long day

My father's mind is gone. He can no longer bathe, dress, or use the bathroom himself. He no longer responds to even basic questions about whether he's comfortable or in pain. Sometimes he looks panicked and I put my arm around him.. I tell him, I'm right here, dad. He chuckles and seems relieved. 

Hospice is often accused of accelerating decline, but the truth seems complicated and ambiguous. They say these are the signs someone is dying, and that their morphine use often coincides with these symptoms. It's easy to get cause and effect backwards. I'm not convinced, but he's been incoherent and on another planet all day. He speaks in fragments of thoughts and memories without context or specifics. 

It's as if different parts of his brain are just firing, increasingly incoherent of one another. It was a large dose of extended release morphine. Maybe he'll start making more sense when it leaves his system. Or hospice is right, and this is what dying looks like. I've never seen anything like it.

Death is hard enough to come to terms with when we've got all our wits about us. I find it horrifying that in the end, we're robbed of even that. A defense some of us have spent our lives building up. My father was never really big on that though. I don't know what he believes or doesn't. I'm not sure he's ever thought much of it one way or another.

I've spent all day with him, muttering incoherently. I don't know if it's because of the 30mg morphine ER, his mind is shutting down, or what. This morning, I was afraid he might only have weeks. Now, days. Maybe just hours.