Normally children are taught to not call their grandparents by name. I, however, was never corrected in calling him Tom all of my life. I never questioned it, when you grow up being corrected at every possible moment so that you grow up to be the best you that you can be and you do not get corrected, you tend to think that everything is fine. I call him Tom as a term of endearment, though, some people question me about it but I haven't thought twice about it since I learned that he was not my biological Grandfather.
The room in which he stays is 420, and he gets room service every day three times a day. He can make a phone call anytime he wants free of charge as long as its local. His room comes with free cable television with the option to watch as many movies he can for free. None of these superficial things are for him though, they are for his friends and family that come to visit him.
How much longer will he stay in this room is entirely not up to him. This choice is up to my Grandmother, a choice that she does not want to make. The guilt she professes to have over the situation is what is keeping her sick and heavily medicated. For the past few weeks all we've been doing is hoping and praying that someone will call and have us come pick him up. Now, the only phone calls that we get are from Doctor's asking for money, which we don't have.
There have been many phone calls made to help make things easier, but none of which were to make Tom feel better. I've developed a new respect for people who have to deal with customers who sit through the automated phone lines for hours as I have become one of those customers.
Who picks the music that people listen to while waiting to speak to an Operator?
I've spent the last few days going through his belongings looking for anything that need to be moved over into my Grandmothers name. Thankfully I believe that task is done, but things pop up unexpected sometimes, much like this entire situation.
I am completely unsure about a lot of what needs to be done as I have never dealt with death on this personal level. Will allowing him to be removed from the machines sustaining his life void his insurance policy causing my Grandmother to fall into catastrophic financial debt? Right now all we are doing is waiting for some mail to be delivered before we know whether or not we can end his life.
It's incredible how easy it is to break something down to its most basic elements. Tom is going to die, eventually. Whether it's from his body breaking down after recovering from this current crisis or from not being able to survive the machines being removed from service.
Tom is going to die.
Breaking it down to it's most basic element does not make it any easier to deal with.
