My brother and my husband and I have told each other more than once, more than twice these past few days, that we just want Dad to die.  It sounds so cold to put it in writing, but we are faced with some serious odds, not only for Dad’s survival, but for his quality of life should he survive.  Let me rephrase that thought—we just want Dad to die with dignity, before all of it is stripped from him.  He has a gaping wound above his anus (from sitting in a hospital bed for three weeks) that is infected.  He has fluid in his brain that is making him incoherent and crazy.  He talks to people who aren’t there.  He curses.   He fusses with his sheets and his blankets and bares his skinny legs and sometimes a lot more than that.  He refuses to eat. 

We’re waiting on an appointment with the neurologist next week to determine if he is fit for a shunt in his brain, a surgery that will allow the fluids to drain to his abdomen.  He might be more clear-headed after that.  He might not be.  All of these things we are waiting on are not things that should be waited on.  They are things that must be dealt with NOW.  But how to do that when insurance and hospital and health care protocol take time.  Dad is cycling through a bureaucracy within an already strained rural health care system.  The odds are against him.  His family doctor is two doors down from his house, but his family doctor didn’t seem up to speed on the devastating effects of UTIs in the elderly.  Weeks and tests went by.  Finally, my brother took him to the ER, the only 24/7 ER within miles and miles these days (Our nearby country hospital had been bought out and shut down a few years ago).  He spent three days in that ER before they could get him to a room and dedicated doctor.  Three more days with a UTI that he probably had for a month.  Days and days of doing nothing brought him down.  Days and days of waiting for help brought him even lower.  And now we’re waiting on a neurologist who isn’t available for another week, while fluid continues to press on his brain and give him epic headaches and make him talk to people who aren’t there.  His wound specialist, who inspected his wound today, will send directives tomorrow.  We must wait another 24 hours.  We ring the buzzer in his room and no one comes.  The nurses and the CNAs look exhausted and defensive.  Might as well be waiting on Santa Claus. 

He asked for his pistol yesterday.  He has asked my brothers and I to shoot him.  “One bullet,” he keeps saying.  He grabs my hand and points it at his temple.  This should be his right.  If assisted suicide were legal in this country, places like this shithole where twenty-somethings change his diaper would not exist.  At least they wouldn’t exist in the state they are in—fluorescent lights, cheap furniture, cheerless “game rooms” where the elderly sit like baby birds in their wheelchairs, waiting for their meals to be placed in front of them at 4:30 in the afternoon.  People asking for help and being ignored.  You can have all this if you’ve got the right insurance.  Dad gets a narrow bed by the wall, and his roommate gets a window.  If Dad doesn’t start showing progress in his rehab, which—at this pace—how can he, the insurance will stop paying, and it will be on us.  $8000 a month—a mortgage on a million-dollar home—for the privilege of a dreary bed by the wall and a roommate who leaves his TV on all night and exhausted CNAs who ignore the buzzer.

My brother and I discuss how short life is now, how we could be in this state in a few, short decades.  A decade goes by so fast.  I can see that his tending to my father for over a month, day and night, is taking its toll.  He’s a changed man now, a different man from the one he was last month.  I can already see those lifelong protective layers of caution and indecision and moderation slipping off of him.  Who knows who he will be in a year.  Perhaps we’ll all go skydiving.