His hospital bed is at an angle in the middle of the livingroom, so he can see the TV but also so there can be the little table with all his Care stuff on it and also room to Give the care. So his back is to the Front Door. When i came around in front of him, he opened his eyes and saw me and started to cry.
Cry like tears flowing, his face all how faces get when there is crying going on. So i sat down and he just cried a little while. This was new. He talked about how it's hard now to hear out of his "good" ear. He's had a bad ear from a broken eardrum most his life, but now the good ear seems gone. And that seemed to be the one last thing gone. About how it's just too hard to keep living this way.
He said a few times that he wanted me to "go with him", but knew i couldn't. There's more, but no need to put it here.
And he asked me to take down four photographs in frames from those shelves at the end of the living room . His mother and father, his daughter that died so young, and I included the one of him as a little boy with his cousin on a pony and then the one of the 5 prize winning heifers. He wanted them packed in a box. Done. He wanted to again talk about how it would go with the cremation and how would Blake come for his ashes and put them in a Prince Albert can, take them, up to that little lake in Colorado and feed him to the trout. At one point, when after a long silence, he began to silently cry again, i found myself leaning down and putting my head to his.
I'd thought i'd be there maybe an hour but it was most of the day. When i got home, Alz B's son Bill called that it was a good day to change the oil in the car and so i went, we have been waiting for this good day for that for quite a while past the mileage point, and while he changed the oil and rotated the tires we talked about a lot of things, it was easy and there was goodness to it so, an Antidote. Nelia and i speculated about our crappy gardening this year and that was good too. I came home at dusk. Tay had waited at the gate. I used to think i didn't know what she did when i'm gone...but then realized i can look at what sticks are by the gate or elsewhere. Her important sticks were right there at the gate.
So...it might have been just a practice run. Or, it might be....well, it. No way to know. But it doesn't matter. It is what it is and it is really Something, this dying.
and Look. Oh and eeee and EEEEEEEEEE, eeeeee, o and Look...
it's happening. Finally. So very Few in comparison to the "normal", but oh and just, Oh
i also saw a flight of migrating Pelicans on the way into town. Migrating Pelicans. Can you believe it????? But i saw them.