Ned Skaff, Signing Off.
Today, I sit beside the bed of my grandfather. His body was made 96 years ago. He is in the process of death. It's a surreal feeling, a hard and painful experience for all in many ways. But Ned had a good life. He is still with us as I write this, but he is now in the transition of dreams. From what I could tell, they looked like good dreams. I held a dying old man’s hand before he slipped into the dreamscape never to return. While he was still awake, my cousin and I sat there with him alone. The nurse sat at the hospital room door. The family needed a break from experiencing the trauma of his pain, and as cousins raised under his love, we were happy to hold him for some time. Until the end if it had to be. "Wat...er" Amanda would tenderly dip the sponge and lift the swab to his mouth, giving him some of his final sips of the substance of life. A strange irony, the same man who gave us our first sips of so many flavors. With trembling and weakness, he would pinch his lips, drinking what he could. She would then run a moisturizing substance in and around his lips and mouth. They had removed the respiratory mask as his oxygen levels we're above 96 and thusly decided it was safe to switch him to the far less medieval and only slightly intrusive nasal apparatus. It would only provide more comfort for him. Amanda gently held his left hand as I gripped his right. He could not speak so we tried to write with him. We made a sheet of answers and needs so he could tell us when he was in pain and when he was thirsty with the point of his crooked, hundred-year fingers, mangled and bulbous with arthritis. He was all of these things at once; thirsty, hungry, in pain... struggling. The catheter was slowly accumulating a dark red liquid. His shallow breaths could only force quarter groans of pain or an eighth of a word. "Hur-...rt" he would strainingly whisper with gasp. "He...lp" "Need to.. ge up..." Amanda and I would exchange a somber look. So, I grasped and told him to squeeze. "That was good grandpa, but you are still very weak, and you need to stay in bed while we get your oxygen levels back up." "You... you... people..." "I'm sorry grandpa. I know it hurts." They had given him a regiment of morphine shortly before this. He did not like it. "I'm... dying..." "We're all here for you Grandpa. Everyone's here and we love you." He did his best to pull his eyelids up to see us, spinning and heavy from the morphine. He looked to Amanda and then to me, in a morphine spiral, trying as hard as he could to jolt his lids up and get a good look at us. "... kill me." Amanda and I looked at each other and then down to him. We stayed strong. I truly wanted to help him. If I could have, I would have killed him. A gentle and prepared way to help him end this pain and anguish of his final hours. I would have begged and pleaded for the same thing. I felt it, Amanda felt it, the nurse felt it, but that was what she did for a living; helping people die peacefully.
Here was the man that helped people get their information for travel when coming into and leaving from LAX International Airport. He was part of the orchestra which makes the symphonies of modern travel. Surely there was a way for us to help him navigate this final terminal in the waking life. "We're trying to help with the pain grandpa. Are you still in pain?" He nodded yes, clearly. The nurse spoke softly to us. "I can talk to the doctor and see if we can switch him over to Ativan. It will help with his anxiety, and he will be able to sleep." Again, Amanda and I spoke to our beloved grandfather who struggled with this reasoning, despite his preparations over the past decade. He was very against the use of drugs. "Grandpa, we can try and get more painkillers. Is that what you want?" "Yes!... please... hurry!" There was some power left in his voice. It was probably the last time we would hear that legendary, historic and stoic tone of Radio Head Ned, one of the original voices of broadcast radio. "S" he tried to get a word out. The nurse gently sat watching over us as he struggled to try and rip out the catheter. "I don't... need this..." He would lob his bulbous mitts of arthritis bloated knuckles at his catheter. "You do grandpa. You're kidneys..." I stuttered. "Your kidneys are failing and need to cleanse." Amanda did the job I could not muster out of myself. Some time would go by with a few groans and gasps of pain without the true breath or strength to express. His eyes would gently open. Everything was slowly failing. One part breaking down after the other. A classic car sputtering to its final stop in the middle of this road. The rest of the family returned. We all discussed the Ativan, and it was a quick decision that took too long to get to him. When they finally came with the Ativan, it felt as if the angel of death had come, delivering merciful empathy for this soul. Now the pain would leave, and he could dream the epic journey. We did our best to comfort him on his way out, and he was finally in peaceful dreams... he slept, he dreamed, while we kept him warm, kissed his bald head, said our individual goodbyes as we held his clay like hand. He dreamed, while we cried and made our plea bargain with the almighty.
The Chaplain came and said her words, absolving him for his own place in heaven, to which he had never cared for, believed in or really acknowledged. Yet, his special heavenly place was still guaranteed to him, for the sacrifice of all mankind was made 2023 years ago so he could join the almighty on this very day. I imagined the theme song to Cocoon, as a young Ned Skaff sat with his balding head under his Greek fisherman's cap at a bus stop…
He waited with an anxious anticipation, taking in the vast landscape, and glancing down the open road. A younger man made his way along the dirt path on the roadside casually and sat next to him. They both sat quietly, staring at a beautiful blue sky and grassy, fertile landscape of open ranges lined with deep, gorgeous forests and heavenly mountain ranges. Ned smiled at the other young man as he studied him with a bit of nervous curiosity. The young man smiled back with a soft purity. Ned waved at him. "Hi." Said Ned.
"Hello." The young man acknowledged.
Ned removed his hat, scratching curiously at his bald head before placing it back on playfully.
"So uh... where does this route take us?" Ned asked, as if he had some kind of amnesia.
"Back home of course... to Albuquerque." replied the young man.
"Albuquerque, New Mexico!" Ned said with innocent and playful youth.
"Exactly!" said the young man with a joy in his voice that could lift anyone.
A bit of silence sat with them. Only a soft, angelic warm breeze brushed around them with crisp and hollow sounds of a comforting kind of quietude.
"Where's your luggage?" Ned asked, pointing out that the man simply sat there without any bags.
"Don't carry luggage anymore."
Ned dawned a quirky look "Well what kind of a traveler are you?"
"Same type as you I guess, just don't really need luggage goin' back home." he answered.
Ned considered this, as he realized he too was without a trunk. He shook off the confusion as if it was of no matter anyway, yet it was strange.
That's when he squinted at the young man, who was just smiling with adornment at Ned. It was like he was already answering Ned's next question.
"... Do I know you from somewhere?"
The man smiled as the sound of the bus’s air breaks could be heard as it approached.
The young man just smiled and did not speak. He just stood up and presented his hand.
Ned’s confusion grew, the clues we're coming together. He looked at the man’s hand as he was reluctant at first, but he trusted the kind aura coming from this bright young soul. He slowly reached out and held his hand as the bus came to a stop and hissed a mighty hydraulic compression, easing into the bus stop and swinging open its doors.
Ned was a little weak as he stood up slowly while the man tenderly grasped his hand like a brotherly guide.
Ned gazed upon the young man with an innocence and realization.
"...Andrew?" a great emotion swept over him.
The young man’s gleaming smile emulated laughter, love and happiness without even changing shape. Just a pure smile.
"I'm so happy to see you Grandpa." the young man comforted him.
"Wha- you..."
"Yea. It's a funny thing really. But you'll see. There are so many things you get to see now."
"Wha... but I..."
"It's alright. You did great. Now, just hold my hand. Come with me. They can't wait to see you."
And just like that, Ned's smile became immortal joy and his body was of unconditional love as his guardian grandson guided him aboard the greatest route to which one day, we will all have a seat reserved.
And the doors closed. A great hiss of compressed air released, and the bus rolled off into the pearly gates of the eternal afterlife prepared. There was no more pain. Only white clouds, blue skies, green grass and everything he had ever loved.
Rest in peace Grandpa. When our times come, please find us at the bus stop.
In loving memory.
Ned Mitchell Skaff October 18th 1926 – March 26th 2023
We love you forever and always.
