Russell J. Warnock, Jr., 1933-2022
It wasn’t complicated. He had fallen at dialysis a few weeks ago, an event that occurred only a week after his surprisingly speedy recovery from having a pacemaker implanted.
He fell at dialysis at least in part because he refused assistance when he needed, mid treatment, to use the rest room. He went in, and then down he went.
Following that fall, tired of dialysis, of the, to him, shackling dependency that accompanied it, he said, while in a hospital bed at Cooper, “No more.” Maybe there were other factors. COPD. The elusive pains of aging. The ever-shrinking world that accompanies getting old, especially in our culture.
It was his decision and that was it. I only made one pitch for future possibility, describing a few things I thought he might consider living for, but he had done the mental calculus about those things and was moving forward. When I brought up my kids, his grandchildren, he said, “That’s your thing. Let’s talk about my thing.”
My brother and I respected the decision.
Years ago, I read an article in The Atlantic about the burgeoning issue of elder care in our culture. The article described it as a largely hidden problem—until we talked about it, maybe even with some stranger on a train, and then we realize how many of us share these challenges.
Decisions. Once you say no more, there still needs to be a place. You don’t just welcome death and lie in the grass and he comes to get you.
There is a lot of waiting. Where would it take place?
He posed the option of going to his house—to what?: To being bed-ridden and alone?
We mulled it over and then decided he would experience hospice at our home.
My wife was a damn hero about it all. She created a bright, sunny care space in our front room. She hung a painting of the first night game at old Ebbet’s Field and a display of his Marine service medals, featuring two Purple Hearts from Korea. Family photos everywhere. A room that colorfully said “home.” He could be hard-hearted, but he said he marveled at the love around him. He said it in a way that affirmed for me how little of that he had had in his life.
She took the job seriously, compassionately. I would find her, day after day, sitting in the front room with him, working on a puzzle.
The kids were great. They handled this process as best they could.
Samaritan Hospice—what would these people be doing if they hadn’t found the call for this kind of work? Their efforts were extraordinary.
He went through an initial period of calm, but then he became frustrated and angry. “It’s all shit!” “Nothing’s worth a shit!” Again, you can’t just lie down and will death. The body is tough, even when denied food and even finally drink.
Other moments. Two nights in, we found him on the floor without a stitch on. There was equipment around the railed hospital bed. There was no way we could figure he could have made it to the floor without falling, but there was no thump. Slid down, amongst the equipment? There he was, while the three of us tried to shake out the cobwebs and figure out what to do. You don’t call 9-1-1 in a hospice scenario. Finally, we had this exchange:
Me: How did you get up?
Him: Up?!
Me: Yeah, we found you lying here on the floor.
Him: Well that’s not really up, is it?
He and my wife got to, uh, know each other. Without dialysis, the body becomes intolerably itchy, and she regularly saw to that. One day, he said, “Scratch my heinie. About this time we’re pretty good acquaintances.”
At one point, my wife and brother thought it was surely over. I arrived home from work, and they rushed me into the house for the final good-bye. I sat for a minute, but then, unconvinced, I walked away to get a sandwich. He was lying there, unresponsive, and then popped up and looked at them brightly: “Hi guys!”
Anything complex grammatically and semantically became difficult then impossible. His vocabulary funneled down to simple commands: “Up!” “Juice!” “Drink!” and of course “Death!” This life-long accountant, trying to explain, in head-gripping frustration, about how he wants to count the “home runs” in the “fiscal quarter.”
Discussing the dying process is always a curious thing, especially in our still virtual era. It’s weird. You’re going through this at home, downstairs, and then you go upstairs and log in to a virtual meeting. It seems especially inappropriate to drop it on people in a Zoom meeting or on email.
There are renewed connections, though. I talked to an aunt and cousins in California I haven’t spoken to in decades.
But my dad was a hermit. Misanthrope. We didn’t have a ceremony, because he was outside the warm sphere of humanity, seemingly by choice. I had to laugh when I came across this a few weeks afterward:
My work handled it all great, humanely. So did my wife’s. So did my brother’s. As people around us found out, they did what they could, and it was always enough: A little food. Some conversation. Contact.
My brother found podcasts of old games, including the greatest NFL game ever played, the Colts-Giants 1958 NFL Championship that my Dad not only attended but still has the ticket stub. My wife created a play list. I couldn’t help but pause when I heard Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” as he was fading, fading…
Then the rattles. No real pain, but total disconnect.
That last night, two-and-a-half weeks after he arrived, I cautioned my son when he was out later than our bedtime not to go in and check on Grandpop, as I didn’t want him to make the unfortunate discovery. My son came home at 12:30 and did peek in: Life was soldiering on.
I got up 6 a.m. the following morning and he was gone.
