We'll Be Okay, and We Were - - Weepy Wednesday, episode 5

111 years ago, this coming Friday, my dad was born in Köln, Germany. His mother, Emma, was 26, and his father, Paul, was 28.

When he was nine years old, he traveled across the ocean aboard the Republic, with his mother, younger brother, and two sisters. They settled in Chicago, and then Grandpa died five years later in 1929. Grandma remarried later that same year. By 1940, they were living in Tripoli, Wisconsin, and owned a farm.

(Dad on the right, with his sister and younger brother - I just realized this was taken the day their dad died)

I'm not sure when Dad started driving bus for the Tripoli School District. But you may remember the story, because I've told it many times, Dad was Mom's school bus driver. He had just turned thirty when he asked seventeen-year-old Mom out.

They married on July 6, 1945, six months after Mom turned eighteen and graduated from high school. Those were different times.

Four kids and forty-eight years later, Alzheimer's Disease had taken over Dad's brilliant mind. With only an eighth-grade education, he had been one of the smartest men I'd ever known. He read voraciously and could solve any problem put before him. Until those last few years.

Friday, April 23, 1993, Mom finally couldn't take it anymore, couldn't stay awake with him all night as he tried to get out of the house to wander, couldn't handle him calling her the nurse, demanding to know what she'd done with his wife. She admitted him to the nursing home.

I went to visit him that afternoon, in that place where no daughter should have to see their dad, confused and scared. He was wandering the halls when I saw him, but his face lit up in his signature crooked smile.

"You're someone I should know," he clearly stated.

"I'm your daughter, Chris."

His smile broadened, and he nodded. Then, he scooted past me to keep walking the halls.

On Sunday afternoon, Mom called to say he had choked on some food and had been taken to the hospital. When he was admitted to the nursing home, she told the staff that she had been pureeing his meals because he had started choking, forgetting how to swallow. They told her that they would need an order from his doctor to do that, and since he was out of the office until Monday, it would have to wait until then.

The doctor on duty at the hospital told her that Dad would need a feeding tube or he would continue to choke on whatever he ate, and that it would eventually kill him. As it was, he was already showing signs of aspiration pneumonia.

We all knew that Dad would never want a feeding tube. And why prolong his life if he was no longer living the life he had loved for 78 years.

When his regular physician saw Dad in the hospital on Monday, he agreed with Mom and us kids. Keep him comfortable, keep an IV going, but let nature run its course.  

He lay in bed pretty much unresponsive until Thursday morning. When his doctor made rounds, he asked, "How are you doing, Paul?"

"Not so good," Dad answered.

Mom and I looked at each other. He hadn't spoken since the weekend.

Late that afternoon, Mom got a call from her niece. She and her husband were leaving on vacation but didn't know whether they should go because of how Dad was doing.

Mom reassured her several times, saying, "You go ahead and go. We'll be okay."

After she finally hung up the phone, the nurse came in to check on things. She nodded to us and whispered, "It's getting close."

Within ten minutes, Dad took his last breaths, Mom holding one of his hands, me holding the other. Even though Mom struggled for years over our joint decision to withhold a feeding tube, she believed with all her heart that when she was talking on the phone to my cousin, Dad heard her say, "You should go. We'll be okay."

I believe that too.