Month: April 2021

When Hospice arrived, we were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting. That’s what her brother and I have been doing for a couple of weeks now, and nothing makes it better. He’s older than I, doesn’t get around very well, and can’t do any lifting, but he is fully retired, and he can stay for long periods of time.

The nurse is a young and perky woman, devoid of the misery and exhaustion we are clothed in. She tells us that her company isn’t offering treatments or cures, because she has to tell us this. We nod slowly, for we no longer hope for a miracle, just a silent and painless end.

Palliative Care, just making the days better until the last day. Just making the nights more livable, and the hours less long. The long trip of a short life is now beginning to make the last turn.

By the time next Friday slips into view, this all should be over, and I will have nothing left to say on the matter. There will be a small memorial, and then we will return to our own lives, and feel regret and relief.

There’s an empty feeling, a sense of loss already, and there’s exhaustion, a never-ending, crippling, overwhelming, exhaustion. No one is rested. No one feels anything but the lack of energy, and the desire to see this to the end now.

Hospice leaves, and there are four people now, a niece, a son, a brother, and there’s me. We’ll do this in shifts, we’ll eat at random times, we’ll bathe and shave, and we will take care of our patient, a woman who is between life and death now.

She’s quit eating, quit responding to us, stopped seeing us as who we were to her. This breaks my heart, every time, each and every time, for there is no recognition. What we had, the love, the memories, all of who we were is gone or locked away. It belongs to me alone now, and alone I will be able to live in again, in my head, only.

Fellow Travelers, my friends from this place, those of you who have followed along, pay attention, in case you find yourself in my shoes. Ride it down, take a bullet for this sort of thing, crash and burn, because it’s the only way to make peace with someone dying. Make sure you spend every minute you can with her, because there will be a day she looks at you, and looks past you, and looks right through you, and you’ll know she’s gone.

Soon, Death, soon, she will be yours, for she is no longer mine. But she never was, really, we are all on loan, temporary fires, too soon to run out of fuel, or run out of time.

Love,
Mike

Mike writes regularly at his site:  The Hickory Head Hermit.

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