Since I’m Still Here, I May as Well Live
Loren Hardin
The Ashland Beacon
This is part two of a series about Doc who was sixty-nine when he enrolled in our home-based hospice program. During my initial visit Doc recounted how, just a couple days earlier, he “almost died”. Here’s Doc, "I was adjusting my insulin and gave myself too much and I went into a diabetic coma. I could feel myself slipping away. I was looking down on myself and I told myself, ‘I’m not ready to die! There are things I still need to do.’ I had to concentrate because it would have been easy to just slip away." I suggested, “I’m not going to ask you what those things are that you still need to do, but when I come back in two weeks, I’m going to ask you if you did them.” So, two weeks later I returned and asked, "Well Doc, did you do them?" And Doc replied, "Yes I did. I contacted my attorney and completed my estate planning; I made amends with my brother who I hadn’t talked to for a long time; and I made peace with my Maker. Then Doc asked me, “Do you know how I feel? Do you remember how it felt when you were young and you were out of school for the summer, when all your work was done? Well, I feel like a boy let out of school."
To be honest, no one expected Doc to live more than two or three more months, but five months later Doc was still with us. Doc’s family moved his hospital bed into their Florida room where he could enjoy the sunshine. One day I felt impressed to ask, “So, where are you on the road today, Doc?” And Doc replied, “It’s strange that you would ask me that. I was just lying here thinking that it was like I had all my bags packed and I was standing at the railway station waiting for the train, but the train never came. So, I decided that since I’m still here I may as well live.”
And live Doc did. He moved back into the old house where his office was attached, where he had practiced medicine for so many years. He bought a new Bose music system; he enjoyed watching “The History Channel” and spent time at his computer again. Doc eventually got up into a wheelchair and prepared the Thanksgiving turkey from it. Doc told me, “The secret to a juicy turkey is injecting it instead of basting it.”
One day Doc exclaimed, “Do you know what I need! I need one of those motorized scooters so I can get out and around.” As luck would have it, someone had just donated one to hospice, so I delivered it to Doc the following week. Doc made some “modifications” to it and attached a basket to the front. He frequently rode it down the road to the local grocery store to shop. One day Doc confessed, “I have to tell you, I had an accident on your scooter on the way to the store. I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about how to put a cruise control on the thing, and I hit a root protruding up from the sidewalk and turned over. The worst thing about it was that two old women had to help me back up. It was really humbling.”
Discouragement and disillusionment are a part of the human journey. With each progressive stage of life or setback, we are faced with the question, “What else can I do.” It can be tremendously challenging and downright overwhelming to, “…watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build’em up with worn out tools…” (Poem, “If”, by Rudyard Kipling). But if Doc could do it, maybe we can too.
“May it never be chiseled on our tombstone, “Died age sixty, buried age eighty,” (Anonymous). “Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always planning to live. Before they know it, time runs out,” (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.)
Loren Hardin was a social worker with SOMC-Hospice for twenty-nine years. He can be reached at 740.357.6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can order Loren's book, "Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course", from Amazon.
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