A month ago

One month ago this morning I was at in hospital waiting to have my right leg amputated. I waited to be taken down to the operating room on a gurney on a floor two flights above the operating room. Lying down was an option. The space was small and curtained off. But instead of lying down I stood up, wearing my gown and those socks with grippers they give you, and paced back and forth. The only reason I did this was because I knew it would be the last time I'd walk anywhere. I massaged the leg, wiggled its toes, and stared at it.

A friend's father is dying*

Even big hospital rooms often can't hold the number of visitors dying people get without some having to cram themselves into corners or sit on radiators.
This is not true with the father of a friend of the Complete and Total Loser. There's plenty of room there.
The man is 58, a year older than the Loser, and is dying thanks to a life misspent. Cirrhosis. The Loser spent several hours with his friend yesterday, and therefore her father, who he had met briefly just once before. He slept for most of it.

When he woke, it was for the succession of hospital employees who came by, none with good results. 
The swallowing therapist determined that he would be unable to eat without aspirating, so food was out. A physical therapist tried to get him out of bed but he could barely manage sitting up with his feet over the side. 
People, all of them women, came by to tug him up on the bed and clean him and change his gown and sheets, or take vital signs. They spoke to him with clear, loud voices that penetrated his stupor enough for him to mumble responses.
The Loser's friend, is 25 years old and is great with him, speaking to him in comforting tones a little like one would to a child, which may seem wrong but his cognitive abilities are impaired enough that it's suitable. He wasn't sure of who she was and couldn't recall her name, calling her "Dad" at one point, which makes some sense as that's what she call him. He was defining her as the woman who calls him "Dad."
He has had little to do with his daughter and her sister for many years, having divorced her mother and remarried long ago. Before this time, she referred to him as her mother's "sperm donor." 
Now she has said that while visiting him last August she wanted to take a picture of the two of them together but didn't and regrets it. 

*He died October 13.

Dying Scene 2: Swabs and Bubbles

She will never eat again. Her choice. Really, looking back, the Complete and Total Loser's mother was eating a minimal amount for months, always with a current excuse.

"My stomach hurts."

That kind of thing. She was wasting away, not that everyone looks strong and thick at 80. She wanted strawberry smoothies and other fluids but barely touched protein, saying her daily Boost, the drink for seniors that has around 300 calories, was adequate.

She will drink, on this morning of last full day of her life. The Loser, at her request, holds a cup of water with a straw to her mouth and she takes a few sips. She still knows who the Loser is, he can tell, but doesn't really acknowledge him directly. By noon she doesn't drink but asks for swabs.

The swabs are little sponges about an inch and a half long by an inch on the end of a plastic stick. You dip them in water and bite on them to release the water or juice on them. They're a safe alternative to crushed ice, the Loser guesses, and you'd never see them outside a hospital.

For hours, the Loser dipped the swabs in a Styrofoam cup of water and puts them in his mother's mouth. She squeezed the swabs between tongue and pallet to get water. Her tongue was dark, almost black. After some dips, the swabs get gunky. The Loser throws them out and opens a new one.

Meanwhile, the Loser's mother wore one of those double plastic tubes in her nose for oxygen. There's a little box on the wall with water in it. The oxygen bubbles through the on its last leg from someplace beyond the wall to his mother's failing lungs. The bubbling is a steady, pleasant sound, soothing, like sounds from his parents' small koi pond.

Weeks

It's coincidence but memorable things have always happened to The Complete and Total Loser on October 18th. Memorable to him anyway. In his childhood years these events were on the order of beloved pets disappearing, returning, fighting, or having offspring. As a teen and early adult, they involved major rejections and departures. Early in his middle years, in 1996, he was robbed at gunpoint while sweeping leaves outside his apartment on a bright autumn October 18th. 

This time, now in his 50s, the date was the one the Loser heard official word from a doctor that his mother's life would end in a matter or weeks.

If you haven't lost a loved one it's always going to be a shock to hear that someone close to you will be dead in a determinate amount of time no matter how ill they've been.

The Loser's father seemed even more reluctant to accept this than the Loser, even though at 91 he's had several of his own close calls with death. The Loser attributes this to the momentum of nearly 59 years of life together.

"The only two people who've influenced my life are my mother and your mother," he told the Loser as the two sat in a tiny room near the ER room in which doctors were treating his mother. The Loser reminded his father that he did have three healthy sons, of which just one was a loser, and four thriving grandchildren, but his father was focused on his wife.

The Loser knows that when one spouse dies, merry widow stereotypes aside, the other often follows soon, but he had hoped that his father would be an exception to that. He has always been good around the house, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry for all; not the average man of his era who ordered pizza when the wife was out of town and couldn't run the dishwasher. Also, he has his own circle of friends and regularly does old-guy stuff. Prostate cancer support meetings. Discussion groups for Civil War buffs. Church gatherings despite his disbelief in an actual supreme being. 

But now, judging from how he took the news Tuesday, the Loser is unsure of this. In just minutes the Loser saw his father age five years, which at his age is a lot.