Or, it is what it is.
I just spent the better part of three days holding the hand of a dying man.
This may be the first night in the past week when I was able to sleep enough to collect my thoughts in a somewhat coherent manner, after spending many hours with words and images racing through my mind, driving out any rational thought with sledgehammer blow after blow of body-wracking grief in between staring into space trying to make sense of things, yet not really thinking much of anything.
People close to me have died before, but never with this much physical proximity and involvement. Platitudes about speaking only well of the dead aside, this was a good, honest, intelligent man who had lived a long and exciting life. The world will be a poorer place without his presence, beyond the inspiration he gave to those who had the good fortune to spend time with him. When someone approaches me with condolences like “I am so sorry for your loss”, I appreciate the thought, but it was your loss too, it was everyone’s, yours too.
Looking into the eyes and holding the hands of someone who is dying, who knows it, who recognizes you and tries to speak but can’t say anything intelligible beyond “hold me” is not something I thought I would ever have the strength to go through. I tried to stay upright through the experience, to keep a straight, confident face with others and to avoid the sort of sullen, blubbering self-pity that I would hate anyone at my own bedside to express. To look the man in the eye and speak to him calmly, to do what little I could to make his remaining time a less painful one, and to not refer to him in the past tense while he still breathed — something I guiltily caught myself doing more than once. To prepare and smooth the inevitable, disagreeable logistics of death without feeling ghoulish about discussing wills and executors and funeral plots. To talk with doctors and nurses, each of them knowing that he was dying but trying, through years of experience, to be sensitive toward friends and relatives when all I wanted was for them to be superhuman master orators, walking that impossibly fine line between compassion and honesty even more than they had been doing all along. The worst part of it is witnessing the open, unashamed grieving of others, their interactions with a being that soon will no longer be, that always sent me over the edge.
It was something I had feared would happen for several months, not for any particular reason beyond the man’s advanced age. He was not an old man, despite the inevitable frailty that comes with nine decades, and the occasional curmudgeonry he permitted himself; he drove a car, judged legal cases, drank, ate, traveled and lived more than many of my generation. When the call came that he was in intensive care due to a mysterious full-body infection, when the second call came that he was deteriorating rapidly after a perceived improvement, and when the third call came that he was dying, it seemed like a perverse serendipity that I was here, visiting him from another continent.
I force myself periodically to take a step back beyond the pain to realize that this was someone who lived long and well, who died comparatively easily without significant pain, who was surrounded by those close to him at all times, and was clearly not afraid. It seems unreasonably whiny to bawl like a child despite knowing that it was an undeserved privilege to be able to communicate again before he died, and to be the one to see him off. Selfishly, I find myself wishing I’d been at his bedside when the lights went out, instead of racing to the hospital at a quarter to five in the morning, only to miss him by 20 minutes, after going home at midnight and leaving him with his wife. Then I realize that he didn’t wake up again after he’d last opened his eyes to the day before and registered my voice and presence, right before completely losing any hint of composure again.
My father was with his father when that old man died, up until the very end. He described it as a “beautiful” experience, being able to see someone through a calm death. I’d thought about this, and didn’t think I was capable of that degree of calmness, even though several of the times it seemed clear to me that the man whose hand I was holding was dying. He didn’t, leaving us each time with a glimmer of hope that he would rally and maybe pull off a miracle recovery, but it was like experiencing someone dying several times. Near the end, we hoped that his body would just permit him to let go to end his discomfort, feeling vaguely dirty and callous that we were wishing death upon someone.
It’s over now, I feel drained and empty, and should get down to the business of researching what a remarkable person this was.
I’m sorry if this was not particularly funny. Go spend some time with your family, your friends and your dog.
