A Moving Tribute to a Dying Spouse

Eleanor Clift's husband died, and her tribute to him brought back memories of being at my father's side while he lost his cancer battle:

One morning when I was lining up the array of controlled substances to give him for pain, I remarked to the hospice caregiver that I figured I should just give him everything that’s available. “Yes, please,” he said loud and clear. On a Sunday morning in March as his condition worsened and the morphine dose was doubled, he asked me clearly, “What do you want to do this summer?” I said, “Take a trip with you,” and then I went into the kitchen to fix his cream of rice cereal, and fight back tears.

That's the way it was with my dad.

I was deeply grateful that his last days were painless, that he didn't have to struggle anymore, that he didn't have to be afraid. I was the one who administered the morphine to him, as he needed it, toward the end. I well recall laying awake all night in the bed I had lain in as a child, just down the hall from my parents' bedroom, listening for any coughing or moaning or any other indication he needed water or morphine, praying to God for his soul and mine.

I remember making the Ensure milkshakes that were his only sustenance toward the end. My mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's shortly before, and she couldn't make them the way he liked. My brother had developed the recipe, and passed it on to me as we cycled in and out of taking care of him.

He retained his humor to the end. The hospice was full, so we had to set up a hospital bed at home while on the waiting list. We were waiting for him to wake up so we could move him into that bed, which was just next to his own. We were all downstairs when we heard this tremendous crash. When we got upstairs, he was laying between the two beds, quite angry.

My brother and I lifted him into the hospital bed. He had to go to the bathroom, and didn't like to use the urinal bottle, so he'd stood up, gotten dizzy, and fallen. As he settled into the hospital bed, he looked up at us and asked, "When is the hospice coming to get me?" My brother laughed and asked him, "Why? Aren't we taking good care of you." He shook his head and said, deadpan but with a twinkle, "No."

It was the last words I heard my father speak, and fitting ones.

I remember my mother, married to him for 49 years and with her own mental capacity fading, telling him on the morning of his death, "Let go, let go. We'll be fine. Let go."

I have never agreed with Eleanor Clift on any political issue. But I have a lot in common with her now, and wish her all the best in the coming days and weeks and months and years as she copes with the loss of so profound a person in her life.