If I had to die in a hospital today, I would want to die in Lackey Memorial Hospital in Forest, Mississippi. My dad died at Lackey the Sunday before Christmas. The people there are the most compassionate, talented, kindest, caring people I have ever come to know. Not just some of them, but every single one of them we have come in contact with from the emergency room, to the hospital room, to swing bed, to physical therapy, and on, and on, an on.
My family should know, and we should know well. Dad had spent a lot of time at Lackey since his 91st birthday last January.
Everything began to come to the end a little over five years ago. In the game of life, that September we were dealt a bad hand when my mother died unexpectedly leaving my elderly father at home alone. They had been married 65 years. They were inseparable.
It was hard on him living alone, but we pressed on until January of this past year when we were dealt another bad hand after anesthesia in a Jackson hospital to repair a kidney blockage awakened the dark cloak of dementia deeply hidden in his brain. We had noticed him saying, and doing, a few strange things here and there, but we put most of it off to being 91.
Following the stay in Jackson we took him to Lackey for the first time to swing bed and physical therapy where we hoped he would improve enough to return home with in-home care.
He would recover somewhat in March, but we had to move him into assisted living rather than his home in Newton because it had become clear he could no longer care for himself, and be trusted to take his meds, and eat properly. He eventually settled into the place and made friends and life returned to normal — or the new normal.
Then in June we were dealt another bad hand when a bout with Noro -virus reared the ugly head of dementia again and he was rehospitalized for six weeks — most of that time in Lackey.
Again he overcame it and returned to Newton, and assisted living, and his regular routine. I think by that time he almost thought he worked at the facility rather than being a resident. He told me many times he thought he would go ahead and retire because they were not paying him anyway.
One day while I was visiting we were walking from his room to the atrium to sit and as we passed another resident sitting up on the edge of her recliner he told her she needed to sit back before she fell. “Did you hear me,” he asked her, and I kind of laughed.
With dementia, sometimes you just have to laugh. Sometimes you just need to laugh.
He was often joking around with several of the other guys there and although I’m not sure what the secrets were they shared, they seemed to share them completely, and enjoyed each other’s company along with those secrets. One of them helped us clean out Dad’s room last Thursday.
All was well again by the last week of August and it looked like happier days were coming. Or, again, as happy as they might ever be.
But then on Labor Day, bad cards fell again and a trip to the Lackey Emergency Room revealed a gallbladder infection and his body was septic. The game, it appeared, was over. But no, the hard work of the capable care team had him back on his feet in a few weeks.
It was obvious by late fall that his mental state was declining more rapidly, but again he was 91 — almost 92 — and was fighting a disease that cannot be fought. He was comfortable, and a very kind woman named Lena Fowler, who works at the facility where he lived, was the best caretaker one could ever ask for. With her help we were making do.
Around mid-December a mild bout with diverticulitis required an overnight stay at Lackey, but that was quickly overcome, or so we thought.
Ironically, my grandfather, my dad’s dad, died on Christmas Eve in 1967 and Dad remembered that. In retrospect, we kind of wonder if he might have set that as a goal.
For a week or so he had been asking for a haircut. He was always worried about his hair. So, on the Thursday before he died I grabbed the clippers and headed to Newton to get him fixed up for Christmas.
When I arrived he said, “I want it as short as yours.” I didn’t think he did so I cut it a little longer than mine — which is very short — and showed him his new do in the mirror.
“How’s that,” I asked. “Whatever,” he replied. “You mean you want it shorter,” I asked. “You can take a little more off,” he replied, and he went home to heaven to meet Mom a few days later with his hair as short as mine.
On Sunday, December 22, I met the ambulance, and my dad, at Lackey for the final time. He didn’t look bad at all, but was in severe abdominal pain. He knew me and asked where my wife, Danny, was and what she was doing. “How could things have changed so fast since Thursday,” I worried.
The team went to work quickly, but this time it soon became clear we had been dealt the losing hand. The CT scan revealed his body was again septic, “the worst case,” Dr. Damon Darsey said, he had ever seen.
Dad was moved to a room he had in fact been in earlier in the year. A crew of his old friends he had made over the past year were on duty and they quickly worked to make him as comfortable as possible in what we all knew would be the final hours of his life. And, that they did!
They hugged me and cried with me and when my wife and daughter arrived they hugged them and cried with them too. They had come to love my dad and they told us so over and over again.
He died all day long and was peaceful and pain-free as we watched him finally, slowly, pass away. At 7:00 p.m. he was gone.
When Dr. Darsey came in to make the declaration, he asked could we pray first, and with one hand on Joe Beeland’s still warm shoulder and his other grasping my own hand, he said his prayer. Somewhere in it he said something along the line of thank you Lord for letting him die in a place like this, rather than in some big sterile facility where nobody knew his name.
Obviously those are not his exact words, but his exact words were true words. Very true words,I heard them, I understood them, and I felt them in my heart. I still do.
And that, my friends, is why I say if I have to die in a hospital, let me die in Lackey Memorial Hospital in Forest, Mississippi.
