Ritual Of The Drugs

Now that my father had been taken away, George the Nurse led us through the next phase of activity. My father had programmed his life around his daily drug schedule. Drugs had been stockpiled, not only for daily use, but for the anticipated death struggle. There were enough drugs in the house to euthanize Ringling Brother's Barnum & Bailey Circus. These had to be rendered useless.

We systematically destroyed, or rendered unusable, the storehouse of drugs by putting them into doubled garbage bags, together with water and kitty litter. It took an hour to remove all the pills from their foil packets and release the nebulizer liquids from their plastic ampules. Some over-the-counter pills, like multivitamins, that require no prescription, I kept. At everyone's insistence, I kept the Extra-Strength Tylenol suppositories (which are said to be very effective for fever, but which I'm less enthused about using).