Sometimes I read to Ed, sometimes I read with Ed while he sleeps. Ed woke up this afternoon and we talked. He said he wondered why they didn’t give him an overdose, he said is useless this  way. I said they don’t give overdoses, and he said he knew that.

He said he was in great pain and this was no way to live. He said the pain was not coming from any one place, but was all over his body. He asked for his morphine dose, which Carol gave him orally.

If they couldn’t cure him, he said, they ought to let him go. I said nothing except I knew it must be hard. He said he just felt useless, there was no reason to be alive.

Carol said she wasn’t forcing Ed to eat, but was encouraging him to eat.  All day, he ate nothing but some ice cream, he had little water and no food. For Carol,  watching her very engaged and energetic husband decline in this  way is very hard. Watching him refuse food and water was even harder.

Maria walked out side to get something from her car and took this photo.

After he and talked briefly, he fell back to sleep. It was the first time I saw him awake in three days. We held hands for a while and then  shook hands, he said “I love you,  Jon.” Then  he closed his eyes.

I hope he doesn’t have to suffer in this way for too much longer. Carol is  wearing a brace for her torn ligaments, and it is helping. She and Maria sat in the kitchen and talked for an hour, we see that these talks are important for her.

Since Ed began taking his morphine doses, he has been sleeping longer and more deeply, and Carol looked tired but better rested than on previous nights. Family members began showing up, so we came home to rest ourselves.

A lot going on, I felt it all today somehow, it seemed a long and hard day.