Why do we put old dogs to sleep but make our parents suffer?
My Grandpa, Lloyd Harness, Sr., was like a second father to me. He was the adult figure I was closest to after my parents. He talked to me like a grown-up. He took time to explain things. I loved him as deeply as I loved my mom and dad.
Grandpa had a stroke at age 61 when I was 16. He was normally an upbeat, positive person, but when I visited him at the hospital he was so depressed it distressed me. He was paralyzed on one side. The doctors said he could be rehabilitated. When I tried to encourage him, grandpa told me that once a person had a stroke they would have another even worse one. He looked in my eyes and said, “Next time I won’t be able to wipe my own ass.”
The night grandpa died I drove the 22 miles from Anderson, Calif. to visit him in Red Bluff in the beautiful home he built many years after he migrated with his family from Arkansas. He couldn’t clip his toenails so I volunteered. He was still pessimistic and somewhat incoherent. I listened and corrected him on some things he seemed confused about. I kissed his forehead and said good night when I finished. He was in his recliner in the family room. He must have been able to walk some because I don’t remember taking him to the bedroom.
As I returned home my mom, Betty, dad, Gail, brother Ben, sister Barbara, and Jim (her first husband) were watching television. I had just plopped down when the phone rang and mom answered. Granny was screaming at the other end of the line, “Father shot himself. Father is dead.” We raced to Red Bluff, south down the I-5 freeway. I rode with Mom, Dad and Ben. Jim and Barbara drove separately.
There was a pool of blood on the inside entrance to granny’s and grandpa’s house. Police were asking questions. Granny was screaming uncontrollably. I rode to the hospital with my Uncle, Lloyd Harness, Jr., while my dad and mom took care of granny. I don’t remember where Barb, Jim and Ben were. As we walked into the hospital a doctor said, “He’s gone. We lost him.”
Shortly after I left them earlier that evening, Granny Lil put grandpa to bed. Grandpa got up, probably when granny was in the bathroom. He must have used all of his strength to walk across their single floor house to the entryway where he kept his 22-pistol in a desk drawer. He shot himself through the heart.
An overflow crowd attended grandpa’s funeral at the Red Bluff First Baptist Church where he and Granny Lil worshipped. The doors were opened so people standing in the streets could look in.
My mother struggled with grandpa’s suicide all of her life. As she faced her own health challenges in subsequent years, (melanoma, two open heart surgeries, lung cancer) she was driven by the belief that if she didn’t fight to the end she would also be committing suicide. When her cancer reappeared she lost the strength to go through another round of radiation. Before she was at peace with her decision to stop the fight she met alone with her Bishop in her ICU room to make sure it wouldn’t be considered suicide. The Bishop told her it was okay, God would understand. The family gathered around Mom as she announced her decision. She was clearly relieved. In her weakened state I think she expected to die right then, with her family all around her. That would have been much more humane than what followed.
When she told her doctor about her decision, he said matter-of-factly, “Well Betty you need to go home because hospitals are for healing. Hospice is for dying.”
The end for my mom was starvation.
After she returned home, she was able to click a button for more morphine at will to deal with her excruciating pain. The family was told to stop giving her food and water and she gradually lost cohesiveness. I was gone for the last few days but my brothers Ben, Jared and sister Barbara, told me once she regained consciousness and begged for mashed potatoes. (She made the best mashed potatoes; just enough chunk to remind you what you were eating). So they made some for her. Mom was able to eat one mouthful before she lost consciousness. The hospice nurse later chastised them for feeding her. “She could have choked,” she said.
Another time Dad sat at her side after returning from the farm. Calling him by the nickname she’d given him many years before, she said, “Beast go shower. You smell like the farm.”
Mom’s death was an excruciating 2–1/2-week process. Grandpa’s was a split second.
We put old dogs to sleep, yet we starve our parents.
That’s why I believe in legal euthanasia. I know it’s controversial but if we love our parents, why make them suffer at the end?
FOOTNOTE: Because grandpa was killed by a firearm the police combed the house for evidence. They were frustrated they couldn’t locate the 22 caliber bullet that had passed through his body.
Granny Lil stayed with us until her new house was completed. I don’t think she ever returned to the home where grandpa died. I went back the next day to gather some of her belongings.
I stood looking at the breakfast nook down a hallway from the house’s entrance where I had breakfast so many times with granny and grandpa. There was a little potbelly wood stove to one side. I would watch them drink coffee as they looked out through the patio to the gulch where grandpa once told me a scary story about a cat that walked up carrying its head in its mouth.
As I stood in front of that breakfast table remembering, I saw a hole in the window pane, and then found the bullet that had taken my grandfather’s life, lying in the sill. I yelled at it for killing my grandpa.
Then I threw it in the gulch and cried.
