I keep remembering these certain last moments with Dad, during the last two months of his life. I originally posted a lot of these stories on my Facebook page, in a sort of stream of consciousness outpouring of memory, the year after Dad died. But certain memories keep cycling back, so I thought I might blog a few of them.

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After Dad’s last hospital stay–in July, which was really the beginning of the end–he had to go to a rehabilitation facility to get stronger before he could return home. While he was there, I called and visited several times per week. The staff scheduled a “status” conference to decide what Dad’s discharge and/or treatment plan should be. Besides Dad, the attendees of the conference were a doctor, the facility’s administrator, an occupational therapist, and me.

The meeting was in this claustrophobic conference room with no windows. The long table where the staff and I were sitting, waiting for Dad, took up almost the entire room. There was barely any room to pull back your chair.

At the head of the table, space had been left for Dad; but no chair had been set for him. The expectation was that Dad, ostensibly still too weak to walk, would be wheeled in via wheelchair. The door to the conference room had been left open, and I could hear the noises of daily life at the facility spilling into the hall.

Dad was late. And then, there was the sound of a walker rolling down the hall, and Dad came in, pushing the walker with enthusiasm. He had a fresh haircut* and was dressed in clean clothes. He smiled widely and said hello to everyone. The staff had to scramble to find him a chair to sit in. Then, once he was seated, he smiled around at everyone again, banged his hands on the table, and said: “Let’s get this thing started!”

He knew what he was doing, because the entire meeting seemed to have been set up to convince him he was failing, in every possible way: mentally, and physically. They discussed his kidney values, his strength, his cognitive test results. And through it all he maintained an alert, respectful demeanor that I marveled at. Because I was seething through the entire meeting. I knew Dad didn’t like to be treated like a baby, and that’s how they were treating him, I felt. But if that’s how he felt, too, he didn’t let on. (Though he did let on to me how he had felt later. After the meeting.)

He left the facility to go home several days later. It would be the last month of his life. The memory of Dad destroying the rehab facility’s staff’s staging of his “status” conference makes me laugh every time I think of it. He didn’t play their game. He won that round.

Bravo, Dad.

*There was a barbershop/salon on the premises, so this is possible. Either that, or he just had the look of a fresh haircut that day.