old old man! (pt. 2)
Tibetan Masters often tell how one's life is measured in breaths. that at the beginning of one's life, the number of breaths is set, and only the Masters themselves can live a bit longer, or, in some cases, choose when they've had enough and willfully pass out of this world.
enough is enough is enough. what the hell do you do when life won't let go? when you're over it, yet the body hangs on... to what, even? to processes in the medulla oblongata that won't or can't stop even if the concious will to live is gone? when you are a walking coma, occasionally lasping into brief lucidity, like a small piece of wreckage bobbing amongst the waves of unconscious timelessness... this is the old man. this is his deterioration....
i was informed yesterday, by one of his daughters (a great, rather intimidating woman who also happens to be my ex-attorney) as well as the dumb bitch who takes care of him that he is on the verge of death. the countdown is rapidly speeding up... while i actually doubt this, having a bit of experience with old people who take way too long to die --instead falling apart for prolonged periods, first-- it's true that the old man is losing it remarkably fast...
now, don't get me wrong, i like the old bastard. he's cranky and shriveled and funny as shit, sometimes, and i hate to see him this way. even as Alzheimer's-y as he is, he knows somethin ain't right.
he fell no less than 10 times between my arrival yesterday at 6pm and bedtime at 9pm... there's a wheelchair that stares angrily at him in the corner, freshly wiped down and disinfected-- cause the few times they've been able to convince him to sit in it, he's pissed himself-- but he won't use it with me for some reason. some macho thing, i'm guessing. i'm the only MAN around who takes care of him... even so, when he got up to "use the john" he barely made it five steps before he was clutching a desk and muttering, "oh shit, oh shit" as his knees buckled. he would've ended up on the ground if i hadn't pulled him backward into a rocking chair i grabbed at the last second. he almost fell out of that, but i held him back, pinned there. for about five minutes he mumbled and pointed out the window, drooling all over the place. when he finally came to, he got mad because he missed the end of Jeopardy, which he'd mostly slept through anyway.
i told him i was sorry, he didn't understand why, and then when i offered to help him take a piss, he said he didn't have to. i told him he'd been pissing himself and that i wasn't gonna tolerate that shit, but right then Wheel of Fortune came on, so i helped him over to the couch and he laid back down. everyone on TV was from Pendleton, of course. the only person who he's not sure is from Pendleton or not is me. at least he remembered my face this weekend... not my name, though. "Tryst?" "CHRIS" "WRIST?!" "CHRIS, you know, CHRIS-TO-PHER" "What?" "CHRISTOPHER GODDAMN IT" "Christopher?" "Jesus fucking christ" "What?" "NOTHING, NOTHING"...
reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead, i forgot all about the fortuitous wheel and about old man piss for a few moments until i hear what sounds like a snore, cut short. i look up and old man's eyes have rolled back in his head-- he's fuckin choking like crazy, but all quiet and weak. i start thinking, maybe if he chokes on his own spit he'll die quietly. then i think, i should do something, shouldn't i? is it not my obligation as a fellow human being to help this guy, regardless of his age and condition? luckily, before i could make up my mind, he snapped out of it. then he looked at me with those watery eyes for a long time. "you," he said, "you... [incoherent mumbling]"
now i'm thinking, 'oh shit, maybe he thinks i tried to choke him or something... no, he can't think that right?! i didn't even lay a hand on him...'
he quiets down and looks at me again, then, very quietly he says, "i don't want to live."
"what's that?" i ask.
"i... don't... want this..." i'm pretty sure that's what he said, but it was so quiet and crackly and sad, i almost didn't catch it above the roar of the TV.
now i have no fuckin idea what to say. my mind is reeling. wheel of fortune ends, so i tell him i'll help him take a piss if he still wants to.
wheel chair? he glares at me. bad idea, alright, we'll walk together. worse idea.
i'll spare you most of the details. suffice to say he fell many, many times --and brought me down with him-- trying to get from one end of the house to the other. at one point i was up against a quivering, sliding door to a closet --afraid it would pop off its hinge and crash down-- while the old man's head was buried in my chest, wobbling all around, half-standing, while i held him under his arm pits... i finally let him gently sink to the ground to rest. "it's cold," he said, "the wall's cold." "try to focus on walking," i told him, "and you won't be fuckin cold anymore." my shirt was covered with old man skin and yellow dandruff (he's bald and has scabs, for christ sake, where does all the dandruff come from?!). it's almost as if i started rubbing his bald head, i would whittle him down to nothing; just a pile of yellow spongey flakes, like from a giant eraser.
well, we finally made it into the bathroom, where he told me he was fine to take a piss by himself. i told him to sit down, just to be sure, turned around and went out into his bedroom to sit on the bed and wait. he immediately fell and cracked his chin open on the porcelain. blood shot everywhere. but again, he seemed fine once i mopped up the blood and patched up his face. never. broken. a. bone. goddamn.
as i helped him into bed, he picked up a large yellow something off the sheet and handed it to me. "what's that?" i asked him. "bug!" he said, dropping it into my hand. it was, in fact, a large scab that had chafed off his back or head at some point. i didn't tell him so, but threw it away and washed my hands.
all night i slept on the single mattress next to his bed, instead of the guest room down the hall. needless to say i got only 4-5 hours of solid sleep despite the fact that he went to bed at 9pm and me at 10:30... his screaming in his sleep, his snoring, his struggle to get up and go to the bathroom every hour just about made me suffocate him with a pillow... but it was fine, because it had to be. and because we talked a bit before sleep. he told me about World War II and how he was a pilot. about what it was like at night, sleeping with all those guys you never knew if you'd see again. he kept losing whatever he was saying and telling me his feet were cold. then he'd say if he kept his hands on his feet, they'd get warm, but i guess they never did because he mentioned that over and over and over again. i finally gave up asking him questions and then he started making fun of me for being younger than him, yet falling asleep faster. i told him i wasn't asleep, but he just laughed at me and told me i was too quiet to be awake. i almost enjoyed that time, talkin in the dark. until i began waking up once an hour...
now it's morning and i've been writing this for WAY TOO LONG. i applaud (and point and laugh at) anyone who actually made it this far. i don't know why i write these blogs. i don't even really care about what i'm saying. if there's some deep underlying message(s) about humanity, i'm not going to bring them to light. that's the reader's job anyway. i'm just regurgitating my experience for y'all.
i wish i could impart some of the wisdom of Tibet. the beauty of death. the fulfilling of life in the final moments. i wish i could impart it to both whoever is reading this insane journal as well as the old man. he needs it. anyone does who's close to death. old man may not reach elightenment, but old man would almost certainly find the peace he craves. that his family and i and all the Buddhas crave for him...
i'll continue this later, the fucker just woke up--
i need to remember to write about the office job and the proposal that my bosses... um... proposed, yesterday.