Last week my 92 year old grandfather was rushed to the hospital and his family was called in on the premise that he wouldn’t live through the night. It was almost the same thing as what happened to my old friend Clarkie, except before that day, I hadn’t seen my grandfather in over two years. Due to the toll his age has taken on his brain, I don’t really think that he would recognize me, but I’m not sure if it makes me a bad person for not visiting him anyway. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but that’s the way it is.

So, all week I’ve been calling in, dropping by, and being generally available to my family for whatever I can do to make things easier. I couldn’t do much, but at least I could be there. Within a few hours of merely being there, I realized that just being there wasn’t enough. It was then that I realized that I should try to be present. And that is hard. Hospitals wear me out. Encouraging an unconscious person that he is strong when others are telling him to let go on the off chance that he might hear me wears me out. The uncertainty of death wears me out. Trying to look like none of this wears me out in case it is wearing someone else out truly wears me out.

Then, I skip the gym, I have nightmares* and weird dreams, and I don’t feel like writing anything. And I wonder if I really did a good job. I know my Dad did a good job. He always does. I know my Mom did a good job, because when someone is dying, I swear I have never seen anything like her. She is utterly remarkable. Whether I did a good job, or whether there was even a job for me to do is up for debate, but I gave it a shot.

And day after day, my grandfather’s 180 bpm heart rate has gradually fallen to a normal level, my family is a little more relaxed, and I feel like writing again.

The two things that I learned from this are: that death is never certain, and no matter what your opinion happens to be on euthanasia, if someone’s father is dying, don’t tell them that if you were a nurse you’d put him out of his misery. It’s really fucking insensitive.

And if you do, I will not only want to order you a very tall glass of shut the fuck up, but I will note that you are not allowed anywhere near my hospital bed if anything should happen to me.

If you happen to be standing around my unconscious, headless body in a vat thinking, “Jon wouldn’t want to live this way…” I have instructed one of my oldest friends to not only emphatically tell you “Oh yes, Jon fucking would want to live this way” but to bleed any possible inheritance bone dry to keep me breathing. I have also instructed him to add several secret backup switches and jam a multitude of feeding tubes down my throat just in case any of you might be lucky enough to get to one of them to shut me down. I have also given him permission to jump on the hospital bed, if necessary, as long as it is done in a dramatic, non-gay way. However, no matter what he might tell you, he is NOT authorized to draw on me in any way. This includes moustaches, big eyebrows, glasses, or any messages with arrows pointing to any oriface.

Can you dig?

*I had one dream where someone was trying to drag me behind a boat in a shark infested ocean, another where seemingly normal occurrences were nightmarish but looked normal, and a third where a caterpillar was writhing on the drain of a moldy shower while a centipede near him looked as if it would attack me.

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