February 14, 2024

Note: This is a personal mini-essay reflecting on the bittersweet experience of sharing in the hospice care at home for a loved one who passed away on September 21, 2023. +

The Spark is Sputtering, Now What?

It was about this time last year that we noticed the differences in Granddad Bill Bean’s daily routine.  He was getting more out of breath than usual during his walks and he was eating less at the dinner table.  Increasingly he was experiencing various awkward incidents ranging from mental slip-ups to physical shortcomings.  

After living with this man since 2009, I began to sense his needs were outpacing his desire to accept help and that’s usually when reinforcements are needed in a caregiving home such as ours had become over the years.  As I grappled with the reality of the present, my mind invariably rolled backwards in reflection and nostalgic amazement.

Big, Bright and Bold Always

“Welcome to the good ship lollipop!” said Dr. Bean to me the first time I met him at his home here in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida in late 1997.  I was on holiday break from the University of Florida and had just started dating his grandson, Thomas Alexander Bean—this was my introduction to “Granddad” of whom I’d already heard about in conversations with Thomas.

Little did we both know that one day we’d be living under his roof with his wife and helping Granddad care for her until she passed away after a long battle with dementia in 2018. How could I fathom as a 19-year-old college student that in that over a decade he would be instrumental in helping raise a few of his great-grandchildren, setting the table for daily meals we’d crank out and his sharing holidays along with his family, friends and with my side of the family?

I cannot properly encapsulate in this piece all that Dr. William Joseph Bean was in his lifetime, a member of the “greatest generation”, WWII era person he was—his obituary barely scratches the surface: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/jupiter-fl/william-bean-11470118 By the time I met him he was barreling into his golden years in his early 70s with no signs of slowing down as an active Rotarian and still flying his own plane to visit family and friends.

What I can memorialize here is that Granddad Bean took every day in bold color, as if everything around him was a black and white movie reel and he had a bucket full of thousands of color hues varying in their intensity.  He hurled those colors and sharpened their focus on the people he engaged with in all facets of his life: a trinity life scope of God, family and country. 

I was enchanted immediately with his energy and love for others no matter how different they were from his personal sensibilities. Having never really known my own respective Greek grandfathers, Granddad Bill became the grandfather-in-love of my lifetime.

Tunnel Vision of Declining Health 

Reminiscing on the “good old days” afflicts us all and usually is a coping mechanism to help soothe us when the current situation isn’t favorable.  As Granddad’s health began to deteoriate, the communications with his children became longer in length and depth while more frequent as well.  This was early 2022 and we’d been so grateful to have survived the “Covid-19 pandemic” years that our hearts weren’t prepared for the rapid decline to come in the months ahead.

This was also the 3^rd year that I would be leaving in the early summer months to go work out west with my three children in tow.  Knowing that my husband’s parents would stay at the house while we were gone and that various family members would cycle in and out of the house helped me pack our things to head out to my work commitment.  The children and I stayed in touch and sent Granddad frequent letters and postcards.  Still, the shock was devastating when I learned that after the first few weeks of our absence that he dropped in his daily weight some 15 pounds or more.

At 97-years-old Granddad was not a typical nonagenarian, he was convinced that he was going to make it to 100 years old and perhaps beyond given his track record of vibrancy despite the odds.  But as his body began to fail him in small ways they began to snowball in big ways.  

It was Granddad himself who concluded that he should have a night nurse assistant so that he wouldn’t repeat falling on the floor and being stuck there until someone came into the house in the morning. This was a huge and humbling step for a fiercely independent man that once gave me a dirty look when I tried to help him physically when I was fresh out of college in the early aughts.

A Final Hurrah: Kaden-Bean Reunion Where It All Began

It turns out that having us host the Bean-Kaden reunion last June was fortuitous and allowed many in the family branches to come and be with Granddad Bill while he was still lucid as his body was failing him.  I flew back with the kids for a week to be with everyone, I spent nearly every night in his room along with the night help as I wasn’t sure if we’d see him again on this Earth when went back west.

There is something so beautiful about witnessing all the different people that Granddad had been involved with in his life come and visit him. This included friends, colleagues, church folk and others along with his family lines that crisscrossed his and his wife’s bloodlines.  His mother was Jewish, his father Christian and there’s at least one grandchild who is Muslim—right there a few of the major religious affiliations are represented in his love for his family and then beyond.

What truly shocked me, however, was how much Granddad Bill was taking in even as he was physically struggling.  For instance, the night before I was due to take a flight from Fort Lauderdale to Denver he awoke next to me and looked over and said, “You’re leaving today aren’t you?” My groggy senses at just after 3am had me thinking I was dreaming but we began to talk for over an hour as the night nurse slept in the chair opposite us. I still marvel at how clear his senses and words were as he spoke with me before he fell asleep again.

I wouldn’t take it back now but I did have the children give their “final” goodbyes as we left the house that morning in case he wasn’t here when we returned later in the summer.  It nearly destroyed me to listen to my oldest muster up two words to him as he stood over his bedside, “thank you”.

“Team Bean”: Grateful For the Seen and Unseen

If you’re still reading this either you know me or you don’t—but why am I sharing these thoughts? I believe because we all somehow will be affected by a loved one who is dying slowly sometime.  

Looking back, I regret nothing about being involved along with my loved ones to help both Granddad and Grandma in their respective hospice care seasons in their home here. They lived beautiful lives and loved others so much, it was an honor and a blessing to be with them until they crossed over.

If by some remote chance you don’t experience a hospice-like situation with family, I’m willing to bet that you’ll know someone close to you who does have to deal with this season of life.  

Either way, I can relay to everyone that it takes a team of blood-haves and blood-have nots, simply it takes insiders and outsiders alike to help this type of journey unfold for the person reckoning with their final days beyond their control.  

In our most recent case with Granddad Bill we dubbed it “Team Bean” to include everyone from the core group of family members and everyone in between to the Visiting Angels nurses who assisted to the friends and family tagging in and out in various ways.

For those who know me personally, my major love language is food and preparing it for others.  When I returned later in the summer and Granddad Bean was still with us, the daily preparation of food became a chore almost insurmountable for me on some days.  I will always be grateful for those who helped feed us all as we helped him and grieved him later on.

If I could describe what the last few weeks were like with our dear Granddad as he approached the finish line of his life here at home, it is this bit I found scrawled out in my handwriting as I cleaned out my writing desk this month, dated September 8, 2023:

It’s like a slow

gnawing pain deep

inside one’s chest

and yet at the same

time, there is a nurturing

from within that must

go out from that place 

of chronic hurt to give 

cheery love to the

person who is slowly

dying.

R.V.S.B.

P.S. Books galore on helping the aging and dying, here are a couple I personally found helpful over the years: