Time To Go Home

Last night I prayed my grandpa would die in his sleep.

I’m still praying for it.

I know it sounds terrible but it’s just only that life has gotten so hard for him. He wanted to stay in his house for as long as he could. My family has been trying so hard to keep him there. At ninety-one, that means someone goes there every day to make sure he takes his meds and eats lunch.

Yesterday, grandpa was confused. He took all his meds before ten am, when they are supposed to be taken four times through the day. Three hours later he was halfway through Wednesdays meds.

The reason he took them is because his Parkinson’s is so bad. When he start shaking badly he thinks he needs more pills.

He’s getting confused, and it’s getting hard for him to be alone. He has to call for help when he can’t get his pants pulled up or can’t get up off the toilet. It’s a humiliating kind of life, but at least right now it’s family he calls.

Yesterday he admitted it might be time for him to move somewhere with twenty four hour care. He told my sister he cried last night because it’s so hard.

I’m terrified he’s going to die of COVID if we put him into extended care. Everyone I know who has gone into a nursing home or rehab center has ended up in the hospital with COVID and died. Every one.

My grandpa is a man of strong faith. I cried myself to sleep, begging his god to please take him home and end his suffering.

Grandpa, aside from some confusion lately, has all his wits about him. He has so far escaped dementia or Alzheimer’s. It makes it worse when it comes to now. I cannot stand the thought of my grandpa crying because it’s so hard to live.

I can’t stop crying about it, to be honest. It’s a real heart breaker.

In this time of mass death and illness, I know I should be grateful he’s alive and I am, I really am. I just can’t take the suffering. He doesn’t deserve it.

It’s time for him to go home. I want it to happen without him having to move into a place full of strangers. I want him to stay in the house where he raised his family and lived my whole life. I don’t want him to have survived this long only to become another COVID statistic.

So I’ll keep praying. Please, universe, god, goddess, angels and family loved and lost- come take him home with you.

Amen.