Although all of us are dying, we often only refer to the process when it begins to draw to a close. In my life I have been close to death numerous times, but never in such a way as I am now. My grandfather is 82 years old and has come home from a two week hospital stay to die. We have been told he will be fortunate to make it through the holidays. A heavy smoker for much of his life, Pops had lung cancer and part of a lung removed in the 80’s. He suffers from emphysema and macular degeneration, leaving him legally blind and unable to walk more than a few feet. For some time now he has been on oxygen 24 hours a day, and for the past week since returning from the hospital he has been confined to his den where a hospital bed and portable toilet were brought in. Various levels of cognitivity are seen throughout the day. At times he is able to clearly convey his thoughts, but more often he has difficulty speaking.
I have been living with Pops for six months. I have seen him go from an active lifestyle to his current state, slowly and painfully. He has often told me things like “Old age stinks” and “Son, I’m not going to be here much longer.” This has been difficult to hear, but there is a certain dry honesty that is comforting. He knows that he is coming to the end of his life, and on some level he is facing that reality.
Pops was never a religious man as far as I can remember. He never went to church, spoke of God, or professed love for Jesus. He was a Christian in the same way that many people I know are; simply through inheritance. In the past year, after his wife passed and he grew more feeble, Pops has made a significant effort to attend church services. He has told me that he has to “get right with God.” Like most Christians, he seems content to have lived 99% of his life away from God, because as we all know you only have to accept Jesus at the end to get into heaven. He welcomes a prayer these days, and speaks about local churches as if they were competing baseball teams. This church has the best preacher, but that one has the better congregation, while another other has the easiest access for seniors. I don’t think you could say my grandfather lived a particularly idealistic Christian life, in the sense that I doubt he did a lot of missionary work or community service, but I would bet that he lived a typical lifestyle for his demographic.
He takes comfort in the idea of going to heaven, believing that when he dies he will be reunited with his wife and all of the things that old age has robbed him of will be restored. Pops knows that I’m not a Christian, and that I don’t subscribe to the idea of heaven. I found him surprisingly open minded about my views, although he made it clear that he thought I was wrong. It would be unimaginable for me to try and tell him at this point that there was no heaven, and that when he died he would most likely simply cease to exist. I think that at this point he is simply living to die; hoping that his death will be painless and that he will be welcomed into heaven. At this point, to rob him of that hope by casting doubts in his mind would be a shameful mistake.
We wouldn’t know we were alive if death didn’t surround us. Being a caretaker of an elderly, dying man has reinforced that view for me. The life in his eyes is like a wave as it reaches the shore; its crests and troughs become more alike and begin to merge into one steady, even flow. Perhaps in a sense death is just the end of a long wave, when we finally dissolve back into the mist and sand.
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