Les the Last

So they are preparing to take Julie back to her house for hospice care. They’re setting up the equipment this afternoon. This evening she’ll be back in familiar surroundings. She will go to the house and then at some point in the near future she will go home. 

The decision was made yesterday. The chemo they have been pumping into her body is not doing her any good—in fact, it is making her organs struggle more than they had prior. Her body has had all that it can take. 

I remember being in her house when we talked with hospice about care for mom. That was on a Thursday afternoon. I had told Julie that I had the number to call when she passed so that everything could be taken care of. It seemed to me that mom was lucid and knew what was happening. When I told her I loved her, she replied that she loved me too. 

A few hours later at supper time Julie called and asked about the number. She was taking mom to UT as she had become unresponsive. Before midnight mom had taken her leave. I think she knew what was going on and willed herself to let go of this life—she was ready for the next one. They never even set up the hospital bed for mom. 

Now we’re here with Julie. Same house. Similar situation. Julie is struggling and the time to leave is near. Don’t know when that will be. 

It strikes me that I will then be the last of my family here on earth. 

PD died way too early of brain cancer. His was the first funeral in the family. I still cannot get over the sight of Dad sitting there in his wheelchair while we endured what was an awful funeral given by someone who did not know PD from Adam’s off ox. I was so angry that I swore on the way home that I should write my own so that it wouldn’t be such a mess. Final words should be from someone who actually had some emotional investment in the person who is being remembered. The ‘acrostic’ sermon was banal and bad—I’m being generous. 

Dad died the next year and it was cause for celebration. He had endured so much that was unnecessary. Would that he had died when he had the worst of his strokes. Would that he hadn’t been kept here by faulty feelings and Faye’s misguided thoughts. Again, it was not a good service. The preacher acted as if the only life Dad had ever known was when he was an invalid and a shell of his former self. I wasn’t invited to participate. I let it go. 

Mom fell Labor Day weekend before I started at Graystone. The doctors kept saying that she didn’t have any neurological issues, but the contusion on the side of her face was awful to behold. She never really fully recovered from that. Within a few weeks she too was gone. I got to do her service and was grateful for that. 

Janet and I were always close—oldest and youngest sort of thing I guess. I had driven her back and forth to Vanderbilt a bunch of times. I had been there to offer my stem cells as a treatment for her. But the treatments got to be just a way of trying to keep her here. I had said my goodbye before I left to go to Gethsemani for my annual retreat. She was still here when I returned. She passed on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Eric, Laura, and I were with her—singing hymns and reading Psalms and tending to her last breaths. I did her service as well. 

And now we hold vigil watching over Julie as cancer again ravages a body. Lots of people are praying for her and her family. Lots of concern has been expressed. I am appreciative of all of that. 

I think I am already feeling the weight of being the last one. I’m the youngest, so there is something expected about that. I’m also the religious so I have been able, when asked to do so, to offer comfort and prayer and stories for the others. I have been the ‘family priest’ on many occasions. Not something I was always eager to do but a service I could handle when needed. 

This one hits heavy. I have become an orphan with the passing of my parents. And now I feel like something of an ‘only child’ with the passing of my siblings. All those moments of growing up and celebrating and life and death that we all shared are now left on my shoulders, but there is no one else that carries them in the same way. There is no one else who remembers the stories and the sayings and the laughter.  The calendar will be filled with days and memories that ring more hollow now. I am not able to recount them right now—they pop into my mind at odd moments. I am filled with sadness. But none of them are left to call and share it. 

Is this survivor’s guilt? Is this the kind of depression that Mom experienced after PD’s passing—she was so sad! Is this part of what it feels like to be the last one? I’m not there yet—but the day is coming. The generations rise and fade away. I, too, will fade in God’s good time. In the meantime I will now be Les the Last. 

P.S. Julie passed peacefully on Sunday, August 17.