Saturday

It's quiet, post-chemo, Saturday. Eric's at a colleague's house, working on curriculum. I'm watching public television and drinking coffee. It's all about Lost Treasures of Broadway. Jerry Orbach. Who knew?

My father-in-law is quite ill. He's been moved to a hospice facility. His blood pressure is too low to receive dialysis, and without dialysis he'll be gone within days or perhaps a week or so. He's comfortable, which is a good, good, thing. The hospice was unable to control his pain at home.

Eric is sad about his father and worried about his mother. He's also sad and worried about me. And he's worried about his students, too -- how to teach them what they should know while under increasing pressure to teach to a bad test, and missing so many days due to my treatment.

My father-in-law, Bob, has a joking, grouchy, persona that has mellowed over the years. He had quite a bark when I met him, but he never growled at me. If he had any objections to his New York Jewish son marrying a crazy Californian with no discernible connection to her heritage, he kept them to himself.

I have to be careful what I say around him. One time I said I liked jelly doughnuts, and two dozen appeared the next day. I once said in his presence that I'd never had an ice cream cake, and one appeared that evening.

Until he became too sick to do so, he picked out a valentine for me every year, as he did for his two daughters. They were "For my daughter" cards, and I know that he meant it.

I'm sad that he's dying. He's been sick a long time, and it's been hard to watch him become diminished. In recent years he's become much more emotive -- he called me when he learned of my diagnosis, and told me how upset he was, and that he loved me -- and Eric says that the last time he went to visit his father, he absolutely lit up with joy when he saw Eric.

Anyone who's ever participated in a "death vigil" knows what an emotional and tense time it is. Such a common experience, but still strangely solitary.