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Going Home
By Barry Yeoman, January & February 2005
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The phone rang at 2:30 a.m. on December 12, 2001, in Debbie
Seremelis-Scanlon's home in northeast Philadelphia. It was Melissa Kuchler,
reporting that her father had taken a turn for the worse.
For several days, Jack had known his life was coming to an end. So had his
family, who had moved him upstairs and were scrambling to get the Christmas
decorations hung while he could still appreciate them. The holiday lights were
Jack's bailiwick: each year he would spend the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception turning the house into a neighborhood spectacle. Drivers would slow
down on the Smiths' block to catch a glimpse of the joyful excess.
This year, weakened, Jack couldn't do the honors, so his family took
over. For the mantel, Peggy chose simplicity: a Hummel Nativity scene offset by
winter greens and white lights. "That is so beautiful," Jack said.
"I think that is the nicest I've ever seen the mantel." Danielle
came over to decorate the tree with her niece. Jack forewent the Eagles game on
TV, sitting back instead and watching his daughter and granddaughter animate
the living room with holiday color. When Danielle pulled out the five-pointed
white star that topped the tree, one of the tips broke off. "I'll pick
up another one," she promised.
The next day, though, the star-shopping plans got put aside when Jack
suffered a setback. Walking to the commode, he suddenly collapsed. Peggy caught
him as he fell, and then called Melissa and the hospice for help. "That
was his last lucid time," she recalls. "That's when I knew it was
over."
For the next two days, relatives came to visit the Smith home. Some gathered
around the kitchen table as Peggy kept the coffee brewing. Others sat next to
Jack's bed as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Father Ferrier came
by to administer last rites—again. Grandchildren ran around everywhere.
When the house finally emptied out Tuesday night, Peggy sank into the
living-room couch, too tired to worry about anything but slumber. Danielle
slept fitfully in a dining-room chair until her sister ordered her upstairs to
their parents' empty bedroom. Melissa snoozed on the recliner. Matt
commandeered his father's basement sofa. "We just wanted to be close
to him," Danielle recalls.
Then, at 2:30, Jack's breathing grew so rattly that the sound carried
upstairs and jolted awake his elder daughter. Danielle hurriedly roused her
mom. "We need to get up," she said urgently. "This is the
end." Peggy pulled herself from her delirious sleep to find her three
children agitated and uncertain about what to do. "We were
petrified," Danielle recalls. "How long was it supposed to take? Do
we have an hour? Is it minutes? I remember just shaking. I didn't even want
to go to the bathroom."
Seremelis-Scanlon lived only a mile away, and she arrived at the house
within minutes. She recognized the rattling sound as an inability to swallow
properly. In the hospital, Jack might have had his secretions aspirated
mechanically, an invasive and noisy process. But with hospice, comfort was
paramount. Seremelis-Scanlon gave him some medication to reduce his secretions,
pain, and agitation. Gradually, he relaxed.
"Come on now, let's let him rest," Seremelis-Scanlon told
Jack's children, who were crowded around their father. "Sometimes
it's harder for them to let go with their family in the room." So the
kids moved into the living room, where their mother was already sitting on the
edge of the couch, smoking. Peggy rose to fix coffee, and as she walked toward
the kitchen she passed her husband. She stopped to look at him, then sat down
at the edge of his bed.
"Jack, it's okay," she said, stroking his head. "If you
want to go, it's time. I'll be okay. I'll take care of the kids.
Everybody's all right. I love you. I know you're afraid. Let the
Blessed Mother take you. Go be with your mom, your dad, your brother, and be at
peace."
Softly, she began to sing a favorite song from their long-ago days as young
sweethearts:
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of
wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three, would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?*
Jack's breathing grew calmer. Peggy sang some more. And then,
peacefully, he just slipped into death. "There was no sound when he passed
away," says Seremelis-Scanlon. "It was just a breath. And a breath.
And no breath."
He had just, 12 days earlier, celebrated his 64th birthday.
A few hours before dawn, as the hearse pulled away, Danielle walked outside
and gazed up into the night sky. "Come here," she called to her
family. "Look at that!" There, directly above the Smiths' house,
flickered the brightest of white Christmas stars.
"Those were the best times I ever had with my father," says
Melissa, sitting at her mother's kitchen table a year and a half later.
"His mind was able to clear from all the medications. It put pride back in
him. He could hold regular conversations. It restored his dignity."
Today, Melissa thinks of her father's last weeks not with unmitigated
grief but instead with a stew of emotions that includes no small amount of joy.
"Without that time in hospice, I don't think he would have been able
to let go," she says. She contemplates the misconceptions her family held
in November 2001 and how grateful she is that they didn't deny themselves
the opportunity for a meaningful final month together. "I thought we were
going to sit in this house and have a death watch," she says. "It was
so much more than that."
Barry Yeoman is a freelance writer based in Durham, North Carolina. He
wrote "A
Taste for Tolerance" in the May-June 2004 issue of AARP The
Magazine.
* "When I'm 64" Copyright 1967 (Renewed) Sony/ATV Tunes LLC.
All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West,
Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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