Glue

My oldest son died yesterday. It was very sudden, the result of a massive brain aneurysm, or an "intra-cerebral event" as the medics would have it. My wife — his mother — had "talked" to him via text early in the morning to confirm she was on her way to pick him up for an appointment. She arrived only minutes later at his residence. It was nearly the exact moment the oh-so-rare blue blood-moon was at its maximum red eclipse. She took a couple of pictures of it from his driveway. Then went to find out why he was taking so long, and found him down and unresponsive in his living room.

She called me, and once the ambulance got him loaded and on the way, she came home for me. We dug out paperwork we needed and headed out. We got to the hospital about 10 minutes behind the ambulance, and by the time we'd cleared a path into the E.R., he'd been intubated, and a machine was breathing for him. We had his Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) paperwork with us, and we gave it to them, and they confirmed with us that we didn't want him revived if his heart stopped. More paper, more signatures, more initials.

They said they were right on the edge of what he wanted even with just the intubation. I told them to continue with the intubation until we figured out what happened. They took him down for the CT scan, and it told the story. The bleed was big as my hand, suffusing his intracrainial spaces, clear down to his brain stem. The neurologist said that in his opinion, it was "not survivable".

No shit. 

We called his brothers and one was on the way from his home an hour away. I told the ER people I wanted two things — to take him somewhere other than the ER, into a private room. I didn't want him dying in a bright, noisy, alarm-filled, no-privacy ER bed with people and patients coming and going separated from us by only a curtain. They said they couldn't move him into a hospice room while he was intubated, which conflicted with the second thing — I wanted his brother to arrive.

You see, they said when they took him off the machines, he might last seconds, or minutes, or hours — maybe days, but nobody really knew. We decided since he was stabilized for the moment, we'd move him to ICU, which gave him his private room. His brother finally arrived, and his second brother was coming, but due to last-minute, zero-notice, weird flight chaining from a distant location, would not be in till the next day. So, now the question — leave him intubated for another day or follow his wishes? His mother and I reviewed the documents we'd signed. I asked his brother's opinion.

"We talked a lot," he said. "All I know is, he wouldn't want — this," waving his hand at the equipment.

He was right, of course. We had them remove the machines, and for a few minutes he looked like he was going to stay for awhile. It's all just reflexes, not really him. I've talked before about how dropping below a certain threshold means the property we call "us" will no longer emerge, no longer exists, but still…then his numbers started dropping. We spent his last ten minutes with his hands wrapped in his mother and my hands. Then my oldest son, my first, my child, gasped one last time and died, as random electrical traces on the monitor drained away. We stood there in silence for a bit, holding his cooling hand. 


"Are you ready to let him go?" I asked. She nodded. Her eyes were bright with tears, as I expect mine were as we tucked his hand under the sheet.
 
He wanted immediate cremation (he is his father's son) but one more time I took the needs of the living over the wishes of the dead. His other brother finally got into town, and the two brothers went to the funeral home. I'd arranged for him to be there instead of on the way to the crematorium. They sat with him for awhile in the prep room in the back of the funeral home. They told stories about each other. Told him goodbye. Came to terms with the three now being two. I didn't ask details. It's between brothers and is not a thing to be shared with anyone else, nor could it be.

And now I'm writing his obituary. Simple enough. But not. Writing it is like walking in glue. I took a break to write this to hope I could break loose, shake loose, put it all somewhere, and let me get on with what needs done.  Doing what needs done is me, is us. We, his mother and I, are hard-core. We're the steady place when everything else is going to shit. Our years and years, decades in The Game have trained us from hairline to toenails to put it all away, take a breath, get a grip and just do the fucking job, even when everyone else's hair is on fire. I remember the ER and ICU staff said they'd never seen anyone make decisions and move so efficiently through that process with so little drama. 

And now I'm in glue.


UPDATE:  I was just with her. For the moment the house is empty except for us. She's been picking music for his memorial. She ran across an old hand-lettered CD that just said "harmony" in his handwriting and put it in the player. It was a thing he did a couple of years ago, just faffing around with his new computer equipment's audio stuff, singing along, harmonizing with Allison Crouch's version of "I'll Fly Away." At the end of it, he says "Here's how they SHOULD have done it…" and sang a Capella, layering audio tracks of his voice, and again, harmonizing with himself in at least four parts.

When the shadows of this life have gone
I'll fly away
Like a bird from these prison walls I'll fly
I'll fly away
I'll fly away, oh glory
I'll fly away in the morning
When I die, Hallelujah by and by
I'll fly away

And we two old, hard-core battle-horses, listening to our dead son sing, simultaneously and without a word broke into tears and clung to each other, weeping like children. I don't cry. I'll bet it's been 40 or 50 years, if ever, since I cried like that.

I still don't know where I'm going to put everything that's been crushed into my chest in the last 36 hours. But we're together, and that helps, and someday, sooner or later, we're going to be ok.  But I think I can finish the obituary, and that will do for now.