This is the last drawing I did in the Daily Derriere series until July 12, 2013. I dunno whazzup with the funking date on the drawing; I did it in February, not January.
As mentioned in previous posts, my spouse, John Callahan died of metastasized prostate cancer (metastasized to his skeletal system) on February 17, 2013. On the day I did this drawing, I didn’t know when he would die, only that he would. But there was no way to know if it would be in a week or a month or 6 months or a year. He had been given a prognosis of 6 months to live in October of 2010 and outlived it by so much that he was kicked out of the hospice in July of 2012. John want to die at home so we were doing what we could do grant his wish.
So on the morning of Friday, February 15, 2013, I entered our house through the back door (my bedroom was in the detached garage) and immediately shrieked at the sight of John, lying in a large pool of his own blood. It seems he had gotten up to go to the bathroom and lost his balance, striking his forehead on the way down. I struggled to get him back into bed and staunch the bleeding. John chortled at the scream I gave out upon seeing him. I then called the hospice, and by 11:00 AM John and I were meeting with the hospice social worker, chaplain, and nurse to discuss John options; obviously from this point onward he would need 24/7 care. John dozed in the middle of the conference and I kept waiting for him to wake up so I could get his feedback.
He never woke up. On Saturday morning he started making weird rasping noises as he breathed, so I called the hospice, described it to the nurse who said that John had about 2 days to live; these were “death rattles”Sure enough, John passed at
around 7:00 PM on Sunday night, February 17, 2013, surrounded by friends and
loved ones.
