Dare I dip my toe again into the dark eddies, and launch into the currents of this memoir of living with the dying?  My resolve to navigate these waters began before I embarked, and the eight hundred and seventy-fourth day is no time to beach.  Arosa raised Dad’s in-home care rates by 75%, charging a “premium” for clients who receive less than four hours of care per day—Dad receives two—but I perceive the premium as a penalty, and the company as preying on the most vulnerable. We can choose to pay either $70 per hour for two hours a day, or $40 per hour for four hours per day.  After several days of anxious searching, we opted to pay neither (we can afford neither), but rather to leave the company for a more reasonable service.  We found Rosie’s local family-operated well-reputed in-home care company.  Dad will miss Cecilia terribly, and she him.  He loves her because she listens to him and cares for him and is patient and kind and loyal, and he is loyal and generous to her.  But loyalty will not pay the bills.  Kourtnee came to the house and introduced Medicare-funded hospice, explaining that hospice is not just for the last hours or days of life, as many misconceive, but for the last six months of life, re-certifiable every six months, and Dad qualifies in a dozen ways.  Hospice would care for Dad as needed at home, manage his symptoms, and help maintain his comfort and quality of life, not to mention picking him up and cleaning him up when he falls.  Which happened this week during a day of debilitating weakness and a collapse and of not being able to get to the bathroom.  A reek assaulted me when I came home from work, and I broke out the Clorox wipes and the Febreze; neighbor Josh had picked Dad up; and Mom had washed the clothing.  Christie called and explained the pitfalls of Medicaid, should long-term assisted living or skilled nursing be Dad’s, and Mom’s, destination.  She looked directly at me and cautioned, “Caregivers decline more rapidly than those they care for.”  Her warning jolted me.  And trusts and wills and powers of attorney and advanced directives and insurance policies and burial agreements and bank accounts.  So many complicated moving parts—I barely understand what they are let alone how to move them around properly.  I might mention that Dad has not continued at home what the rehab therapists taught him.  He does not wear his compressions socks over his red swollen legs, or exercise, or use correct technique for standing and walking safely—he is back to the way he wants to do things, and I often wonder, Dad, did you come home to live or to die? because he’s not doing what he needs to do if he wants to live.  But I do not ask him this question.  He is 88 years old tomorrow, and will do was he pleases, and I have not the heart or fortitude to badger him.  And as listened to a murder mystery while driving home for an hour late at night after City Council meeting—where a councilman gave me a small bag of chocolate toffee-piece truffles and white chocolate mints as a Christmas token—I violated my vow against candy and munched uncontrollably on truffles until the bag was empty and my stomach upset, and I wondered at my weak self and the internal dynamic that compelled me to consume sweetness despite my resolve to resist (and in spite of my fear of diabetes, the disease that wrecked Dad), and I realized how discontent I have become, with no partner or companion, my loving smart children having grown and gone, raising their own families, living with increasingly demented parents, with a church community of couples who do not understand me or relate, with a God whom I adore and obey but do not hear or feel, with devoted siblings drowning in their own livings and griefs.  Did I mention the toilet tank is leaking and has flooded the bathroom?  I understand that this entry constitutes a confession to feeling sorry for myself, but hope you will have the compassion to set that aside and understand me: I want to taste of that elusive inner sweetness, and do not know where or how to find it, making a futile attempt with toffee truffles.

(Candy cane image from kcparent.com, used under the Free Use Doctrine.)