Bedbound

Burt’s choice to stay in his bed wasn’t really a choice. I had noticed a decline in the two months leading up to those last two months. Friends who came to  celebrate his 85th birthday said he seemed less engaged. After that birthday party, he went out for ice cream in his wheelchair for the last time. We didn’t have him walk out the door, as his aide and I had done in the past. It was clear that just the few steps from the bedroom to the chair were a big enough challenge.

The next week, after I recovered from my petulance over his “refusal” to go outside, I realized it was not his decision but his necessity. Almost at once, I felt guilty about being angry with him for not going out with me. I asked if he wanted to go out to the park and for ice cream. He enthusiastically did. He clearly could not. I offered to bring home some ice cream, pistachio, his favorite.

Those months were hard and sad. My Burt wasn’t responding to visitors with his usual sociability. He tired quickly after one visit from his dear friend MH. Our podiatrist was clearly shocked by the change in him.

I have accustomed myself to say the first decline, leading up to his being bedbound was just two months. That’s probably accurate. But, as he was in bed from mid November, there were three months to the end. They were the months during which imaginary guests were his companions, and he turned to them in the midst of conversation. It was hard to leave for my daily respite but it would have been harder to stay. I guess I knew where we were headed as I thought of staying as sitting in vigil.

As happens when we lose our dearest, we hold on to some guilt. It’s often of the random I wish I’d been more patient or more loving variety. In my case, it’s that and. He’d been coughing the last few months. Nothing showed up on the Xrays we took. I tried giving him a homeopathic remedy to reduce the worst of it. The cough made my kissing him imprudent. I had always kissed him; he had turned it into a game of tens; ten kisses hello and goodbye or just because were a cherished habit. As we neared the end, there had been no more of that kind of greeting between us.

Do I also feel guilt over my relief at how quickly Burt passed? Over my relief not just for his sake but for mine? That guilty relief is mixed with so much sadness that he’s not in his bed, that he is not here that it can only be described as grief. I yearn for him, not as he was at the end, but whole and well. I mourn him as he had been and as he was as dementia took him. I miss him, and, yes, I am relieved. I think that’s what rest in peace is meant to express. For me as well as for him.