We called upon the Catholic Church, and they delivered Father Louie unto us. He gave dad the last rites. We may have jumped the gun by a bit on this, because he does not seem to be near death, but better safe than sorry. Consequently, Father Louie only said prayers for the sick and not the dying. Louie serves at the cathedral in Monterey, where up to Covid my dad would weekly go to mass. Louie is originally from the Philippines by way of Chile. When the priest arrived, he made the comment after driving up the hill and admiring our view, that we lived quite close to heaven.

Afterwards, we asked him about Pope Francis and how he was handling his death. He actually seemed pleased for Francis. He said that two years ago, when Francis was sick, Francis expressed his desire to die during the Easter season, but that time he recovered. A month ago, when Francis was again ill, there was much concern that he would pass before this Easter arrived, but he made it.

Next up on today’s cavalcade of help for dad, was Analya the home help aid. Talk about descending from heaven to hell. She too was on a mission for God. Her mission was to bathe dad, but he was having no part of it. He screamed and cried and tried to fight her off. At one point, his cries or help were so pitiful that I almost faltered. I think that if I had folded Analya would have too, but Chris was stalwart and made us all persist. We got the job done. Afterwards, I asked Analya what kind of patient my dad was, good, bad or the worse. She recounted other patients who would hit, kick, bite and spit. I guess he was not the worse.

After our turn with cleanliness, it was time for another try at godliness. Next up was Andrea, the service’s chaplain. Her visit was pretty benign. She just wanted to talk. She spoke with dad and then us. I was more impressed by the priest. Finally, Amelee the visiting nurse arrived. That’s four people visiting in one day. She came to rebandage a bed sore on his heel. She also broke out the big drugs. With them, things went a lot better than with the bath. What a day though.