Hey, it’s my blog so I can be as sacrilegious/blasphemous as I wanna be!!!
Charles passed away around 11:30 PM Friday night, Happy Independence Day?!? Joe called me Sat morning, thankfully it was peaceful (thanks to hospice). He had had a bath Thursday, which Joe said really exhausted him, although he was still trying to do his dog & pony show of entertaining everyone! By Friday morning, Joe said Charles was only marginally coherent, having conversations with souls who were not there. He was getting palliative medications every four hours; when Joe went in around 11:30, Charles was completely unresponsive. He wanted a simple cremation with no funeral, although Joe says he’ll plan an open house for the benefit of we survivors. Charles did get to enjoy the tomato-basil soup from the care package I sent, although Joe said he “drowned it in mozzarella cheese”. We are a family of cheese lovers, that’s for sure - I took Zach out for pizza Thursday night to celebrate his new job & he joked with the waitress to stop grating the Parmesan when the block ran out!
So I’m in a sad & contemplative mood - I regret that I couldn’t get back down to see him, more so for Zach’s sake, but I’m also grateful his suffering was not prolonged. Charles was not religious, but he was deeply spiritual - I remember his sharp look when he asked me how long I thought he would survive? I tried to gently tell him from my perspective, he couldn’t last long like this & obviously he did not. The curse of the diagnostic sense.
I agree with a gathering of folks. We did that with my Dad and enjoyed hearing from his friends. It was the last of the bond for a lot of us.
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