what death/dying looks like

Last Days


There is this idea that floats around about adversity and tragedy bringing people together. That would be other people. People to whom I am not related.

It’s tempting to write specifically now about the melodrama surrounding Dad’s last days but another time. Suffice to say that my brother, CB has at last burned one bridge too many. He is stranded in a place that Mom and DNOS, especially, are fully content to let him be. He even managed to alienate BabySis, and since she has blindly worshipped him since childhood, I wouldn’t have thought it possible had I not witnessed it.

Did he step over any of my lines? Yes he did. He knows it. He has been extra careful with me all week because I am his only lifeline. I choose to withhold my charity from him for the time being. Instead, I carefully painted him into a corner and he was on the earliest plane back to Nevada this morning. I am still the oldest and I still, mostly, rule. However, I gave him money for the trip. I consulted with Rob first, because we had agreed not to be ATM’s for our dysfunctional siblings, but even he agreed that there was no good reason to be so cruel to CB.

“It’s funny but as a non-Christian, I am the most Christian person in the house right now where your brother is concerned.”

I was very angry with CB. His behavior while Dad was dying was appalling. What he said to me while our father’s still warm body was lying in the other room is not something I will forget any time soon. I am not one of those people who believe that grief is blanket permission to behave as one pleases. I heard many times during the latter part of my first year of widowhood that grief can cause a person to act out and that it was part of the “process” and therefore should be overlooked or at least tolerated. It was not okay, I was told, to call people on what amounted to shitty behavior for which a non-grieving person would be handed his/her soundly kicked arse.

That is bullshit.

Being in pain isn’t an acceptable reason to inflict it intentionally or to not apologize when it is done in a moment of thoughtlessness.

And there is no hierarchy of grief. Widowhood does not trump the loss of a parent, no matter the age of the child though, in the latter case, age dictates the level of personal responsibility expectations.

I really can’t say that I felt worse after my first husband died than I do now. The relationships I had with Will and with my father don’t compare. They occupy different spaces. I feel each loss in a different way with equal intensity. The point of view may change but the sorrow is the same.

I was not with Dad when he died. I knew it was coming but I chose to go with Rob and the two kids to McDonald’s for lunch. There is a play area there and, though all I can eat is the side salad sans dressing, I didn’t want the little ones around and I thought Dad might be more inclined to go if they, and me too, were out of the house.

It was a moment in time that hurt very much to give up, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

I went in to be with him when we got back. I had forgotten the waxen look a body takes on after death. The complete absence of animation in the face. Mouth gaping and eyes hooded and the stillness, the chest no longer rising and falling.

There were a lot of tears. It was easier this time because Rob was there to envelop me. It felt safe to cry and I have never in my life felt able to safely show my sorrow in such a manner. He was not a panacea but he was, and continues to be, amazing.

I helped the hospice nurse, A, undress and then redress Dad. Mom couldn’t. Neither could DNOS. I wanted to and was glad I was able. Truthfully, helping care for my father in his last few days was wonderful. Dad was not someone who said, “I love you.” Consequently neither was I for much of my life. His way was to take care of a person. Provide and do. That is why actions are so important to me. Words are good but without accompanying actions, they are meaningless.

“Dad didn’t say ‘I love you’ to me until just a week ago.” BabySis complained to me the day after he died.

Lucky you, I thought, because he didn’t say the words to me at all. He did love me. I know that because of the things he has done for me. For BabyD. For my late husband. I guess it would have been nice to hear the words, but he showed me in a hundred different ways and what more is there?

Taking care of him was a way to show him back.

It was hard. The death rattle was agony to listen to. I have written before that I heard the sound many times during Will’s hospice stay. He was in a six bed hospice for three months. One room had the same occupant the whole time but the other four changed over at least three times each during those months. I heard death rattling a lot. I saw death’s shadow more than I ever cared to. The sound, the look and the smell are all things I never wanted to encounter again. But I loved my dad more than I worried about the effect of his dying on me. I wanted to show him I loved him even though I could have simply said the words, which I did as well, and let someone else do the rest.

I don’t think I want to watch someone die of lung cancer again but judging from my siblings’ coughs, and their strange habits of taking a smoke break after watching our dad gasp, wheeze and hack up a steady stream of brown phlegm, I could easily be witness again.*

I would like to thank all of those who read and took the time to comment. I appreciate your concern and your friendship. I have more to write about but I am unbelievably tired and quite swamped with things that need to be done before we head for home. The exhaustion, I have to say, is every bit as awful as when one is widowed.

*I might be much more militantly anti-smoking from now on.

What Death Really Looks Like


I went and saw the movie The Prestige last night with a friend. There is a scene early on in the film where Hugh Jackman’s character watches his wife drown in a water tank during an escape trick gone bad. As the scene went on I could feel the balls of my feet bracing against the floor and pushing me back in me seat. My arms drew up into a x across my chest and my hands covered my mouth. I could feel my friend’s concern as the scene progressed and Jackman’s character tried to first revive the wife and then dissolved into disbelief and tears. After the scene had passed I relaxed and slumped a bit in my seat.

There were other uncomfortable scenes but this one stayed with me. It reminded me of watching my husband die. It did so because of the terror of both the husband and the wife. I was so afraid of being with Will when he died and equally terrified that I would not be there.

The hospice workers tell you exactly what to expect. Even as his body began to cool, extremities first, and his skin mottle from lack of oxygen, behind the back of the knees is where it starts, I was still not prepared for the last minutes.

His arms and legs had contracted with each stage of his illness. He was so spastic that his arms and legs refused to bend at all by the end. As he slowly lost that last battle with pneumonia, they relaxed and unfurled. I had forgotten how tall he actually was until I came back that evening to stay the night with him and found him completely relaxed with arms and legs straight and loose.

The breathing begins to be less obviously labored and slows. The urine output is negligible and bubbly. As the strength required to draw breath in wanes, the chest stops its rise and fall and the effort shifts to the diaphragm. The nurse on duty that night pointed it out to me. I asked if it meant that he was going to die soon, but she told me that this was unlikely and this could go on for most of the night though she was sure he would not still be struggling so when morning arrived.

He looked waxen and even less like the man I married than usual. I was alone with him when I noticed the odd way he was gulping. Like a fish when it is lying on a dry surface. It seemed almost as if he was using his tongue to pull the air into his mouth and force it down his lungs. I watched for a minute, maybe two more. His head now hung limp and he was facing me with glazed eyes.

I hit the call button. The aide took forever, though really a couple of minutes, to arrive. I pointed to him, asked if that was normal. She didn’t know. New? I don’t know. I never saw her again. She went for the duty nurse. By the time she arrived I was sitting on the bed holding his hand with my other placed on his chest.

“Is this it?” I asked.

“I didn’t think it would happen this soon,” was the reply.

“Tell him it’s all right to go,” she told me.

I could feel his heart speed up, an uncountable number of beats. I repeated what I had been told. I told him I loved him.

Suddenly everything is moving very fast. The worst was watching him try to breathe frantically through his mouth. Trying to bring air to lungs that were still. There was no sound. I am grateful still for that. I can block out the image when it pops up but know that I would be defenseless against sounds.

And then it was done. A deep sigh. His head hung limply, eyes half open. I felt the heart beat just a few seconds longer. Then he wasn’t there anymore.

I just cried. I would rather endure just about anything other than to cry in front of someone else but I didn’t even notice that the nurse was still there until she came around the bed and sat down behind me and gave me a hug. Then she left me alone. And I was alone. He wasn’t there. I wanted to believe that he was still in the room with me and finally able to understand what I was saying to him but I am not so sure. I didn’t feel him at all and I would know him anywhere. I stopped crying almost as quickly as I began and didn’t cry again for nearly a week.

This feeling of disconnected numbness settles in and it stays for quite a while. I still sometimes feel so removed from myself and my actions that it is like watching a movie. I can do such dumb, self-destructive things then.

I avoid movies and television for the most part anymore just because of what happened last night. It’s not real and doesn’t even look real because I know what death really looks like, but it’s enough like reality to pull me back.

And I want out.