Person lost

(Been processing this since September 16, 2023.  He passed on September 27.  The difference between the passing of Person Adjacent and Person are a couple orders of magnitude.  I haven’t fully absorbed that he is gone.  What follows are some reflections on the plane ride home…)

On the plane back from Greenville, lots of things to process, since this wasn’t the day I thought it was going to be.

Zio is dying. He might actually be dead already, we’re in the air and in radio silence until Newark. I can’t believe I just typed that, and I can’t believe it’s happening, yet here it is, and here we are.  I’m not eulogizing yet. I had a whole raft of things to say in my head before cracking open the laptop, and I’m sorry I don’t have my journal to write in, but honestly my handwriting is so bad that I can’t even decipher my own notes anymore.

Good to connect again with the cousins. I want to get down maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas to spend time with them.  I’m glad we got in on Thursday night, because we got to see him while he was still him.  He was in so much pain—I know this because I held his hand and he squeezed hard as the pain coursed through him. He pretended he wasn’t feeling any pain, but that was only because he was waiting to say goodbye to everyone and wanted to be present for his goodbyes.  A was the last to arrive, so he held off on taking the big guns, the heavy painkillers, until noonish today, until after he saw her.

“He didn’t seem happy to see me.” She was dejected, just having flown from upstate NY and having to turn and burn, out tomorrow morning early.

“He was, honey, he’s just in a lot of pain.” 

It’s tough to be an adult child in this group.

 But there’s Zio. His eyes lit up when we finally got to the hospice Thursday night.  Hubby kept getting calls tracking our progress. Nic wanted adventures. G would rather stay home, but gamely was along as only he can be. We finally get to where we needed to go…

 And there he was, looking smaller and frailer than I have ever seen him. This guy. The same guy who took hubby camping, hunting and fishing, the same guy who was basically hubby’s first person, the same guy I fell in love with 33 years ago with his camouflage Tyrolean hat and ever present morning Meister Brau and evening Zio Carlo—this guy now on oxygen, his thin arms covered in bruises, his shoulders like angel’s wings poking out of his hospital gown.

This guy.

I parked myself in the chair next to him and held his hand.  That was my spot for the better part of the last two days. I absorbed his pain the best I could. He turned to me often and told me he loved me, he was comfortable, he was happy.

But the pain. 

I knew it was there. So did my cousins.  But he was waiting for his granddaughter.

Then she came.

Then he finally found relief for the pain.  That was when he left us.

He wasn’t dead, it didn’t kill him, but that was when he made his decision to start shutting down.   He even announced that he was leaving—I wasn’t in the room, I heard later—and he was told he wasn’t going anywhere.

I knew what he meant. I saw he was already gone. His eyes were open when I sat with him again, but they were blank. He was transitioning right in front of us.

I’m on a turbulent plane right now typing all this after the fact. G is trying to read a book but is anxious about the turbulence. So am I, but typing this helps.

Anyway.  Dinner with the cousins was fun, if not comic in trying to get service.  We didn’t take pictures. Too busy visiting, catching up, reeling in the years.

We took a bunch before we left. It was loud. 

Tears.

Everyone is a little fractured.