My son Rusty passed away on October 29th,2007.. he had a brain tumor that no amount of radiation or chemo treatment could reverse. Throughout this entire ordeal of hell and misery, Rusty NEVER spent a single night in the hospital. That’s my one saving grace… I was able to keep him at home under the loving watchful eye of family…24 /7.
Anyway… when his pain became intolerable in early September due to the spread of the cancer to the bones and spine, we were compelled to call in hospice for more effective pain management ( i.e. morphine).
Although my son was a very light-hearted soul with love for everyone, he quickly developed a distaste for his assigned Nurse (who was very distant and cold) and asked that her visits be kept to a minimum. So.. she came weekly as opposed to daily. She resented this and became colder yet.
On October 29th at 2:25pm Nurse Ice arrived… walked into Rusty’s room and never even looked at him… touched the IV bag, shifted her paperwork around and abruptly and oh so coldly told me that she wanted to talk to me outside about what she thought I should do to “expedite” Rusty’s impending death.. Wow… those words shocked me.
I looked at my son and thought he looked so far away… no expression…no sounds… still breathing arduously..but so absent ( He had been more noisy, moaning with pain that just couldn’t be eliminated with ANY amount of morphine)
I walked to the front door and exited ahead of the Nurse, as I turned back toward her, she was stumbling like Fred Flintstone about to take off running…yabba dabba do!! toppling side to side.. legs and feet everywhere! Her glasses fell from her necklace where she normally kept them when not reading, and when she came to a stop, she picked them up and put them on her nose. She looked at me with shock in her eyes and said… “MY GOD, I FELT LIKE SOMEONE KICKED ME IN THE ASS”!..she seemed surprised that I was such a distance from her.
After composing herself, she approached me at the front hedge by the driveway. Suddenly….really FAST, like a bolt of lightning, I saw a ginormous wasp zing in and beeline straight for her eye!!!! SMACK!! The monster wasp whacked HARD, dead center over her left pupil… BULLSEYE!!! He hit so hard, I honestly expected to see yellow guts on her glasses… but there were none.. and as fast as that enraged wasp came, he was gone… I tried to see where he went but nothing… not anywhere.
She was now very upset and shaking and shrieked ” I AM GETTING THE HELL OUT OF HERE, THIS PLACE IS SPOOKED” As she scurried toward her car, looking back at me, telling me to load him up on lethal amounts of morphine, suddenly her car alarm sounded amazingly LOUD..she screamed “I SWEAR I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THIS CAR HAD AN ALARM!!”… and she hauled ass to her car, threw it in reverse and sped away…alarm still sounding…papers blowing all over the driveway.
I quickly went back into the house.. sat at the table for a moment to record the time I was going to give Rusty his morphine injection which was now due. I then went right to his room… my mom and daughter present, I told them all what had just happened. My mom immediately said…” Rusty did YOU do that to the Nurse” We were all laughing… and in this moment, 2:40 pm, my son and best friend in the world expired.
I believe Rusty had already left his body..and gave the Nurse what he felt she deserved, reaching beyond the veil, right into her reality!
This is my son Rusty