for years, but right now he’s my inspiration for aging and my inevitable decline.
“When I can no longer write books, I don’t know if I want to go on living”- Fuck man, that’s equal parts heartbreaking, scary, and brave.
Thought provoking video, it makes me think about Pratchett in a different light that’s for sure. A very brave endeavor to so publicly explore his own final options.
I’m 55. My dad died from Alzheimer’s complications, in his 80s. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve read — the Western Canon was never some dry didactic fossil to me, it was an active friend.
And I’ve known, since I was a teenager, that our inevitable mortality makes it necessary to think rationally about how we will manage our demise — literally, exerting the last control over our lives that we are able to. And it seems to me that is the human thing to do: rather than let ‘fate’ or ‘nature’ decide the time and the fashion — pick the way & means that doesn’t devastate your family emotionally and financially; that grants you a minimum of dignity, and minimizes your suffering.
When it becomes inevitable, and the future curves of the downward spiral are inescapably grim and horrific — then checking out is not cowardice or crime, but rather the kindest and most moral thing you can do,for yourself and your loved ones. My aunt, who I revered, had a chance to ‘load up’ on her morphine and take an early out from her cancer — due to moxie and bravado she declined — but toward the very end, if she could have traveled back in time, she would have taken the out.