As I go about my morning duties in Grandpa’s room, checking his blood pressure and taking an oxygen reading, I don’t remember the last time I saw him sitting at the little round table by his window reading his Bible. For the last three years I’ve bought him a scripture tear off calendar. He would always know what day it was by the calendar. Now I find it next to his computer, untouched and pages behind. Another sign that Grandpa is declining.
We see the loss and it weighs heavily upon us—upon me, in particular because he’s my father. I feel his infirmities as if they were my own, and I grieve, although I don’t always recognize it as grieving. It may be a sadness that sweeps over me one day, and sheer exhaustion another or confusion about what changes to make and when, but it always adds up to grieving what Grandpa used to be able to do, and what he cannot do anymore.
Slowly over the last six years, Grandpa has gone from having a few mobility issues, i.e. the inability to transfer by himself from bed to walker, walker to toilet, to no longer being able to walk and barely being able to pull himself up onto is adaptive walker. He used to work out on a home gym, but it finally became too scary for him to back up to to sit down. It was hard for my husband to let go of the routine. He used to sit in his room and make sure he didn’t fall off the equipment. He also made sure he did all his repetitions, but Grandpa has always been highly self motivated to exercise, at least while he’s been in our care.
I don’t remember ever seeing this side of him when I was younger. Maybe he was used to an exercise routine the four and half years he was in the nursing home, but the funny thing is, when a physical therapist from home health came to evaluate Grandpa, he said he had never seen anyone on a piece of equipment like that past the age of 80. Grandpa was 91 when when we finally donated the home gym to a ministry for young men with disabilities.
It finally became impossible to give him a shower because we couldn’t get him into our hallway bathroom anymore. His bathroom has a beautiful Victorian clawfoot tub, which is completely useless for anyone with mobility issues. Extended family was supposed to help us with the cost of a handicap shower, but never did. As the saying goes, a burden shared is half a burden, but I will never know that relief.
Grandpa’s decline has been so gradual, it’s been hard to discern at times, especially when you are so caught up in the day to day, never ending care. But over the years, it started became predictable that Grandpa would be sick during the holidays, and then, it became the norm for him to have at least one hospital stay a year. Last June, he was admitted to the hospital with the first of three urinary tract infections that have robbed him of his health and vitality. Nothing will bring back the beautiful glow of his skin and the bright light in his eyes. I see him fading and there is nothing I can do to stop the dying process.
Dying is a part of life, the crossing over from this life to life eternal. But I don’t know how to let go, how to transition. The Lord will have to do it for me. The tears that had been bottled up for long, freely flow now, knowing no bounds.
Early in our cargiving journey, someone told me, it isn’t your responsibility to keep your father’s body from breaking down, and it’s true. Ultimately, he is in God’s hands. But after helping Grandpa recover from several debilitating and life threatening illnesses, I became extremely proactive in his care because we barely had anything to work as far as mobility goes, and each hospital stay would take a bigger bite into his ability to walk. And so last week, I finally had to order a Hoyer lift to lift him out of bed and place him in his wheelchair.
One thing I know for sure, Grandpa is not going to be able to weather many setbacks that zap him of what little strength he has left to fight them, and to tell you the truth, neither am I. This life of day-to-day caregiving has been bittersweet, and passed by all too quickly. I really don’t know where the time has gone, but I do know I have lived each day to the fullest, living outside myself and caring for another human being who has so many special needs.
It has been rewarding, overwhelmingly crazy at times, and challenged us like nothing else we have experienced. It has shown us what’s in our hearts—the good, the bad, and the ugly, but more importantly it has shown us the face of God, His never-ending compassion, his mercy, and his unexpected grace. And in exchange for our weakness, he has given us his ever enduring strength, equipping us over and over again for the God-sized task He called us to.
And what I find so mind boggling and hard for me to comprehend is how I figure in to Grandpa’s longevity. Honestly, he should have been dead long ago. And if all his days are written in the Book of Life, how is it that I am part of that equation? If I just gave up and quit, it would be all over, but I can do no less than what the Lord enables me to do, and most of the time, that is taking too good care of him.
“What would I do without you?” Grandpa said again today.
“I don’t know, Grandpa,” I tell him, but really, I do. He’d be in heaven by now.
And because Grandpa wants to go to heaven so badly, I just answer, “I don’t know, Grandpa.”
But I wonder as I think about the empty room at the end of the hall , What will I do without you Grandpa?
My emotions are all in a jumble. I do not know how to say goodbye, but I know I must.
He is growing frailer every day.