It's an Education

I arrived in Massachusetts yesterday. This has been a process curiously filled with gratitude, hard work, sidelong glances, and a lot of humor. Some of the humor has come from my father. A good deal has been between all the rest of us. NURSE: So, is your Dad going home by ambulance? LISA (my sister in law): Well, if you can't get the limo with the TV and wet bar. ME: And a moon roof. LISA: Oh, yeah, moon-roof is very important. NURSE: I think the limo's at the garage. ME (hopefully): How about the helicopter? LISA: Too windy. NURSE: Ambulance it is!

This morning Dad made it perfectly plain to all comers he does not want feeding tubes or any other damned nuisance tube, and that he wanted to get out of the hospital and back to his apartment. The goodwill and hard work of all the various people--the doctors, the nurses and their aides, his case worker at Berkshire Medical Center, the amazing people of Hospice Care in the Berkshires, the people I dealt with at the home-care agency (and the lovely aide, Debbie, who is on tonight's 6-6 shift), and the aides and staff at Kimball Farms, where his apartment is--has been just shy of miraculous. There's been a lot of information to absorb (at one point my sister-in-law, and I, and Dad's assistant Susan, were all sitting there taking the exact same notes) but the result is that by 4pm Dad was back home.

I just spent an hour researching funeral homes, for if and when. More information to absorb (particularly as Dad wants the minimum spent there, in favor of a big-ass party later...so totally like my father to plan one more party where he's the guest of honor).

I should probably go to sleep. But in certain weird ways this is such an education....