It has been approximately four years since my father started dying. Since then it has been a sore throat, a persistent pain that occasionally fades enough to go about my day, to maybe forget that it's there, but with each breath it threatens. And every so often it can't be soothed whatever I do. I am painfully reminded every day that he could die tomorrow, or in two weeks, or in six months, or in two years and it would not be surprising. I would be devastated and adrift, but I would not be surprised.
Of course, had you told me in 2012 that he would live another 4 years I would be aghast. He has outlived every expectation. There is a part of me that wonders if it is a good or bad thing, but most of me knows it is good. He has had 4 more years of time with his grandchildren, he danced with me at my wedding, he has visited California. Some of those years have been better than others, with more or less pain, with more or less cognitive function, with more or less vigor and physical ability.
It is now, when he is back in the hospital, with a viral infection and complications due to congestive heart failure, only partially lucid, that I wonder. When I speak to my mother when she's been woken up five, six, eight times over the previous night and I hear her voice catch on the phone, I wonder.
That being said, his being back in the hospital is not unsurprising. It doesn't feel new. It's well-trod ground. Back again.
