The Deathbed

A month has passed since PaPa died. I haven’t really slowed down enough until now to think about it much. I’ve seen Mema a few times and noted how frail and windblown she seems. I can only imagine what it is like to be left in such a state, the center of gravity of your universe suddenly gone, now a deep dark hole in the middle of your life.

I suppose I never realized how much Mema and Papa loved each other. I never remember them being in the least bit affectionate with one another, not in the way my own parents are. Their life together seemed more practical than passionate, more ingrained than invented. I figured the births of their two sons were the result of a two sudden bursts of friendliness very much in the past tense. When I was driving Mema to her hair appointment the Tuesday after, she told me that after his last stay in the hospital, he could no longer sleep lying down. She said for almost the entirety of their marriage, they had fallen asleep facing one another and holding hands.

The deathbed is such a hard, uncertain reality from the moment it ceases to become a hospital bed and becomes the deathbed. There is that excruciating moment when it is understood that there will be no homecoming. For us, it was a hard and fast transition. Papa had rallied his last bit of strength when Shosha came home. The words “recovery” and “rehabilitation” had been mentioned. He had looked at us and known us and talked to us and loved us. One moment Shosha and I were talking to him about his childhood and the war, smiling softly to one another when he drifted off into sleep. The next moment, we exchanged anxious glances as his weak lungs began to rattle and hum. The nurses were called in. His gurgling breath echoed around the room, a horrible sound like crumpling rice paper.

For nearly two hours we listened to him struggle and gag, suctioning the phlegm out of his mouth when it finally came out. I remember when the others came into the room, wanting to protest to them that not an hour before he had been talking and smiling and fine. And now we were watching him drown, watching him as his lungs fought the inevitable, frantically asking the nurses if anything could be done. And then asking them if this was the end. Hospital bed became deathbed. Visitors became mourners.

I think all of us were pretty determined to get this right. After his gurgling stopped with the Morphine and Ativan, the vigil began. It began with the acceptance that this was the last stand. There would be no recovery. The details get fuzzy after this. I remember holding his warm, slightly swollen hand, tracing the veins and massaging the palms in an intimate and loving way, things that would never have been entirely appropriate before. I stroked his hair and tucked it behind his ear. I touched him like I would a lover or a baby.

I watched as the people with far more complex relationships to Papa than mine came to terms with our situation. I watched my uncle, damaged as he is, cry almost imperceptibly. I watched Mema, facing this horrible reality that she had been preparing for, but not really known how would feel. I watched her crumble and straighten and crumble and straighten. I watched my own father, saw the lines of anguish and worry in his face. I watched Shosha as she struggled with this shock of death after being so far away. I watched my mother, whose sensibility in a crisis is matched only by her compassion and capacity to love, comfort us all in the ways we needed it most.

On Saturday morning, I read Papa and Mema my Jocassee piece, as Papa began to slip into advanced organ failure. It was stupid, but I thought it would make a change from the sterile and surprisingly loud hospital noises. Plus, I was hoping to put Mema to sleep (she had not slept all night). Maybe my voice was heard past the fog of morphine. It didn’t matter. I should have read it to him earlier, but it was better late than never.

Saturday was a day of music and counting breaths. We watched as his breaths came slower and slower and more shallow. The nurses told us with their faces that this was most likely the end. So we watched and counted the seconds between shallow gasps. Breath…2..3..4..21...22. It was like some frantic form of yoga relaxation breathing. And then there came a moment when we all sat around his bed, an intuitive (or wishful) feeling that we could somehow lift his soul out of his tired, broken body to that next place. Mama asked me to sing and tried to herself, but couldn’t. I didn’t think I could handle a hymn, so I sang “Riddle Song” that Leah taught me when I was 18 or 19 and that I had sung as a fail proof lullaby first to Anna and Catherine, then to Kira, then to Eli, then to Stevie. After that, I could move on to others. We sang softly and poorly, our throats filled with the cotton of grief, but mostly on key and hitting those few lovely moments of familial harmony. The nurses closed the doors to give us privacy, though I’m sure we were an intriguing bunch. We exhausted our hymn knowledge, pausing to count seconds between breaths after each song. I remember pleading with God to just take him now. Give us this beautiful moment to remember. Make this death into a poem. Let us line his passage to heaven with sweet songs. We were all ready. There was no need for him to suffer any longer. We had just sung him our blessing. There had already been so many moments when he was surrounded by the people he loved the most. Times when we could have all watched him leave the room for the last time.

But it was another whole day. Shosha had to go back to California. We who were not on the deathbed had living needs; papers to write, calls to be made, showers to be had, food to be eaten, decisions to be made, sleep to be snatched from a restless night. I remember being so angry. Angry at God who would not just take him from that God-awful hospital. Angry at an old man’s surprisingly stubborn heart.

He held on for so long, long enough to make us think that maybe we had been wrong. Maybe we had given up to quickly. The nurses were so surprised each morning and evening when they changed shifts. They asked us if we knew of anyone that he was waiting for. Sometimes death will wait for reunification. They had seen it happen. We then thought that perhaps he was waiting for permission. And we all, in our way, gave it. I whispered in his ear that he could go. That we were all ready and willing to let him go. That we loved him. That we would take care of each other. I told him to let go of this tired old world. I heard my father assure him that he would take care of Mema. Maybe this did the trick, but it was a delayed reaction. Papa was a champion worrier. Maybe he really did need to feel this assurance that he could leave us behind and that we would be okay.

Apprehension gave way to exhaustion. Nicholas, Mama, and Dale left to get some rest. Mema sat fretting in the corner about funeral stuff while Daddy tried to convince her to take things one at a time. I propped my computer by Papa playing gospel grass internet radio. I held his hand and began counting breaths. It was sometimes up to 70 or 80 seconds between shallow gasps. Every time, I thought “this is it” and then he would gasp again. Maybe it was the music, or the fact that I was physically and emotionally worn down. But I let go of his hand and began to zone out, tracing the pattern of the wallpaper with my eyes. A few minutes passed and I was vaguely aware of his breathing. And then vaguely aware that there had been no gasping.

I waited for three long minutes, afraid to touch him, paralyzed. I always imagined the face turning blue and the body suddenly becoming limp, but the only thing I noticed was that his lips turned the same color as his skin. I struggled to find my voice. I remember trying to somehow get my father’s attention without alerting my grandmother, worried that I was making a mistake. I had been 12 inches from him. I had expected death to be louder, more obvious. What followed was a surreal half hour. He had gone away in the blink of an eye, but it took about four people listening for a non-existent heartbeat before he was declared.

I remember reading this poem by Thomas Hood a long time ago.

WE watch'd her breathing thro' the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied--
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed--she had
Another morn than ours.


I am always humbled by the ability of poetry to transcend in this world.