A very sweet story about a daughter/caregiver and her dying father

Jun 16, 2009 04:05 PM

by Anxious Patient

Premium Member

A Time in a Life for Pie and Beer

By JUDITH WOODBURN
Published: June 15, 2009

You’ve heard the one about the old man who was dying? He smelled cherry pie baking, so he roused himself from bed and staggered into the kitchen. He was reaching for the pie when his wife swatted his wrist away. “No!” she barked. “That’s for the funeral.”

There are lots of jokes involving pies; they’re funnier than other foods, somehow. But for caregivers like me who’ve helped feed a loved one through a long illness, the very idea of pie may carry regret. Like the wife in the joke, I spent years nudging my ailing father away from pastry and anything like it. Recently, though, I’ve found myself wishing I’d cooked with a little less yogurt and a lot less worry.

My father died last year at age 85. Over two decades, as his health declined, I cooked for him when I could. It was hard to find foods that weren’t literally deadly for him. What made it harder was that only one of us cared.

It’s not that Dad had given up hope. Paradoxically, he loved life more as he grew sicker. And the happier he became, the more he indulged in things that were bad for his health. Alcohol was dangerous, given its interactions with his many medications, but he became devoted to a daily cocktail or beer. Though his blood sugar soared, he stopped saying no to sweets.

Because his heart was failing, salty food made fluids pool in his body. But the soups he adored were oceans of sodium, prompting hospital visits and the need for powerful diuretics. Even while threaded with intravenous lines, he’d poke at his food and ask for salt from the cafeteria.

After a lifetime of hard work and moderation, my father simply wanted to enjoy himself. He had come to live — and eat — entirely in the moment. I wanted to join him there. I wanted to bake pies with buttery crusts and bask in his delight. Yet I was stuck not in this moment, but in the next: the one where we were about to lose him.

So I kept trying. I made banana bread with yogurt and wheat germ, salmon with the barest suggestion of sauce. Dad received the food graciously, though I often returned to find it cached in the depths of the refrigerator, shriveled and rubbery.

Just after I had stacked a batch of low-sodium meatloaves in my parents’ freezer, my father’s illness entered its final phase. It was time for hospice. In a blur of phone calls and furniture moving, it was done: Dad had a hospital bed, an oxygen tank and a flock of children and grandchildren to do what we could.

My father last sat for a family dinner two nights before he died. I’d been the only one in the kitchen, but it was as if two daughters had been cooking. One of us still believed she could rescue her father; she had fixed pork tenderloin in a no-salt marinade and a salad with oven-roasted tomatoes. The other daughter acknowledged something her father had come to understand years earlier. She’d put together a pudding that held nothing back. It had cream, five eggs, sugar and a transgressive dose of salt.

Hospice literature suggests that the dying often lose interest in food. My father did. He looked, mystified, at all I’d set out. “Now, who is going to eat this?” he marveled, and while everyone else ate, he and I just held hands.

Then, at the sound of a beer being opened, a mischievous light entered his face. “Hey,” he said. “I’ll have some of that!” My sister caught my eye. We shrugged. There is a love that concerns itself with the tides inside the body, with organs and arteries (and the fact that alcohol and sublingual morphine don’t exactly mix). There at the table, I finally understood. We were past this kind of love.

My brother filled a juice glass with beer. Dad downed it in a near-gulp, the way we’d tossed back grape juice at the Methodist communion rail as kids. He sighed. Then he smiled and said, “This is so good.” He was looking around at us as he said it, there was joy in his eyes, and we were pretty sure he didn’t mean the beer.

Judith Woodburn is a writer based in Madison, Wis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/health/16case.html

*leslie :-D* · Jun 16, 2009, 05:35 PM

Re: A very sweet story about a daughter/caregiver and her dying father

it's interesting this article comes up now...
as i am dealing w/the very same thing w/my mil.
she has advanced heart failure, crf and now, malignant melanoma.
my husband has been scolding her if he sees her 'sneaking' a piece of fried chicken or a pastry.
just today it happened again.
and as soon as he said something to her, she became defensive and denied the amt she had eaten.
i pulled hubby aside, and firmly told him to let her enjoy whatever she wants.
that she is at a point in her life, where she should be able to indulge w/o guilt or fear of retribution.
as a matter of fact, when we got home, i baked her a strawberry shortcake (her favorite) and will be bringing it over for her to eat to her heart's delight.

thanks for this article, anxious.
i hope a lot of readers heed this important message.

leslie

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A very sweet story about a daughter/caregiver and her dying father

A very sweet story about a daughter/caregiver and her dying father

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