2022 continued

August 28 – With more family around I visit, but briefly. 

August 29 – I saw Howard this morning. He had a bite of a scone, and some water. He was sitting in the sun out in his sunroom. His confusion is a little worse, but he’s still has some good lucid moments. He is more jaundiced and gaunt. He’s drinking water fairly well. 

Some longtime friends visit. 

Howard’s friend Terri takes over Chinese food for the family. 

August 30 – Hospice is failing again to provide a home health nurse to bathe Howard. The family rallies and gets him a shower. 

He had a restless night last night. He slept while I was there this morning. Some very long time friends visited. Multiple people told me he’s still cracking jokes. People are coming daily to visit. 

The hospice nurse came and took out his catheter and the one IV line the hospital didn’t take out before discharging him. 

I laid on my be staring at the ceiling for 2 hours. Not crying just staring.

August 31 – I happened to drop in when Howard was awake and mostly lucid this morning. He was sitting up in a chair watching TV. He had eaten a little breakfast and sat in the sunroom for a while. I helped into bed and he watched about half of The View before fallen asleep. 

A couple of close friends are coming to visit.

Howard was awake again this afternoon and got to see his brother Barry and nephew Nick. They drove from Arizona. They went off to check into their hotel. 

I baked bread this morning and I’m taking beef stew over for dinner to go with it. When mom & I did we all sat at the table and he had a couple of small bites, mostly the sauce. His “mmm” at the fist bite was the sweetest one every. I’m glad I could bring him a little bit of pleasure at this point. 

He got into bed and we watched some of CBS Sunday Morning. We used to watch it every Sunday. He has continued to. 

September 1 – Overnight he has taken a big turn for the worse. I don’t get the messages because I silence my phone overnight every night. To be perfectly honest when I get up in the morning I don’t rush over. I have to have coffee and breakfast to face the situation. And I don’t want to watch him die. 

When I get over there it’s bit chaotic.

I climb into bed with him to hold him for a few minutes. The act of doing that caused him big moan of pain and I immediately feel bad, but since I’m already there I stay. I continue to try and provide some comfort. I don’t have any idea if it was received. I hear crying around me. 

He’s going through bouts of vomiting and it’s particularly awful as it’s very black. He’s in pain and moaning. The nurse is constrained by doctor’s orders how much morphine she can give. But she’s being compassionate so frequency is upped a bit, but she says she can’t up it any more. I’m using a warm wash cloth on his forehead trying to provide some comfort. The vomiting slows and the bedding gets changed with us helping the nurse. We also put a clean top on him. Unfortunately, it’s dirty in just a minute or two. Still it’s cleaner than the one we took off. 

The nurse asks for the “comfort pack” of meds. We have no idea what she’s talking about. That’s what Louise had been told would be delivered. The nurse is desperate and calls the hospice office. I suggest they call it into CVS and I’ll got pick it up. That would be the quickest. But they dispatch someone. They arrive 10 minutes after his death. 

Howard did not have peaceful death. It was excruciating to see. Nobody prepared us for such a violent thing. I imagined a slipping away with little pain due to morphine. It was very far from that. He was groaning and gurgling with times when both were worse. Those last two hours were horrid. I was in another room catching my breath when someone, I think the nurse, came to get me saying death was coming soon. We were all gathered around him. He stopped breathing. I was certain he was gone. But it took the nurse several minutes to conclusively say he was. I had to leave. As I was walking away from his condo a man got out of his car with a bag. I asked him if he was from hospice. He said yes. I told him he was too late. Apparently he still went to the condo. 

Our healthcare system is broken. A compassionate system would have helped him pass quicker with way less suffering. A lethal dose of morphine would have been kinder. 

This horrible scene has played over and over in my head. At least by now it’s more infrequent. 

Two days later I flew to Barcelona. He made me promise I would. In his confusion one of those last days when I arrived he said “Look who’s back!”, thinking I had gone already. 

I cried in many places in Europe during those two weeks. I cried over not being able to text him something that I saw that reminded me of something we saw on our trip to Italy way back in 1995. 

29 years as best friends. 25 years together. Domestic Partners in CA & HI. Married 6 years. Divorced 2 years. Our life together was filled with many wonderful times. We had our share of troubles too.  

Howard, I love you still. That was made exceptionally clear to me after you left us.