©2010 Tom Weathers
It was a year ago that she died. Today I go to the oncologist to see about my own cancer.
This is what I posted in the Blind Cat blog about her last night…
She woke up about 1:00 AM, uncomfortable, not able to breathe. I called the night shift nurse. He asked her if she hurt. I think she said, "No." He gave her a dose of morphine, maybe mixed with Haldol.
We sat beside her bed, him on one side holding one hand, me on the other side, holding her other hand. She asked him if she was dying. Without hesitating, his craggy pirate's face calm but infinitely sad, he said maybe. She stared at him, transfixed. She was still afraid. But something was different. She wondered if she would see a light. He said some people do. Then he smiled and nodding at the large TV in front of her bed, noted that the last thing some people see is whatever is on television at the time.
Her blue eyes, now brighter than I had ever seen them and more alert, darted around the room, seeming to take it all in, as if she was saying to herself, this is where I will die. This is my last view of the world. My sister (who died not far from the motel room on the Outer Banks where I sit writing this) had the same look in her blue eyes not long before she lost consciousness for the last time.
After a while the nurse left us alone. I am not exactly sure what we said. I told her that it was OK to for her to die now but that if she wanted to stay a while I would prefer that. She leaned up from the bed, kissed me on the forehead and said that she loved me. I kissed her on the forehead and said that I loved her. She told me repeatedly to look after Yancie. I said that I would. I think she also said something about Yancie looking after me.
This is what I posted about her trip to the Hospice House…
She didn't want to go to the Hospice House. She said she would die there. But the Hospice home nurse swore that it was just for a couple of days to get her medicine regulated. I went along with it because it was a plan and I didn't want to see her slumped anymore at the kitchen table about to fall out of her chair afraid to go to bed, because she hated that room, was afraid of dying there.
The last episode of getting Brenda ready was like all the others. I pushed and cajoled. She wanted to slow down, to not go, to stay where she was and sleep at the kitchen table in front of her little TV and Nancy Grace and the Cooking Channel. She cried for me to leave her alone that she couldn't make it. But I was committed to the plan and pushed on.
When we finally got into the car and had one more dose of morphine, it wasn't so bad. Driving across town in the rain and failing light we got silly and sang a Christmas carol - We Three Kings I Think.
By the time we got to the Hospice House, which appeared in a winter field just over the crest of a low hill, Brenda did what she always did. She joined into the adventure, talked with the people, and looked around at the chalet-like surroundings as the nurse, a dusky man of deep wisdom, ferried her down the hall to her room.
The first year without Brenda ends as it began, with biopsies, x-rays, scans – threats of death. Last year the threats were to Brenda. This year they are to me. In her case the threats proved prescient – she died. In my case, the jury is still out.
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