#there is something about the sacredness and intimacy and terror of death that gets to me

[hylianengineer]

Favorite Artful Dodger scene so far:

Belle: "He's dying, isn't he? What can we do?"

Jack: "Hold his hand and see him into the next life."

Also, the parallels between this and Jack's earlier speech about how dangerous it is for a surgeon to play God. No matter how good a doctor you are, you still have to be a person - it is being a person that makes you good, and if you lose sight of that, you'll fail.

And when you've done all you can as a doctor, there's still something you can do as a fellow human being. Be there.

#death tw #artful dodger spoilers #the artful dodger #medical tw #hylian rambles #there is something about the sacredness and intimacy and terror of death that gets to me #it might have something to do with the fact that i volunteered doing fundraising for a hospice program as a teenager #never did any actual end of life care and didn't want to but still saw a lot of how it affected my coworkers and our clients #something a coworker said still gets to me. she said when people ask how she could do this job she says 'how could you not?'

[nookishposts]

Grace Notes 2

I spent a week as part of a team of friends and family sitting vigil for Maureen, who lay dying. A long eroding illness had occupied her last few years and she had successfully integrated into a wonderful hospice program which I believe prolonged her life through exemplary care. When we all got the call that she was suddenly and rapidly deteriorating, we answered.

A good deal of life is about just showing up. It would appear that the same is true of death. Maureen’s body had suffered greatly while her mind remained sharp and full until it began to show some cracks a week before her death. Who knows if her lucidity was affected most by pain, fear, fatigue, brain tissue deterioration, or most likely some evil cocktail of all of those things. Her pre-approval  for legal physician-assisted death came with the proviso that once she chose her date, there must exist a 10 day window of time in which she could change her mind. But when Maureen began to lose ground, the lapses in her lucidity invalidated her ability to invoke assisted suicide. It was also highly unlikely she would survive the 10 days.  Either way, it was a cruel twist in a carefully engineered self-determined plan. She had wanted to have a party with all of us and then quietly slip away into a bedroom for her final curtain. We knew she didn’t want any of us to see her suffer, to witness the messiness of a body shutting down and the very personal, mildly invasive professional care that would entail. We showed up anyway.

A handful of women went in and out of Maureen’s lovely hospice room, in shifts, to the best of our abilities. When someone you love is dying, life otherwise goes on and must be factored in to the schedule. She’d turned 69 last December and most of us are within 10 years of her age either way. We have learned our limits and are realistic about how best to cope. We all knew we would be there as much for one another as for Maureen, and through the process of bearing witness together, would come to know one another better.

Texting made things a little easier. We kept one another apprised of Maureen’s status as it changed: “She opened her eyes for a bit, she seemed to respond to the music.” We kept tabs on who was coming and who was going from the room, trying to ensure that one or more of us could be with her always. A couple of days into the process, a Saturday, the Director of the hospice came in to prepare the staff for Maureen’s departure as she had been with them 16 months and formed many heartfelt bonds. On shift or not, they each came in to say goodbye. We tried to give every one who came the courtesy of a few minutes alone with Maureen, to speak their hearts as they might, in privacy and sacredness. Saying a final goodbye is indeed sacred; even when its wordless. 

Over 7 days, we saw at various times Maureen’s twisting physical pain, watching in trust as the nurses adjusted and added medications to reduce her constant, relentless tremors. She hallucinated, not from the medications, but from some battle within herself to gain any modicum of control over the spiralling conflict between “here” and “not here”. Her emaciated face was a movie screen of emotions. We could see the terror so clearly in frantic eye tics, deeply furrowed brows and a grimacing, gasping mouth. She tried so hard to express herself, to release words. We sat in turns at her bedside, murmuring soft soothing sounds, stroking her face, holding her hand.  In the middle of one rather harrowing night, she convulsed her knees to her chest and amid the wails, we heard very clearly: “I huuuurt!” The nurses were right there, doing everything they knew how to do, but it took 2 hours before Maureen retreated into an exhausted sleep.  At 8 am the next morning, she opened her eyes and responded to the nurse’s cheerful good morning with a smile and: “Good Morning Shannon” in answer. We were stunned, but cheered her for the gift of that moment, and hoped she recalled nothing of the night before. Those were her last pain-free words. Over the next days, she spoke hardly at all, made few sounds beyond a yawn or a sigh. All of her energies went into the rasping rhythm of one breath after another after another.

There could be up to 6 of us in the room at any given time. It is a large room painted butter yellow, high-ceiling-ed, with one wall a bank of white shutters overlooking the garden. Staff wheeled a tray of coffee and snacks into the anteroom. The vase of black licorice was a special hit. Stories constantly flew across and around Maureen’s bed and I wondered how much of them she heard, whether she was frustrated at not being able to get her two cents in, to participate in the surprising amount of laughter. We tried hard to include her in the conversation.

“Redhead, pee the bed, 5 cents a cabbage head! Maureen you are shaking so much, do you have a vibrator under there? ” teased her middle sister.

Some stories referenced the traumas in Maureen’s life, including the death of her only son less than 2 years ago. Did we contribute to her discomfiture I wonder?

Those stories were the touchstones between we handful women of who may have known Maureen originally in different ways but over time and through her became more familiar with one another. Most of us were at her son’s wedding, and also at her husband’s funeral. We may have danced in a circle at a fundraiser or sat across committee tables in heated discussion. We may have met over a meal or at a political protest. At the hospice, we found ourselves balancing cups of tea on the couch in the fire-lit parlour while PSWs tended to Maureen’s body and bedclothes, and we tried to reconcile the elegantly-dressed hummingbird of the ready-made laugh, with the wizened, crepe-draped skeletal wisp under the quilts in Room 1. It took its toll on each of us, but we offered it with clear hearts.

There is a rare intimacy in the wait for merciful death. When you sit either side of a bed, in the dimmed light, taking turns swabbing parched lips with a lollipop sponge ; when your eyes meet across the divide, something changes in both of you, forever. The maelstrom of emotions you share when your dying friend is trying to cry, or the relief that comes when at last she sleeps without tremors and you stop holding your breath for her...it forms a fierce bond between witnesses. Some moments we share, we will simply never forget.

Each one of us in some way tried to help Maureen die. We gave her “permission” in reassuring her that it was okay to go, that we would be fine, that we would watch over her loved ones in her stead. We reminded her that perhaps her son, her husband, her parents, were waiting somewhere to assist her transition into whatever comes after this life. We sat with the musicians who played and sang at her bedside, songs of comfort and of peace: Hallelujah, Imagine, I Believe In Angels, What a Wonderful World. We wept or sang along with them. There is a 20 minute video of the day staff clustered around Maureen’s bed, all of them singing her and themselves into solace.

I think in the final 24 hours of her life, we all managed to spend a little time in Room 1. There is a comfy chair by the window, and when one of us was holding Maureen’s head, offering the energies of Reiki, she remarked: “Well, that’s a first. I felt her swirling above the bed in time to the music on the radio.” We speculated jokingly that perhaps the chair was a portal between worlds.  Maureen was very much a dancer, and a figure skater, when her legs were still free. From her room, I took a homemade CD on which someone has written: “The Best of Gloria Estefan”, because it will make me sing and dance in the car on long trips,and I will feel Maureen in the music. But not yet, not yet.

I re-read a poem a friend had suggested, just before I said my own final goodbye at 10pm on a Friday night:

You have been called from the place of your dwelling,

After times, after, duties, after separations.

May blessed soul-friends guide you,

May helping spirits lead you,

May the Gatherer of Souls call you,

May the homeward path rise up under your feet

And lead you gladly home. (Caitlin Matthews, Celtic Devotional)

The woman who was with Maureen as she took her final breaths about 2 am on Saturday morning said this:” ...it was so sweetly, peacefully, and so quickly over...”

The calls and texts began and the relief spread like fresh honey through the circle of women whose week had been focused on safely seeing a beloved friend, and one another, home. In time, we will gather once more, as you do, for some kind of farewell service and a meal. We will giggle and reminisce, but among the toasts we will quietly raise a glass to ourselves as well, for fearfully, but also so fully, sharing the gift of showing up. Sweetest of dreams, Maureen.