Outside, a rare misty day tempts the cracked El Paso ground. It goes unnoticed.
It is the last day of our visit to my father-in-law Ed. Ed has been diagnosed with metastasized colon cancer. He began chemotherapy three weeks ago, but that’s not why we’re here — or at least not the primary reason for me to be here.
Ed is 93. I can easily spot his stork-like figure among all the overweight people in the tiny El Paso airport. He walks very slowly now, this man who played a lifetime of golf. My husband, whose usual gait is nearly a run, decelerates to match his father’s pace.
The house is in OK shape. Wind blew off half the shingles several weeks ago. Ed has already had them replaced. Everything is in good working order, but the dishes are tacky to the touch. No need to waste the dishwasher on the few dirty plates that he generates, he says.
In all his life, he has never learned to wash dishes by hand. His wife, now dead for two years, did everything for him.
The heat in his home is set at 80 degrees, and we are sweltering. Ed wears a sweater.
My great hope is to improve Ed’s final months by getting him fixed up with a decent hearing aid. He is willing. His hearing has been the only topic we’ve been able to share over long-distance phone calls. I’ve done my homework: long conversations with my audiologist, Internet searches, and finally the name of an audiologist to look up in El Paso.
I’ve been blaming the Veterans Administration for the failure of Ed’s hearing aid. Ed is a Pearl Harbor veteran, which often gets him special treatment, but maybe not in the case of his hearing. He is profoundly deaf.
The audiologist is sympathetic. “I’m an Army man myself, but I won’t hold that against you, heh heh,” he tells Ed. He has to say his joke twice. Ed just stares at him. He explains all his tests slowly and thoroughly, then shouts his explanations a second time so Ed will hear.
“Now, I will read some words for you to repeat after me,” he shouts into Ed’s face. “This tests the condition of your hearing aid.”
“Down.”
“Clown?” suggests Ed.
“Sags.”
“Bags?”
Ed misses at least half the words.
The surprise is that he has a top-of-the-line Siemens hearing aid, only two years old. The audiologist tinkers with it, and we leave.
Ed still can’t hear most of what we say. He thinks the audiologist has made his hearing aid worse, not better. He is not happy with the adjustments, or with the audiologist.
We go out for lunch. Ed says the chemo has taken away his appetite, but he cleans his plate. Perhaps it helps to have company while he’s eating.
The abortive hearing aid trip took place just after Christmas. By March, close to the end of his chemo treatments, Ed gave up eating.
Hospice advises talking to the patient at the end, telling him you love him and will miss him. Of Ed’s three children, my husband was the one who was there when he slipped quietly into his death.
No one inserted his hearing aid for him during his final days, so I wonder if he could hear any of the goodbyes.
Danielle Steinfeld lives in Morrison and teaches creative writing in Arvada. She was a member of the 2004 Colorado Voices panel.
