A new branch of MD Anderson was under construction in Jacksonville, Florida, which was a couple of hours closer than Emory. Some of the medical offices had literally just opened, so off we went. Megan flew in from California to help me take her dad, with Jessica and Melissa planning to join us later if he had to stay. I don’t know what I would’ve done if Megan hadn’t been with me on the drive to Florida. Just that morning, a new phase of the illness caught us off guard. Pat had fallen and became extremely disoriented afterward. During the drive he started talking out of his head and didn’t know where he was or who was in the car with him. Before Megan and I went into full-panic mode, he quieted down, and we made it without further incident.
Although Pat seemed okay once we got to the oncologist’s office, the doctor took one look at him, then at the results of the blood tests, and admitted him to the hospital. Again, we would spend another week in yet another hospital. Pat had to be stabilized before receiving any kind of treatment, we were told. Although I had no idea what was going on—stabilized how?—there was nothing to do but accept it.
The trip to Jacksonville began a pattern that would be repeated throughout the month of February. It was unbelievable how fast the illness was progressing. If we chose to remain at Anderson for treatment, we were told before Pat’s release, we should plan on relocating for the duration. No traveling back and forth in his condition. When I asked about MUSC in Charleston as an alternative, the team sprang into action. I’d looked into MUSC when I ruled out Houston, but to no avail. No one could tell me when anyone could see us, so I’d given up. The Jacksonville doctors got Pat in only a couple of days after our return to Beaufort, which reinforced the truth of that old adage: it’s not what you know but who.
While in Jacksonville, another top-notch hospital with a wonderful palliative care team, Pat had a new nerve-block procedure to help ease the lower back pain. Although it didn’t work for him, at least it offered hope of relief. His downward spiral had been so rapid that he wasn’t yet on strong pain relievers; that would come next. Megan and I were foolishly optimistic when Pat was released and we started the drive back to Beaufort. Although there hadn’t been any more episodes of disorientation, Jacksonville was still in the rearview mirror when it happened again. Pat insisted we were driving the wrong way before it hit him what was going on. “I’m talking nuts again, aren’t I?” he asked in a voice of despair. I pulled over so Megan could retrieve the medicine they’d given us. Something about an imbalance of liver enzymes caused it, I explained to Pat. Later Megan and I would marvel at our willful ignorance. Our giddy relief that the disorientation wasn’t caused by a brain metastasis masked the dreadful reality of the true cause, liver failure.
The same scenario played out again at MUSC, where Pat was admitted to the hospital as soon as the oncologist came in with his test results. His doctor turned out to be a lovely British woman who could match Pat’s wry humor, though she’d have little opportunity during the two weeks he was under her care. Neither would any of us. As his condition worsened, Pat seemed to slip more and more between this world and the next. What little hope I’d clung to would soon be snatched away. It was obvious that he’d gotten much worse when I’d brought him to Charleston, yet I was shocked when his doctor told me that she hadn’t expected him to live through his first night there. I honestly had no idea he was that near death. Only a couple of weeks ago he’d been laughing and cutting up with his visitors at Emory! For the disease to have progressed so rapidly didn’t seem possible, too much for me to take in.
A strange thing happened the first night in the MUSC hospital that threw me for another loop. I got up from my makeshift recliner-bed in the corner of the room to make my way to the bathroom. Pat didn’t stir when I paused to check on him. He was so out of it that I feared he might be slipping into a coma. But after I left the bathroom and tried to slip back to my perch without disturbing him, he stopped me in a loud, clear voice. “Did you hear that?”
I went over to whisper that it was just me, returning from the bathroom, but his eyes were fixed on a point beyond me. “Do you hear them singing?” he said, and his face lit up with something I can only describe as pure joy. When the singing stopped (or so I imagined), Pat grabbed my arm with such a strong grip that I sank down beside him. “Sweetheart?” His eyes, now perfectly focused, held mine and he said, “You know what? I killed myself yesterday.”
I swallowed, hard, and managed to say, “It must’ve felt like that . . .” but he interrupted me with a shake of his head. “No. You don’t understand. I did—I killed myself.” Before I could stop myself, I fell on his shoulder, sobbing. I’d been so determined not to cry. He held me for a long time before saying, “It’s okay. I did it and everything’s okay now. You don’t need to worry anymore. Go back to bed and I’ll see you in the morning.”
I never knew what to make of that strange conversation, and it took me a long time before I was able to share it with anyone. I can only assume it was his way of saying that he’d accepted his fate and had killed off the part of him that was still earthbound. The King family tells the story of my grandmother’s final words, and I’ve heard similar stories from others. My grandmother had been in a deep coma for several days. Just before she died, she opened her eyes and focused on something beyond everyone else’s line of vision. Her face aglow, she said in a strong, clear voice: “I can see the other side, and it’s so beautiful.” She smiled, closed her eyes, and passed over to it.
Only a couple of days later a visit from Bernie would break my heart even more. Plenty of visitors came and went, family and friends, staying briefly because Pat was so sick. He mostly slept, and I had the distinct feeling he was partly here and partly in the other world. Bernie paced the visitors’ lounge, waiting for word that Pat could see him. Finally Bernie came in to say goodbye, even though Pat slept on. I’d almost reached the door to give them some time alone when Bernie lost it. He fell across Pat’s bed and wept. “Pat, you can’t leave me! I don’t have anyone else to talk to. You’re my only friend in Beaufort. Everybody else hates my guts.”
His crying woke Pat, and Bernie quickly pulled himself together, forcing a smile. Like me, he didn’t want Pat to witness him falling apart. I stepped outside the room but could hear them speaking softly to each other. In a few minutes the door flew open and Bernie came out, pale and trembling. Without a word to me, he fell against the wall and wept with the kind of grief that’s painful to witness. I went over to help him make his way back to the waiting room, and he apologized for being such a baby. I told him to shut up. Walking down the hall and holding each other up like two very old people, we made our stumbling, silent way to the waiting room.
The next morning I’d just come out of the bathroom when Pat suddenly sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side. “Where are my shoes?” he demanded. Unlike the day before, he was wide awake and completely lucid.
“Whoa!” I rushed over to stop him from pulling himself up by the IV stand. “Where do you think you’re going?” I cried.
“To Beaufort,” Pat said. “I’ve got to see Bernie. Bernie needs me. He doesn’t have anybody to talk to.”
* * *
Pat would live for two more weeks. After one round of chemo, then another trip to the ER in Beaufort, he was taken back to the MUSC Intensive Care Unit by helicopter, where once again he surprised everyone by reviving. “He has nine lives,” Pat’s brother Jim remarked, and I said, sighing, “Yeah, but the problem is, he’s in his tenth one.”
Even though his condition was much more dire, Pat appeared more lucid than he’d been during his stay the week before. He slept a lot but was aware of his surroundings, even chatting a bit with the staff. Not being allowed to stay overnight in the ICU, I made my weary way to Anne Siddons’s house late every night. It was one of the most forlorn journeys I’ve ever made. I walked through the darkened, empty lobby toward the deserted parking garage, with my footsteps the only sound disturbing the eerie stillness.
&nb
sp; On the second day, the girls arrived and Pat called them in to say his goodbyes. I don’t know how they endured the deathbed scene, or his final words to them. I’m ashamed to say that I chickened out and never told him goodbye. Even worse, I wouldn’t let him say it to me. I knew it was wrong of me—I’d read the palliative care literature. But I simply couldn’t. At one point Pat said something that both infuriated me and broke my heart. Out of the blue he turned to look at me and said, “You’ll get married again.”
I shook my head in a fury. “No. I won’t.” When he asked if it was that bad, I gave him a watery smile. “No, you idiot,” I said. “It was that good.”
When Pat asked me to write down what he wanted for his services, I took notes without looking up so he couldn’t see how much it hurt. I held myself together until he made me promise to finish the book I’d started. Working on the book would help me more than anything, he said. When I nodded, unable to speak or meet his eyes, he didn’t push it. Instead he reached out to take my hand.
“We’ve had a good life together,” he said. Then his grip on my hand tightened and he added, “I just wish it could’ve been longer.” I lay down beside him, IV tubes and all, and stayed next to him until he fell asleep. I couldn’t say what I longed to: Please don’t leave me. I might not have been able to tell him goodbye, but the other directive in my palliative care reading I took to heart. Don’t make it harder on the dying patient than it already is. Let them go.
On the fifth day of intensive care, his oncologist called the family together to say they had done all they could and were sending him home.
At the Beaufort house, my office had been transformed into a hospice room in preparation. Pat’s sister Kathy, along with Maggie Schein and her husband, Jonathan, had it set up when we arrived—Pat by ambulance, me following in the car. Initially I’d balked at using my office because, strangely enough, Pat had asked me not to put him there. It was when we first returned from Emory, and he walked through the whole house as though seeing it for the last time. In my office he stood a few minutes, hands on hips, and looked around. “This is such a great room,” he said, and I agreed. Then he caught me by surprise. “Don’t put me here, if it comes to that. You won’t be able to come back in without seeing me.”
He walked out before I could ask what on earth he meant—don’t put him there? He had his own writing room; why would I put him in mine? Only when hospice care was being arranged did it hit me what he’d been trying to say.
My office was where he had to be, though, even if it meant going against his wishes. It was the only room in the house where a hospital bed could be set up to look out over Battery Creek and the marshes Pat loved. For the man who wrote so powerfully of the place he’d claimed as his own, that scene had to be the last he would see. In his own words from The Prince of Tides, the Lowcountry was his anchorage. It would be his final port of call.
Friends and family arrived to help, often filling the house. They took over so all I had to do was be with Pat. I couldn’t have managed without them, or the efficient and excellent Friends of Carolina hospice team. People came by and left food; some of them I only heard about later. I don’t remember anything I ate during that time but will never forget the offerings left for a gathering of grieving souls. It reminded me again of the importance of reaching out to friends in need. We never forget the kindnesses offered during those times.
On our first night home, I knew who I wanted with me. Janis Owens had said to call when I needed her. I’d longed for her solid, comforting presence but didn’t want to ask her to drive several hours from Virginia for what might be a vigil of several weeks (or so I foolishly thought). My son Jason came in from Birmingham and caught me with my face buried in my hands. “Mom, can I do anything for you?” he asked when he knelt beside me.
I could only think of one thing. “Janis,” I said without raising my head. “I want Janis.” My son left the room so abruptly I assumed that my grief had upset him, but he returned with my phone and said, “Do you need me to call her?” I shook my head and took the phone, knowing the only thing I had to say was “Come.” In addition to being a strong earth-mother type, Janis is a former Pentecostal with prayers capable of soaring all the way to the heavens. After she arrived Janis rarely moved from Pat’s bedside, hands folded and head bent in prayer.
Once Pat was situated in my office, I moved in with him (thankfully the daybed hadn’t been taken out) and turned over the master bedroom to the girls. Pat’s brother Tim arrived to stay, and other family members and friends came in and out sporadically. All of us settled in for the long haul, not knowing it’d only be a three-day vigil. In the spirit of the deathbed scenes in Beach Music, we read poetry to Pat. Or rather, the poets among us did: Tim and our friend Ellen Malphrus, reading from Pat’s vast poetry collection of his favorites—Dickey, Auden, Millay, Wordsworth, Eliot. Pat remained unresponsive but I knew he was still with us.
Pat’s former classmates Warley and Scott sang him The Citadel fight song. Jason played the guitar and all of us sang gospels, “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Unclouded Day.” My son the preacher’s kid knew every hymn in the book, and I think we sang them all.
As painful as the ordeal was, the poignant camaraderie among those of us in the sickroom I can only think of as holy. Every dark moment seemed to be infused with a celestial light of love. On the first night, three black-robed priests appeared to perform the last rites, and the house filled with the bittersweet aroma of incense. It was an incredibly moving ceremony, a powerful ritual in a house of sorrow and death. Eyelids fluttering, Pat would be with us for a fleeting moment, then gone again, drifting in and out. Although he was barely conscious, we never doubted that he heard us.
Our vigil wasn’t without its Conroyesque moments. The second night when Pat’s daughters fixed dinner, they roasted almonds for a salad. The almonds scorched, and those of us in the sickroom smelled them before we heard the yelps from the girls. I stuck my head out to see what was going on, then reported back that all was well. Several minutes later, we still smelled scorched almonds—even stronger—and I left my post by Pat’s side to tell the kitchen crew to turn on the exhaust. Oddly enough, outside the sickroom the scorched smell was gone. As I came back in, something caught my eye. Foolishly, I’d draped a washcloth over a small lamp to soften the light for the poetry readings earlier. I stood blinking at the smoke coming from the washcloth, unable to take in what was happening until the washcloth burst into flames. Letting out a screech, I grabbed the fiery washcloth and ran to the bathroom to extinguish it. With oxygen in use, it’s a miracle that the whole house wasn’t blown to kingdom come.
Pat’s old buddy John Warley had a couple more mishaps. Driving in to take his place at the vigil, he found the driveway full of cars and pulled into a spot in front of the house where the ground was covered in ivy. The ivy masked the water meter, which Warley ran over. Suddenly water spewed sky-high, a geyser in our front yard. Fortunately a neighbor was nearby and came over, wrench in hand, to avert further disaster.
Warley looked shaky when he came into the sickroom. With a weary sigh, he plopped down on my daybed and told us, “Hey, y’all aren’t going to believe what just happened.” Before he could say another word, my bed fell in with a loud crash. None of us knew whether to laugh or cry. Warley sat on the floor with his legs sticking up, the only time I’ve ever seen him at a loss for words. Hearing the racket, Jason came running in and sized up the situation. He helped a stunned Warley to his feet then set about repairing the bed. I put my head in my hands and groaned.
The prevailing tragicomedy was the septic system. The mischievous gods of mishap decided that almost being blown up, having our water system wiped out, and my bed caving in weren’t quite enough. Right after everyone arrived, our septic tank backed up. Trying desperately to avert more chaos, Jason and Tim attempted to fix it but to no avail. Finally we had to call in the experts. (The slogan on their truck read: your number
two is our number one.) Watching them dig up our yard with their backhoes, Tim Conroy, with the same dark humor his brother had, turned to the sickroom to say, “Oh, God Almighty, y’all. I bet the neighbors think we’re going to bury him in the backyard!”
Those of us in the sickroom stared at him in stunned silence. Then someone broke. It started with a giggle, and before any of us could stop ourselves, we were hooting and hollering, bent double with laughter. It was too much.
* * *
Early the morning of March fourth, Janis, Tim, Jason, and Jessica sought me out in the sickroom with a strange tale. They’d barely slept, I knew, because I’d heard them in and out of the room throughout the night. Because Tim’d taken over the job of dispensing the pain meds, he set his alarm to get up every few hours. I usually woke when he came into the room, but I would turn my head away. It was too painful to witness, one brother trying to ease the suffering of another. Sometimes the others would wander into the darkened room as well, Jason, Jessica, or Megan, to see if Pat was fitful. A labor of love, but it was taking its toll. All of them were wan and bleary-eyed, especially Tim. Hoping they’d get some rest, I’d insisted the night before on bringing in a nurse. It was the nurse they wanted to tell me about.
Jason had been appointed spokesman. Coffee cups in hand, the five of us sat around the hospital bed where Pat slept, oblivious to our whisperings. “Mom?” Jason asked. “Where’d you get the night nurse?”
“Lord, I don’t know. Hospice called someone for me, seems like.” The truth was, the details of the previous evening were hazy at best. Pat’s old friend Father Mike Jones had come to pray with us. I couldn’t even recall everyone who’d been there. After Father Mike left, I remembered lying down beside Pat and talking to him about the afterlife, and recalled that Megan sat on the floor with tears streaming down her face. It’d been late when I’d finally raised my head to focus on the others and saw how weary they looked. Had I left the room then to call the night nurse? Surely not, at that time of night. I must’ve asked the hospice worker earlier if she would send someone.
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