Short entry. I have been spending time in an ICU, the single child of a 90 year old man. I hope, as I write, that his 50-50 chance of survival from an assault of sepsis (blood poisoning) caused by an infection, will be improved by morning. The doctors say that things take time to come to a point of either turning a corner or an end. One doctor, this morning at least, was cautiously optimisic.
He arrived there, at ICU, at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, not even two days as I write. And the family of a woman, two doors down from him, lost their mother. She had 16 children and 39 grandchildren. As they wheeled in a large empty bed covered by a black plastic, they cried, consoled each other, and it occurred to me as it has several times in this long short weekend that no matter what the age, or the condition, and the fact that we know that death is coming---when someone dies, it is as if we are surprised when it inexorably does.
I am hoping against hope that my father doesn't die, because they say that if they can treat this, turn that corner, he will recover quickly. But it's almost as if I am at some level thinking that there would never be a next time, when he would come this close, or that it would happen. A paradox of our psyches? Psychological self protection no doubt.
How could we live if we really thought we might actually die, so in a way, we reject the facts, the fact that no one escapes. Even if we believe that we go to a "better place" most of us would rather not get to that door and have it opened for us. There is always a little piece of us I am thinking that when that door is opened, we say, "Are you kidding me? You don't mean it right? Not now, right?" Sometimes the answer to that cosmic question is "yes, now".
But for my father, not today, not tomorrow, please. Bring back a status quo. We need to talk. We have never really talked. Isn't that another inexorable reality for so many of us?
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