Translation

Tom translated around 11:45 on 8 Sept 2012.  Translated is how he referred to what he was doing.  As I understand it, translating is the Eckankar word for dying.  Eckankar was his spiritual path, Baseball was his religion.

Below, I will describe his last day in a lot more detail, maybe too much for some.

We spent the day watching Baseball...about 9 hours of it.  It was a long day for him.  He had more problems breathing thru the day and was having great difficulty moving around.  A dear friend came by and visited with him in the afternoon.  He and I ordered pizza and he ate a few bites.  I read to him from a book about Baseball that another friend had lent him.  Around 8pm, he started to get a death rattle.  I gave the medicine that the hospice had provided for that and we turned up the game,  After the Baseball game was over, I asked if he wanted to watch the George Harrison/Beatles documentary again.  We started watching that, him in the recliner, me on a pile of pillows on the floor next to him.  He sat forward for a few minutes, then slumped over.  I got up and helped him back into an upright position.  Over the next five minutes or so his breathing slowed, stopped, and restarted while I held his hand and told him that I loved him.  Then, it was done and he was gone.

I called the hospice and they sent a nurse over and had me call friends to be with me.  One got his eyes shut for me.  We waited for the nurse to pronounce him.  He stopped breathing just before 11, but wasn't officially dead until 11:45.  We had made arrangements to donate his body to science so I called the Anatomy Gift Registry to arrange the pickup of his body.  They contracted with a local funeral home and they came and picked him up in the middle of the night.  We left the Beatles on throughout.

I stayed with my friends at their house last night.