Anonymous wrote:Are you sure he wants this? My DH was much younger, but after his dx, he only saw family. He died 6 mos later. I mean, the man knows he’s dying, Let him or his wife pick the song.
I’m sure you mean well with this post, but you’re suggesting we’re imposing this upon him. We’re not. He’s my stepdad of 20 years. We are incredibly close. I’ve been by his side every day and many nights as he went through the nightmare of a diagnostic process in which day by day opportunity for hope was eliminated. When he was diagnosed, he said he wanted to wear his dress blues and he wanted to take my mom to a ball. He will likely lose the ability to recognize people or communicate within 4 weeks. He wanted to see his military friends. This is honoring his wishes. This disease moves SO FAST that each day he loses more and more ability to recall information or generate speech. It’s like dementia on 32x fast-forward. So, unfortunately, he’s no longer able to tell us which song he’s like to choose. He also can’t tell us if he wants chicken or roast beef because he can’t remember what those words mean, but he enjoys what he has always loved. So we take our twenty years of knowledge of him paired with the 40 years of his kids’ knowledge and we do our best for him, and we all agree that this event will mean a lot to him.
I’m very sorry for the loss of your husband but it sounds like it was a very different journey for him. I hope he was able to find joy in his final days. We are trying to bring joy to my stepdad in his final days by giving him something he’s said loudly and clearly was important to him: take his wife to the ball, be back in his dress blues, and see his military friends.