Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

by Sheri Fink

In less than a week he was off the ventilator, saying he was relieved to be alive, highlighting the complexity of end-of-life decision making, of predicting in advance what we would want in a situation we have never faced. He requested his DNR be removed. He lived a few more months, and his granddaughter, a twenty-one-year-old college student studying musical performance, described in a eulogy what that time meant to both of them as she spent her summer vacation visiting him in the hospital, a rehab unit, and a skilled nursing facility: “We talked about politics, economics, current events, gossip, books, movies, the past, the future. He taught me about social responsibility and his past. I taught him about opera and music. We even talked about boys and relationships. When he gave advice, it was always good and, more important, wise. […] I will continue to live my life as if I’m going to tell him about it.”