Holding pattern

Four generations of extended family are in a holding pattern, even as the patriarch quietly slips away. The hip is mending nicely, but the pain, stress and unfamiliar people and surroundings during his hospitalization loosened Dad's grip on the present, pulling him deeper into an Alzheimer's induced alternate dimension. Now he time-travels through free-associations and memories, apparently for the most part enjoying his experiences.

Once proudly described by my mother as one of the "best eaters" in his nursing home unit, he is now even losing interest in food. Actually, that's not quite accurate. It is as though food - and the people, conversations, reading, and every other part of the world that once mattered to him are now less accessible, visible, real or desirable to him. He reminds me more and more of one of those patients described in an Oliver Sacks book, whose unique neurological symptoms have left him unable to process information coming in through his senses in the same way as he has for years. Now, whatever is all around him may as well be, Star Trek-like, in another dimension. He is in another world, already almost lost to the present one.

When I received the call telling me of my father's fall and hip fracture, I was driving back to Seattle from a vacation. Hearing the strain in my mother's voice, mid-call, I had already begun turning the car around at an exit. During my father's hospitalization, I stayed with my mother for nearly a week. That was nearly a month ago, but I haven't been back to Oregon - yet. Initially, scheduled meetings, events and work kept me too busy to take more time off, after falling behind. Now, I am preparing myself for the possible necessity of taking another chunk of time off again, perhaps soon.

We - the majority of the family members who chose to weigh in - encouraged our mother when she was considering a decision to stop the cocktail of medications he had been taking for many years. Now, my father is on hospice, all his previous life-sustaining medications (for his heart, lungs, kidneys, etc.) discontinued. He is on orders for palliative comfort-care only. Apparently he likes his new visitors, among them a chaplain and a harpist.

Now we wait. Emotions are, understandably, all over the map.