what do we hope for?

So I'm heading into the fray tomorrow. I should arrive at the hospital somewhere around 10:30 p.m. eastern time. I don't know what I will find there, other than my cousin's dear friend Jan who will give me a key to Joe's house, which is right across the street from the hospital. Convenient.

I should have time to see Aunt Grace, too, who didn't have pneumonia but instead, congestive heart failure. She's only about 30 miles from where Joe is, and her nephew's wife is with her, so I don't feel quite so pressured about that.

But I don't know what we're hoping for. Joe is so sick, and his tissue so necrotic that the doctors had to do an orchiectomy. Look it up. They were unable to insert a urinary catheter the usual way because he was so swollen with infection. There is more tissue that may need to be removed. He is 63, and what he has to look forward to, should he ever recover from the gaping wound that used to be his groin, is more chemotherapy for his advanced prostate cancer (it's in his bones). And he's all alone.

I'm bringing our grandmother's prayer books. I'll read and pray from the books, aloud. They are stuffed with memorial cards for our family members, including his father and mother. And I'll wonder why the Catholic Church, which he has attended daily for decades, won't send a priest to give the sacrament of Last Rites, that is if Jan's husband didn't kidnap the priest today as he threatened to do, and drag him bodily to the hospital.

So what are we hoping for? I don't know. I truly don't know. Well, actually, I know what I'm hoping for, but I'm just not ready to say it out loud.