The long, sad trip home.

Monday, March 23, 2015, we set out for home under some stress.  My baby sister had been fighting an increasingly desperate fight against the effects of cigarette smoking.  You will notice that I don't cite the lung cancer or COPD as the diseases, but rather the addiction to cigarettes that her entire family indulges in.  Robyn Lenora Anne Salvatore Hobbs was legally my half-sister, but we disagreed and there was no way to separate our family in that way.
Robyn was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer 5 years ago, had a large portion of one lung removed and still continued to smoke.  Instead of recognizing that she had managed a close escape from harm, she became increasingly and stridently hyper-religious.  In the mind of my sister and her family the science behind had diseases and the statistics that indicated a real need to conserve her ability to process oxygen and not nicotine, was completely negated by her reliance on a "Jesus take the wheel" miracle.
Reports from her husband had caused me to fear that she would die at home in a chaotic, screaming paroxysm of attempted CPR and the subsequent destruction of her frail chest.  The family and she had refused to turn to the services of hospice, because of their abject refusal to cope with reality.  I finally convinced her husband Ricky, worn out from care and panic to take her to a hospital believing that at least there, she could die with some dignity.
My surviving brother Bobby let me know how dire the situation really was.
Micky and I had to put our motorhome in "vacation storage" on Sigsbee Park and start our drive home at 9 am.  Even though we are able to swap drivers, the trip is 13 hours of driving with 3 of them in the Keys.  That Monday was plagued with slow-downs in the Keys.  Essentially US1 is a two-lane 45 MPH road 130 miles long.  Any mishap that blocks the road or even a lane results in soul-sucking delays and stoppages.  We avoided the worst of it, but the trip through the Keys, although spectacularly colorful, was longer than normal.  At Fort Lauderdale, we rain into the rain that would plague us all the way home.  We rolled into Augusta at 11:30 that night and went straight to the hospital and a jarring scene.
Arrayed outside the door was my sister's family smoking.  I held off comment and went in to see her.
Robyn had wasted from the last round of chemotherapy to a skeletal 85 pounds.  Her hair was a just a fuzzy cover on her skull and her skin was blackened and parchment-thin.  Gasping for each breath with a fish-like urgency she was a pitiful and heart-wrenching sight.
Half-lying on the bed were her grand-daughter Kolby and my niece Rachael.
Robyn acknowledged my presence, and stayed by her side for a while telling her in a soothing voice that I was there, loved her, and would take care of her while stroking her swollen, but manicured hand.
Outside the room, I pulled Ricky aside and with the loving help of my wife let him know that he needed to arrange for home hospice and to take her home so that she could pass in a much more comfortable and soothing place.
The next day, the transfer was made.  My visit at their home showed Robyn had already lost the ability to sense my presence or to acknowledge it.  The hospice nurse was being badgered with unrealistic requests from my youngest niece.  I understand her desperation, but it pointed again to the lack of a grasp of reality.
That night, as I expected, she stopped breathing and died.
I have seen my share of death.  It is never cinematic.  No grand pronouncements or  bright glowing lights, just prosaic, nasty death.  My sister just wore herself out trying to do a function that doesn't even require conscious thought.  Years of punishing chemical attacks on her frail body had left her with no reserves in the end.  Even after her brain had stopped its higher functions the small portion in the back of it that precedes even the reptilian age demanded that her chest flail in a vain attempt to live.  Finally her muscles could not respond to the demands and even that spark faded.  That was my sister's death.  Harrowing and nasty to behold.  Especially gruesome in a woman whose denial of her fate was sharpened into a frantic Facebook scream of prayers to angels and Jesus for a relief that would not come.  Such despairing hope!  And such a despicable lie in the end!

The family was barely prepared for breakfast, much less the social obligations of a funeral.  Ricky hadn't worn his suit for decades.  Now it fit his son.  No list of final wishes and account numbers with passwords.  The power was cut off one day and the gas another during the mourning period.  My brother Bobby, a true man, stepped up with those.  I took Ricky to get the suit he'd need for the funeral and for his daughter's vow renewal.  We met with the funeral home.  Platt's on Crawford Avenue has buried my family for at least three generations.  Although now located is a truly scary neighborhood with demented black men screaming and dancing into what may have been a dead cell phone, it is where we all grew up.  It's numbingly sad that the final gift I could give her was a funeral.
Families are complicated balls of love, anger, exasperation, and sometimes shame.  We don't get to choose our families and sometimes help is the worst thing you can do.  But in the final tally, your family formed you and you formed them.  You can no more leave them than can leave you.  My family has a hole in it.  It will heal, we will live on and the scar with thicken over the wound to protect us from further hurt.  We live.