The Last Summer Is Coming to an End

If you're reading this in August and you have a parent in hospice, you probably already know this summer is different. Maybe a doctor said something in the spring that made it clear. Maybe you've just been watching and you can see how things are going. Either way, you're in a summer that might be the last one, and it's almost over.

This post won't make that easier. But it might help to think through what the next few weeks can actually look like, and what you can fairly let go of.

You don't have to make it meaningful

There's pressure in this situation to do something with the time. Create memories. Have important conversations. Take your dad somewhere he loves one more time before the season ends.

Some of that is worth doing if it's what he wants and he has the energy for it. But a lot of it is pressure you're putting on yourself, and it doesn't serve either of you. Most people who have been through this say the planned moments weren't what they remember most anyway. It was the plain ones. Sitting in the same room. Watching something on TV. Asking if he wanted more coffee.

What's actually worth doing

If there's something specific you want to do before summer ends, do it now rather than waiting. His energy and comfort will likely be better now than in a few weeks, and making plans later is harder than making them today.

That might mean a drive somewhere he likes. A meal that takes some effort because it's his favorite. Calling someone he hasn't talked to in a while. Asking him something you've always wanted to know.

If he's too tired for any of that, then sitting with him on a good afternoon is enough.

What you can let go of

If there are things on your mental list that would really be for you rather than for him, cross them off. An outing he'd find exhausting. A conversation he's made clear he doesn't want to have. A version of the summer that requires him to be doing better than he is.

You're not going to get the summer you would have had if things were different. The summer you do have is still real, and it still has good days in it.

When September comes

Fall will show up whether you're ready or not. The kids will go back to school, the weather will change, and the hospice journey will keep going into a new season.

At some point you'll look back on this August. Not with the sense that you handled it exactly right, because nobody does. But you'll know you were there, and that you kept coming back on the days when you didn't know what else to do.

He'll have known it too.