Somewhere on the Far Side of Respect
David R. Weiss – January 16 and February 1, 2026

Before I know it, the small plastic cup filled with ice and Coke is filled with neither. The ice spins itself in lazy spirals across the tray top while the Coke races to the edges, beating my napkin and dripping down to the floor. “No worries, Dad. I got this.” I corral the ice back into his cup and refill it with the last bit of Coke from the bottle.

This is the constant peril of being at times reduced to peripheral vision. Since breaking his neck a year ago—his top three vertebrae are now fused together—he can barely turn his neck side to side or up and down. If he knows the Coke … or the newspaper … or the red grapes are on his hospital tray anywhere other than right in front of him, he reaches for them with all the precision of an earth-moving excavator. Which is to say, not so much.

But there’s far more than a stiff neck plaguing him these days. Meet sepsis. It’s a condition triggered by infection in the bloodstream—the last place infection should be (blood is meant to be sterile). When that happens, your immune system goes into a mad tantrum, over-producing white bloods cells and sending them out to attack anything they can find. In Dad’s case they seem to have found and attacked his muscles: everywhere, but especially in his legs. We’ve been told that between the damage done by sepsis and the long-brooding arthritis in his knees, he won’t walk again. But we hope, desperately, that his arms recover their previous fragility. Not asking for much, merely the strength and steadiness to feed and groom himself.

A moment after the Coke debacle, I watch him slowly—and precariously—lift the short cup with the tall straw to his lips, and I’m no prophet, but I can see another mess in the making. So, I offer to transfer the pop and ice into a sippy cup with a closed lid and a short rigid straw. He readily agrees. Happy to trade one more token of his dignity for a surer pathway to his preferred beverage.

Over supper his aide encourages him to drink “all” of his 4-ounce protein shake. It comes in a paper carton, a mini version of the 8-ounce milk cartons I used to get for lunch at schools. He’s agreeable enough, but it takes a special talent to maneuver the 8-inch straw flailing from the 2-inch carton to his lips. For Dad it’s a slow-motion game of hit-and-miss. He knows the straw is down there—somewhere—but he can’t lower his gaze to get it in his sights. I don’t want him to feel embarrassed, and he won’t ask for help, but after a long minute that seemed like five, I step forward to steady the milk carton and guide the straw to his pursed lips. Once there, he devours the shake in three and four draughts.

It’s about here that the room starts to spin for me. See, it’s finally settling inside me, with all the grace of a bull in a China shop (leaving shattered shards everywhere): my dad is infinitely more mortal than I ever imagined. I knew he would die someday. I did not realize how much he might wither before death.

Yesterday he asked me to shave him with his electric shaver. I’ve never owned an electric shaver—I’ve never even wielded one. I can count on my two thumbs the number of times I’ve shaved my own cheeks to bare skin over the past thirty-five years! But here I am kneeling beside him in his wheelchair, his face held perfectly still while I work my way feverishly toward aged cheek skin through the patchy ungainly fuzz that’s been given free rein on his face for the past week. It is an exercise in trust and humility on his part. An exercise in humility and honor on mine.

Tomorrow (compared to January 16 when I started this piece) he will put hungry helpless effort into eating his vegetable soup. Leaning slightly to the side in his bed (seeking to alleviate the nagging pain of a bedsore above his butt) and with his back raised to 45 degrees, he brings the soup slowly, unsteadily, and with exquisite care to his waiting mouth. Three times in a row, as he tilts the soup to match the tilt of his mouth, all the soup ends up on his chest. He surrenders his spoon to the tray in silent frustration.

I am trembling inside as I walk around the end of the bed, go to his side, and ask if I can try. He nods. Through the silent frustration, saying nothing. My first attempt fares no better than his, although I have cupped my left hand below the spoon, so I catch the soup in my hand before it reaches his chest. How do you get a soup spoon into a tilted mouth without tilting the spoon?! On my second attempt I coach Dad, telling him (as I’m sure he once told me some 65 years ago), “Open wide.” He does, and I slowly put the spoon all the way in, then he closes his lips around it, and I tilt the spoon allowing the soup at last to find its goal. We work like a team for four more spoonfuls. “That’s enough. Thank you.” I’m spinning.

Now I’m going to leap forward two weeks. In the interim my sisters and I have made the necessary arrangements so that on his release from Life Care Rehab in Valparaiso (where he spent five weeks), he can move into Trail Creek Place, an assisted living facility just a mile from the house in Trail Creek that’s been his home for the past 61 years. He would’ve preferred to die at home. But he can’t live at home any longer, so he might not get to die there either. (Spoiler alert, I have promised him that if he wishes to go home when the end is near, to take his final breaths in that house, I will make that happen. But he is so weary by now, that I’m not sure he much cares. Still, that’s his call if he chooses.)

I’ve brought as much familiar furniture from his home over to his small 2-room apartment, so the dresser and nightstands, the end tables and TV, his recliner and Mom’s wingback chair all whisper “You’re home, Fred.” Although I don’t know if he hears that above the chatter of all that is unfamiliar. We bundle him up and he gets loaded into the Trail Creek Place bus by wheelchair lift. I ride on the last bench in front of him. He seems to smile as we pull out. Maybe he is excited; I am sure he is relieved. I make small talk as we ride along. I keep to myself the words I want to say, “Don’t be scared, Dad.” I’m not sure whether they are there because I sense his fear—or mine.

Well, he lasted five days at Trail Creek Place before the sepsis that sent him to the hospital back on December 12 made an encore appearance. He wound up back in the ER and then back in the hospital, where he’s been for the past five days. This time they seem to have found the “magic” antibiotic that has actually cleared out the infection. It is a mixed blessing, however. In his earlier stay, they attributed the sepsis to a series of chronic UTIs and treated it with IV antibiotics primed for the usual bacterial suspects in your bladder. This time they opted instead for one more adept at the type of bacteria—including MRSA—that might enter the bloodstream by way of the multiplying bed sores that now punctuate—and puncture—his body. It was exactly the right antibiotic.

These pressures sores, abetted by Dad’s moderate (not even severe!) diabetes, result from his inability to move any longer. The largest one, on his foot, is larger than a half-dollar—and mostly black. An ugly orb where it appears death is getting an early start on him. The other significant one is on his lower back at the base of his spine above his butt. More diamond-shaped, it’s not as big and not at all black; it’s more a bright pinkish red, but it’s deep and the dull yellow-gray spot at its center is exposed bone.

Per the doctor, neither of these open ulcers is going anywhere. And I don’t mean “any time soon.” I mean EVER. Dad will take them to his grave. Or the reverse. The powerful IV antibiotic can kill the blood infection that sparked the sepsis, but these two open wounds (and a third smaller one, and others likely to follow) will be welcome mats—hell, open doors, literally!) for more bacteria. Topical antibiotics and regular dressing changes will keep them in check … for as long as possible.

Now, we’re finally that two weeks forward, when I got back into this document to finish this piece.

Besides the bed sores, Dad also has edema—noted swelling in his feet and left hand. Some days the swelling in his hand makes it more a decorative appendage than a functional one. Ever try reading a newspaper (one of my dad’s favorite things to do!) with just one hand? That’s its own Zen koan, right up there with one hand clapping. Thus, yesterday I fed him vanilla pudding (cook-and-serve, made at home), which he eagerly ate. I don’t think he had images of baby food in his mind—he was getting pudding out of the deal, after all—but as I raised each spoon to his lips, it wasn’t lost on me, that he is now, at least some days, almost childlike in his dependence on the care of others.

Today was a better day. Two working hands and wide awake. It’s a low bar, but even the low bars count these days. Plus, we found a Chicago public television documentary (two parts, each two hours long, airing back-to-back!) on the history and cultures of Chicago’s south shore and north shore suburbs which Dad found enthralling. (I did, too, but I had the luxury of taking a 2-mile walk in the middle of it.) Tonight, he fed himself pudding. A victory of sorts. In a life where those victories will become increasingly rare.

When he’s discharged from the hospital (maybe Tuesday?), he’ll return to Trail Creek Place, sepsis-free and yet still somewhat worse for the wear. Once there, he’ll enter hospice. Not that he’s done living. He might well have months to go. Or maybe just weeks. Still, as the doctor explained to us, he is pretty much done healing. Those open ulcers will never become his best friends, but they will be his constant companions from here on. And, because he’s completely unable to walk, they’ll be inviting their friends. With healing no longer on the menu, we’ll turn toward comfort care. There’s a lot we can do to keep him comfortable during this last glide home. And each of us—Dad and all three kids—are ready for that, though each in our own complicated ways.

Me? I had three good cries today. Short, but shaking sobs, so they count. Well, (wipes away tears) make that four. Part sadness, for sure. Part trembling at the awe-full holiness of being so near to where the edge of life meets the edge of death. And part realization of just how infinitely mortal and infinitely fragile he is. The room keeps spinning.

This man was The Mountain of my childhood. Airplanes rides from his hands to his feet and making models and climbing sand dunes and grilling out and playing games and listening to him read poems to us at bedtime. The ands are endless!

True, we clashed often. Our temperaments and interests were decidedly different in countless ways, but we unquestionably loved more fiercely than we clashed. He was the measure of manhood for me: reliable, faithful, gentle, caring, level-headed. (Damn it, five cries.) I knew how to push his buttons. But I suspect I only dared to do that because I loved him so much—and because I knew the reverse was true.

It’s been decades now since we clashed on anything more than sports teams. The tale to reach that point is long and winding, with occasional switchbacks, but here we are. Graced. We are hardly mirrors of each other, yet we have cultivated an abiding respect for the varied choices we’ve made. I suppose that’s because we’ve both come to see how even our differences remain diverse manifestations of our shared core values like decency, fairness, mercy, and justice. And here I am exercising those core values in my tender care for him. An echo six decades in the making of the same tender care shaped by those same values that he showed me as a kid.

I know, it’s “full circle,” the way it’s meant to work. But that full circle has me spinning right now. I somehow foolishly imagined that “abiding respect” was the endpoint—and a fine one at that. But this inward dizziness tells me there is yet one more alchemy taking place. In real time.

I did not know I was capable of love like this. I have fathered two children and parented several more. I have loved—and do love—each of them with a love that regularly surprises and astonishes me. But I did not imagine that the love for an aged man—a very much worn-down mountain—could be … so sweet. He is hardly any of what he once was. Except in my heart, he is all of that still and more.

So, I am now somewhere on the far side of respect. And so happy for the tears that leave salty traces of love on my cheeks.

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.