Old and failing

So my love is old – 86 in April. I remember how we imagined we would cuddle together by the fire, both of us understanding the dreadful gates that age imposes, but neither of us imagining it would come to this.

He always insisted that when it was time he would go to a care home so  I could be free. I do not know if he meant it, because this disease is a shape-changer and what is  – or was –  moves, as so our life situation.

But I see and hear and interpret  from the limited monitoring i can do, by Skype 2 times a week and calling the care home LPNs every day, that he is slowly going away.

Just a couple of months ago,  on good days, he was talking like crazy and cracking jokes that only he can understand.

Now for 3 days straight they have used a lift to get him out of bed.

I don’t think or hear any evidence that he smiles and jokes anymore. I fear he is losing spirit and hope.

I get no reports anymore from the care aides who love him, because the most efficient part of Island Health’s swanky administration has been to plug the possibilty of real info – did he smile or joke today? Those jokes that no one else understood but cracked him up…

I am afraid this lockdown has cost him the will to live. Not sure about me either to be blunt.

When you have had dementia for 15 years, we all know it is inevitable. No one gets out of a long term care home alive.

But despite his chivalrous instructions, I always planned, and arranged my life and work, to be by his side every step of the way. To hold his hand, to reassure him with love.

He is still eating mightily, so my fear is hopefully premature,  but i think he will be leaving soon.

I will never know if he lost his fabulous joie de vivre because it was the natural path to death, or because the lockdown cut him off from nurturing. Everyone in masks, no hugging or touching.

That applies to me too.

In the meantime i think i will entertain myself by finding out about death rates in long term care. Some deaths, of the … 2 dozen or more i have seen over the years in a 17 bed ward, are clearly understandable.

But so many more are unexpected. And uninvestigated. Especially during outbreaks and lockdowns. I have been uneasy about this for a few years.

One wonders if anyone ever looks at death rates in these quasi-prisons,  or does the entire system shrug? After all, they come here to die.

But if you care enough to forbid visitors for months on end, you ought to care enough to look at the death rates.

Does the coroner ever look? Do the cops? Does the Public Health Officer even glance at the reports and look at the time periods or like everyone else shrug,  because who cares, they are old and dying anyway?  Is this entire warehouse system killing people, at best, by cold kindness?