Update on Grandpa

I heard from my cousin again tonight. My grandfather now also has pneumonia and he was transferred to a hospice home yesterday. They pulled his feeding tube, and he's had no nutrition since Monday. I guess I didn't realize that withholding nutrition is part of hospice pallative care. Wood and I immediately said to each other that if it ever comes to that, neither of us would want that done. My cousin said that hospice indicated that because of the discountinuation of the feeding tube, he was not expected to live much longer.

I had dozens of people in and out of my office today who needed me to make a decision on something, deadlines and schedules to be done and budgets to be planned and finalized. I just couldn't focus.

I knew when we traveled to Ohio over Labor day weekend that it would likely be the last time we saw my Grandfather, but, honestly, at his age, we've been saying that for a few years now. He's so strong and such a fighter. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that it is finally his time.

He's lead a long and facinating life. His father, my great grandfather immigrated to Canada from England as a young adult. He was an Episcopalian priest, who lead a church and raised a large family in Canada in harsh, primitive conditions, before moving into the US, where my grandfather, the youngest child in the family, was born on an Indian reservation in Minnesota (Bemidji). My great grandfather was a missionary for a long time there, before coming to Detroit. My grandfather spent a good deal of his childhood in Detroit, where his father lead the congregation of Old Mariner's Church, right down on the Detroit river, next to the tunnel to Canada. During the great depression, my great grandfather was instrumental in opening homes for the homeless, health care, and jobs creation in Detroit - work that my grandfather was a part of. My great -grandfather wrote a facinating book "Humor and otherwise in a ministry of 50 years", where I've gotten such a detailed glimpse of my family history. My entire family is staunchly Episcopalian, and my converting to Catholicism is a subject that isn't brought up - ever :)

We'll be making the long trip to Toledo, most likely in a few days.