The bubbling noise is hard to ignore. It is followed by a laboured intake of breath.  My father has been struggling for breath for the last four days.  Today is the hardest to watch: he has a fever which medication is no longer helping, and bed sores are starting to form on his heels, his hips, his shoulders and knees.  It is a painful sight, but one to which I feel I must bear witness.  Five years, almost to the day, since he entered an institution, my father is finally giving in to death’s call.  But not without a fight:  The proverbial fight to the death.

What a long journey this has been. I had no idea when I first realized how confused he was that alcohol was not the source, but the solace to which he clung.  His well-built barriers now broken down, he was experiencing the after shocks of a much-delayed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  He had lived alone as a young teenager on the streets of London at war.  He had seen things that a child should not; at fifteen he had manned an anti- aircraft gun alone on the roof of a paint factory.  He had killed to save hundreds of lives, but he had saved lives with the cost of his own peace.

At the institution in Guelph, his first home away from home, I sat with him one whole day while he wept and kept saying, “Everything is broken.”  I couldn’t make sense of it.  “What’s broken, Dad?” I asked. He had no answer.  I tried reassurance, “The family is all well.  There is nothing to worry about.”  He was inconsolable. His words, “Broken, all broken,” accompanied by heart-rending wails of grief.  The social worker arrived and explained that this was something she had witnessed many times in veterans of the war: the mental strength to hold the memories at bay was leaving him, and he was, she thought, reliving a particularly difficult moment.  We were both helpless to do anything but stay stalwartly with him.

Since then, he has had months of alternating lucidity and fearful confusion.  I received calls at night when he was terrified that he would be found by some malignant enemy who he could not name, or that he had no money to pay the bill.  He was a traditional sundowner: agitated later in the day and unable to settle.  Often my reassuring words would help the nurses to get him to sleep.  “Don’t worry, Dad.  I’ll pay the bill tomorrow,” or “Don’t worry about a thing.  Please just be polite to the staff and return to your room.  We’ll sort it out tomorrow.”  But, of course, tomorrow he had forgotten the wisdom of the day before. His demons stalked him for months.  A woman in my fifties, with grown children of my own, I was finally learning what growing up was all about: Life is difficult and messy.  There are things that are broken that cannot be fixed.  My once proud, articulate and intelligent father was receding, slipping away.  I could no longer find him. He would never again hold my arm crossing the street; I would hold him, ensure that he was safe. This, I learned, was the rite of passage into later middle age.

The last two years he has not known who I am.  He has been more peaceful; the demons have vanished to be replaced by a vacancy and slackness.  He woke up one morning certain that he was unable to walk, and so it was. A wheelchair was ordered, and he never walked again.  How does one make sense of this? Ah, but there is no making sense of everything.  In my youth, everything had seemed so black or white.  This caring for elderly parents has taught me about the thick grey fog of uncertainty.

It hasn’t been all bad: I have learned that long-term care nurses can be such wise agents of mercy.  This week, this week of dying, countless people have cared for him as if he were their own. Loving hands have rubbed his skin with lotion, suctioned the fluid from his throat and mouth and soothed his fevered brow with cool cloths.  They have spoken to him with respect and gentleness.  Not a single one has failed to ask how they can be of help to my mother, to me, or my daughter as we sit through this vigil.  This, too, has been a revelation.  Gifts of mercy and kindness are given regularly and generously in this world of the dying.

Tonight, as I held my father’s bluing fingers, hot with fever, I urged him to rest, to let go, to rest comfortably knowing that the family was safe, that he had done his job well.  I sense, however, that he does not yet believe it. He is still trying to stay, to hold on to something, to make sure that we will not endure any ill.  We sang to him, songs from his childhood.  He moved in our direction.  He heard. The singing gave us joy.  Even in an unskilled voice, to sing is to release something that is beautiful.  Another lesson I will continue to learn. Joy finds us in the doing, not the seeking.

I am dogged by fatigue.

The words of the 23^rd Psalm, read this afternoon by the Anglican priest touched me. ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  Those words will stay with me, as will the feel of my father’s burning hand.  Lord, in whatever form you exist, show thy servant mercy tonight.

Sleep.