I'm wading through Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov. It's a stunning read, beautifully written, and word-smithed perfectly.
There was a passage about the passing of a cow. "I tell her I see that cow, it is now grazing at the right hand of God, because it wasn't alone when it died, it had seen a young girl talking to it ...that is a happy death."
Yeah, I know y'all are scratching your heads wondering where the hell this is going. Hang on for a second, this is not all that obtuse. I thought back to Donna's death.
I was home walking Nina, our Westie, when I got a call from the hospice nurse saying to get my ass back to the unit; Donna was having agonal breathing. Took Nina home. Hopped in a cab, gave the driver explicit directions. Dude failed. I had to jump out of the cab three blocks away and run to the unit.
Donna had passed. The hospice nurse said it was only a couple of minutes ago. (Can’t help but think of her kindness to tell me I was close but no cigar.) I keep thinking, nah, I missed it by a bunch of minutes. She died alone.
I wonder, even if Donna could hear my voice in her last moments of life, what would it have meant for her? For me? Would it have been as Gospodinov said, "a happy death"? If hearing me repeat I love you, I love you, you're not alone, would that have comforted her or me? But she was alone because of a cab driver. Or, she chose to do this alone to spare me.
Fast forward to today and my work as a crisis counselor. I frequently say you're not alone to those in crisis to help them feel connected, heard, and considered. It seems it might not be the same for someone who is dying. Or is it?
Would it have been a happier death for her, as if death can be happy? Would it have soothed my broken heart and ravaged soul? Would I have felt as if I did enough for her? Or even me?
This is what hope looks like years later. A wish. A belief that what was then was not a lost moment. It was a memory to carry forward. To offer others as a way to give comfort. To make amends. There are no regrets about my failing to be with Donna in her last moments of life. What there are are memories that build upon a continuing expansion of my life even as it burrows into isolation.
Our memories are of what we lost and fear and suffer over. For many of us it is grief that is unfathomable and relentless, yet for me and my experience with hospice and Donna’s entire spectrum of care, I had memories that gave me hope and kindness and friends and family and a team that was there for Donna first and me as well. They were there to help me because they knew I was to live as much as I didn’t want to, but thinking about the time during her care and hospice, I reflect on what was, not what wasn’t.
These are static memories, yet dynamic and evocative. To ignore those activators of memory is a failure to abide by the voice within myself, within us all. As I tug on this string of memory through the lens of grief and memories, what are the pearls or knots that appear? That is my work: unfurl memories to apply them to others.
The rearview mirror is not your direction. Memories go forward with you.