I had hoped Dad’s mental acuity would return after a solid sleep, if not some of his physical strength. But his first utterances upon waking were incoherent nonsensical sentences, spoken with a thick tongue and loose jaw.  His beloved Gloria came to take care of him, the day being Sunday, and he broke her heart calling her Martha and Ana.  “Nelson, I’m Gloria!” she nearly wept.  He strained to sit up so he could pee, but had a distorted sense of himself and his surroundings, holding the urinal absently in one hand while peeing on the bed and on the floor.  She laid him back on the bed and helped him finish, then stripped and remade the bed around him.  He did not want to wear a brief, but we put one on anyway, explaining that it was necessary because he had no strength to use the urinal or the toilet.  Gloria and I sat at the kitchen table and faced the reality that my father and her Nelson was in serious shape, would be permanently bedbound, and we would need to reevaluate the whole procedure for his care.  He adamantly opposed staying in his hospital bed in the corner of his office, so I slid away his recliner and we rolled him in his hospital bed into the recliner space, comforting him that this way he would be with Lucille and listen to her music and watch her TV programs and eat lunch together just like normal.  I reported to Jessica that Dad’s condition had deteriorated quickly and severely, and that he needed a catheter because he could not manage urination in any manner.  She was shocked at his appearance less than 24 hours after her previous visit.  She observed his incoherence, his exhaustion, his inability to swallow a pill, his breathing and speech and loss of appetite and distorted sense of himself and his surroundings.  “I wonder if he had a heart attack yesterday when I was here,” she said.  Even one day before, convincing him to accept a catheter would have been impossible, whereas today he did not resist or complain, and the bag quickly filled.  Though he awoke for an hour as Gloria bathed him and changed his bedding, he had been confused and incoherent, and, with the catheter in place, he now slipped into an all-day sleep.  We tried to feed him pinches of food, but he could not chew or swallow.  When we gave him his pills, he alternately held them in his hand, dropped them into the cup, and chewed them without water.  We gave him water to wash the pills down, but he aspirated and sputtered and coughed and his breathing gurgled during his hours of sleep.  I asked if he were in pain and he shook his head no.  I asked him other questions but he did not respond.  He ate nothing.  He drank nothing.  He took no medications.  After observing him, Jessica thought he would not survive the day, that he was beginning to transition from life to death.  She suggested I call the family and invite them to say their good-byes.