Soul Mosaic

Photo by author

It was Wednesday night, March 7, 2013, about 7 pm. We were heading home in the morning. I had completed my part in “Dad’s death process,” honorably. But at the moment, he was being a real bastard to the young hospice nurse, and we needed to calm him down. So we headed back to the hospice facility.

How long’s this gonna take?

He had early dementia and was dying of stomach cancer. His care had become too much for Mom to keep him at home anymore, and his end was getting close. So, my husband and I had traveled to their home in Pennsylvania to help my Mother move him into a local hospice there.

The Maria Hall Hospice facility was a peaceful place, located on the grounds of the Motherhouse for the Catholic order of nuns there — the Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius, in Danville, PA. My Mother’s sister had belonged to that order before she died years earlier in a tragic car accident. For the last several years, my parents had been living nearby in a retirement community run by that same order of nuns.

In his typical fashion, he was being difficult to the end. When we moved him in on Monday, he glared at me from his chair and said,

“Well, what do I do now?”

I suggested rest.

On Tuesday, as he lay there, he looked up at me and asked,

“So, how long’s this gonna take?”

As kindly as I could, I simply said, “Well, Dad, I don’t know. That’s between you and God.”