What to do? I panicked, of course. I got on the phone and called his father, whom John hated, I called our friends in Michigan and begged them to come for a final visit, and I called our friends in Indiana and harangued them about the inevitable outcome. His father and sister came the day before surgery. The day after surgery, our favorite pipe organist leather-top drove in from Detroit. Our patient was in ICU with a breathing tube. Herr Kapellmeister trod into the hospital room, took one look at the catheter and urine bag and said, "Remember when we used to do this for fun?" His humor was cruel enough to distract anyone from the pain or the helplessness, a blessing we all needed then.
No one else made it to that room. I talked to the folks in Indiana, but rain delayed the rites so they were going to stay. That Monday night, everyone came back. I went back to work, third shift, and got the call Tuesday morning. I drove to the hospital. He had been moved from intensive care since it wasn't going to help anyway. Less than twenty minutes after I arrived, I watched him, as his breathing hoarsened, and his pulse weakened, die.
I have watched not only John K., but my own grandfather die slowly for seven years from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease (you placed in the upper 25th percentile, Gramps!). In Melmoth Sim dramatizes the syphillis death of Oscar Wilde: slow, gruesome, and painful. John K. was sharp, our circle's Oscar, and finally, his death was nearly quite as gruesome as his, and I am glad someone thought these matters should be memorialized in a book:
Thanks, Dave.
© 2001 pbbuxton
