A four hour drive (there and back) to sit in a hospital room for forty five minutes. Since he's had bad hearing for more than thirty years nobody said much: yelling at the top of your lungs in a hospital brings worried nurses. I'm afraid to say whether or not it was worth it.
His birthday is in a little over a month. My father's prediction is that he won't see it. My grandfather is more optimistic. He figures he'll get to go back home and finish up there.
I agree with that wholeheartedly. If it's to the point where there's nothing anyone can do... I wouldn't want to die in a hospital- it wouldn't be comfortable. There'd be tubes and doctors and it'd be loud and complicated. Like Margaret Edson's Wit and John Donne's Death be not proud: death is a breath, a comma, not an exclamation point.
But the thing is, if you can't get out of bed, you have to have someone to look after you. You don't get to die by yourself.
Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I'd anticipated. The worst thing was the nurse who assumed that since she couldn't talk well enough for him to hear and understand her that he was a moron. I wanted to tell her that he was a sailor and a factory worker and had never been to college but he'd seen the Sistine Chapel and the Great Wall of China and St Stephan's in Vienna, and a whole world of places she'd never been, I'd bet.
Children and the elders, two age groups not to be underestimated.