Philip Pierce

It should have been a day of celebration, or at least breathing easier. It's November 7th, and an unseasonable 75 degrees and cloudless in the Boston area. The Boston Globe's headline reads "BIDEN BEATS TRUMP." I am elated, soaking in the festival atmosphere of honking cars and cheering people on the streets of Cambridge. But my frail, vision-impaired 88-year-old father is 26 days into his rollercoaster battle with Covid-19 and the virus is clearly winning. His oximeter reading is 86% and dropping. He hasn't been able to stand or walk since mid-October. He is scared, confused, and at times - so unlike the warm, steady father I know - belligerent when we speak by phone. I haven't seen my parents in person for weeks, even though we live just a few miles apart, and now a visit is all but prohibited. "They're killing me! Why are you letting me die?" he yelled into the phone -- pitifully gasping for air between each word - the week before on a call from the only rehabilitation center in the area that would admit a Covid-positive patient. The day before that, he said he had fallen twice in his room and hit his head. I can't fathom how this could possibly happen in a first-world healthcare facility. And yet I know these providers are overwhelmed, putting themselves at risk daily, and following strict protocols to minimize contact with infected patients. By midday on that sunny Saturday that brought welcome news of Trump's defeat, my brother and I are desperately trying to arrange hospice care so that my father can have oxygen provided in the home - oxygen that his primary care physician won't order without an in-person consult that, we are told, can't happen over the weekend. But waiting two days is out of the question for us, for him. We are advised to send him back to the hospital, the experience he dreads most - an ambulance ride back to the ER, where he'll likely be warehoused in a corridor for hours and then, if admitted, provided with unpredictable levels of care and human contact, and separated from his wife of 67 years, perhaps never to see her again. The names of the Boston area hospital, rehabilitation center, and senior living community in this account don't matter. Suffice it to say they are all excellent and staffed by caring professionals. Yet I never would have imagined the maze of dead-ends and indignities we entered when my father's test came back positive. He caught the disease from my mother, who had herself contracted it, she thinks, from a doctor's office visit. She was eventually hospitalized but recovered quickly despite her vulnerable age and condition. At first my father was asymptomatic. But within a couple of days he had spiked a fever and developed a sore throat. Then he was struggling to breath. At the hospital, he was treated with the best available therapies, including remdesivir and dexamethasone, and IV antibiotics for his pneumonia. But for the five days he was initially there, he was left largely alone in bed, and his strength and balance deteriorated noticeably. I asked repeatedly to be allowed to visit, but hospital policies prevented me from doing so. One morning, he reported that he was up all night from thirst because no one answered his calls for water. In the weeks that followed, our father was shuttled back and forth among the hospital, third-party rehabilitation, and the small apartment he shares with our mother at a senior community. With his limited vision, it was hard for him to keep track of TV remotes and phones, hence most of our calls to his hospital or rehab room went unanswered. At each juncture, no one seemed to know who was responsible for arranging transport. In one ambulance ride home, his overnight bag was lost - slippers, pajamas, toiletries, medicines… gone. Nothing that couldn't be replaced, to be sure, but it added to the mounting sense of confusion and disquiet. He couldn't be admitted to the nursing floor within his community because of his Covid status. My brother rented a hospital bed to be set up in the living room. Thankfully, we had arranged back in March for round-the-clock aides in their home. Those heroes and angels, as I think of them now even as they remain faceless to me, were doing whatever they could short of medical intervention to keep him comfortable as the virus attacked lungs, heart, brain. Despite best intentions on all sides, communications among multiple care providers and family members were chaotic at best. Medical records and discharge instructions seemed to be owned by no one. As his ability to swallow declined, did his food need to be pureed or not? Who was providing in-home physical therapy and nursing? Why hadn't oxygen been prescribed at discharge in the first place? My father passed away on Wednesday November 11th. Two days earlier, I was able to see him for 10 minutes, masked and shielded, and hold his hand. He knew I was there but clearly didn't know where he was or what was happening. He murmured my name once or twice, and "Please take me home." In a final insult on the day of his passing, his body was picked up by a funeral home I knew nothing about. Who had ordered this? I still don't know. Through a flurry of calls and texts, the error was corrected and he was transferred in the parking lot outside the apartment building to the service I had contracted with to return him to New York City, the place of his birth and where he chose to be laid to rest. The day before, they explained to me that the body could not be washed or dressed due to the cause of death. As I take stock now of how I will remember my father, the overarching sense is of warmth. The specifics are his playful antics and physicality when my brother and I were young kids. And, later, his intellectual engagement in every aspect of the world around him - science, art, animals, language, politics, people. That this virus prevented the peaceful ending surrounded by loving family that we all hope for is the hardest thing. That's what I will strive to forget when I remember him lovingly, aspire to honor his memory, and carry his warmth with me. A recent tweet by Dan Rather resonates at this dehumanized moment: "COVID is sadness. Profound sadness. It is suffering, and sacrifice. It is perhaps the greatest abdication of presidential responsibility in American history. I have seen a lot of death and tragedy in my lifetime. But this shakes me to the core, completely and irrevocably."