I'd heard that my father successfully ate breakfast this morning. Again, I had a ray of hope. Maybe some post surgery healing, some day for him to learn to talk with a speech therapist, a few month just to settle.

My mother and I ran to the bank together to do some end of year sorting on business - all in order now and then to a funeral home to get some paperwork. That's trip actually ended up getting some of the things decided and making some beginning selections. It was a full day.

When I arrived home, I was looking forward to getting some food and bed. I got a call from the hospital doctor. The breakfast hadn't gone down the right pipe and after suctioning out his lungs, they were calling me for permission to put in a feeding tube which I Ok'd. You can't starve a aware man and more over he needs to have him medicine.

The Ok was easy, yet in flies in the face of his decision for no ventilator and no feeding tubes. We make decisions like those without understand the strange situations that occur - we visualize that was will be out and non aware. But he is fully aware. The end is not a nice, neat package like TV makes it where the eye flutter and then a pleasant smile creeps across the face. Maybe it happens that way sometimes, but not in the five cases I have had personal contact with. Death is like a staircase going along flat and then a step down, another step and another.

Or as it was put to me on quality of life we start out are a most wonderful spice cake with rich frosting and decorations....the the frosting goes away, but you are still left with a great tasting spice cake (think of aging and the gray hairs coming over a wonderful inner person). Then the spices fade in flavor and you are left with a rich yellow cake. The egg yolks are taken away and you now have an angel food cake (I still enjoyed the angel food cake day of my grandmother!). But then it is just some sugar, flour and water and you have scones...and then you get to the flat bread existence....with the flour getting rarer and rarer.

My father has lived at the flat bread stage for about eight years and now I'm watching the pancake get thinner and thinner. May I have the spirit to see the wonder in a crepe and to always know that even when all the flour is gone the spirit of the water will live on.

The rock is rolling down the hill and there is little I can do but keep an open mind and watch the direction it rolls. He will be staying in the hospital longer now, at first they were thinking a change would happen Thursday or Friday. Now everything is open again to reinvestigation.

My gut is telling me the rock is starting to roll faster. I need to take time out tomorrow and exercise -- the stress is really starting to build up in my body. I wish I had a punching bag.