WE STAYED UNTIL VISITING hours were over. The nurses had been checking on her regularly, so they kept me abreast of what we were looking at in the way of time. The nurses convinced me that she was stable and the best thing for me was to get a good night’s sleep. I was torn leaving, but with all the pain medication, she would be fast asleep all night. Besides, I felt like the girls were going to need me more than ever. They were shaken pretty badly, so I wanted to be there for them.
The ten-minute ride home from the hospital was chock-full of me fielding and deflecting questions from the girls. I wanted to be honest with them, they deserved that, but I didn’t want to tell them that their Mommy was going to die. As we drove that night, I remember feeling very lonely in the front seat, but at the same time, very, very close to my girls.
I also remember how utterly shitty it felt to walk into that house with just the three of us. It was absolutely awful…as if it were a dry run of what my new life was going to be. I know I had been trying to prepare myself for these sorts of things but seeing the finality barreling down on us was spooking me. As we took off our shoes in the foyer I whispered to myself, “…Get used to it because this is what it’s gonna be like.”
I got the girls ready for bed fairly quickly and then sat in their rooms with them. They were ten- and seven-year-old at this point and each had their own room, so I had to alternate. It was the right decision to go home with them. We said prayers and talked. About fifteen minutes after I tucked them in, I saw them both standing at my door wanting to sleep with me. They would do that from time to time when they were scared, and I could tell they were scared. So there I was, lying in my bed with my two girls, with them sleeping and me just staring at the ceiling. My mind was racing in fifty different directions. Part of me couldn’t stop thinking about Gina and what was going on with her. I kept trying to picture what was going on and how things looked in her hospital room. I started thinking about what preparations I was going to need to make, like hospice, getting her home, where to put her, etc. Part of my mind was on the girls sleeping next to me and on the imminent change that was about to hit their worlds. For the first time, some panic started to set in, not as much about Gina as about being a single Dad with two little girls and Jackson I know I’ve said it before, but I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle it all. To keep the house in order, to give them the love of a father and a mother, to be nurturing, the important things. It was all very weighing, very saddening. I don’t know that I have ever been as depressed as I was in that particular moment.
The next morning the girls seemed a little better as they got ready. I checked in with the hospital and it looked as though Gina still had some time and would be coming home for hospice, so I sent the girls to school. That morning I spoke on the phone with a woman about hospice care. To be honest, I figured that this would be something the hospital would arrange or at least offer some assistance with. Today many hospitals are starting to hire Nurse Navigators whose job is to help patients and their families down the line from the moment of their diagnosis through hospice, but that wasn’t the case for us. It would have been nice for someone to give me a heads up that this was something to think about, and maybe include some sort of referral service or something. You would think this would be something maybe even Dr. Smith’s office would have prepped me for.
I was shocked, however, to learn how minimal it was. When I got to the hospital, Gina was in a lot of pain. She was coherent however, so we discussed it. She didn’t want to die in the hospital and I didn’t want her to either. She handed me a sketch she drew of my office at home and how she wanted it to be set up for her hospice bed.
I know some people might find it eerie to have their wife die in their house, like it would stain or taint that room. I have to admit, as much as it seemed like the right thing to do, part of me worried about her dying at home. It wasn’t a memory I wanted nor was it something I thought the girls could handle. I mean, how was I supposed to go into my office and work knowing that was the room that she died in? And what do I do about it? Do I express these concerns to Gina or do I swallow my tongue and deal with it? I didn’t want the house to be a funeral parlor but at the same time, it was in essence my wife’s dying wish. It would be an easy decision if it was just my own insecurities holding me back, but I was also worried about the girls. The house was completely her. She decorated it, she ran it, and she raised a family in it. I wasn’t sure if it was right to denigrate all of that with their last visual of their mother being her dying and then wheeled out of the house with a sheet over her.
It felt like a catch 22 situation. If I said something, I was being a good dad trying to protect my girls, but at the same time, I would be an asshole of a husband if I denied my wife her dying wish. I had no clue what to do.
The day was long. It was nice spending all that time with her and I was trying to soak up every minute, but good God, sitting in a hospital just drains the hell out of you. I took a lot of walks through the hallways and even tried to get some work done when Gina would doze off. It wasn’t my best work but it was nice to force my focus elsewhere. I went to get the girls at 3pm and to be honest, I really needed that break.
The rest of the night was pretty much a repeat of the night before, except that the girls were less scared this time. Jackson came by the hospital to visit and took the girls home for me so I could stay. I stayed with her until the end of visiting hours and the nurses were forcing me out the door. I took that as kind of a good sign, thinking that if they thought things were bad enough, they would have let me break the rules and stay.