“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore,” says Billy, “was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past (…) All moments past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist…”
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
In the early afternoon, medical supply set up the equipment after I dragged the coffee table into my office and the gold chair and orange side table into the kitchen. I cleared off the sideboard, dumping the mail, paperwork and tchotchkes onto my desk where they would sit for months.
The hospice nurse arrived before the ambulance transport. I signed paperwork, pausing a moment before scratching my signature on the DNR. I was signing for my husband’s death. My head felt like a balloon with the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
The ambulance appeared 20 minutes later, brought him awkwardly through the narrow screen door and transferred him to the waiting hospital bed which I’d dressed with his favorite sheets and blankets.
“Hi baby. Welcome home,” I said.
He had a dreamy expression, surfing a morphine wave. “Hey”, he replied with a soft smile.
His sister and her family arrived from Boston and we milled around the close quarters of the living room. Chris was cognizant and conversational, and we made eye contact occasionally while I stood in the kitchen drinking coffee.
His family left shortly thereafter, but his sister Michele stayed behind to spend just a little more time. I wandered around the backyard, sent texts and gathered my courage.
When Michele left at 5:30, I squatted next to the hospital bed and looked into his eyes.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?” I asked.
“Do you have anything you want to ask me?” he replied.
Did I have anything to ask? I had a thousand questions. Did you love me? Were you happy enough in our life together? Why did you do this to us? Do you know how much I’m going to miss you? Did you love me? Do you know how much I love you? Do you know how much I love you? Do you know how much I love you?
“No, baby,” I said.
“Is Elissa coming?” he asked.
“Yes, she’s on her way.”
“I guess it’s not a social call this time,” he chuckled weakly.
I shrugged.
I took my place on the couch parallel to the bed and we talked a little about nothing. I listened to his voice, but not the words: just the rise and fall of his voice patterns, inflections and breath. I had put on YouTube and let the algorithm of our music play. I rubbed his head, his arm, his legs, held his hand. There was a sudden shift in the atmosphere that I couldn’t name but instinctively understood.
“Are you ready to do the thing one more time?” I gently asked.
At 6:45 I called Elissa, still 2 hours away on her drive to us. “It’s starting,” I blubbered.
She told me to give him more morphine, to call hospice and let them know.
“You can do this,” she reassured me. “You are capable.”
I stood at the stove and with shaky hands, drew the prescribed amount from the bottle into the dropper. I couldn’t get it wrong. What was I going to do, kill him? I bit my lip to quash a hysterical noise bubbling in my throat. Chris would have found the dark humor on point.
Volumes have been written for thousands of years equating birth and death and now I fully understand, as many of the trials of labor and delivery ran parallel in Chris’ dying. It was not lost on me.
I labored it out with him: encouraging with soft words that I was there, that he was safe, that he was loved, that it was okay to go. I did what he asked if the request was feasible. I told him it was okay to go, that he did a great job, that he didn’t have to fight, that it was time to rest, that I loved him.
He shifted into a position comparable the yoga pose called “child’s pose”. I had cut away the hospital gown earlier at his request and in this arrangement, Chris resembled a baby waiting to be born.
He had the grace to hang on until Elissa arrived, ensuring I wouldn’t be alone, passing away twenty minutes later. We watched his back rise and fall with growing seconds between each breath. And then he just stopped breathing, without fanfare, his head in my hands. It was 9:22 pm.
Instead of a baby howling as it entered the world, it was me howling, primal and without abandon, at Chris’ departure from it.
I felt him go. I felt the energy leave his body. I didn’t know its destination and tried to snatch it back for an instant, but his soul had slipped through my fingers and moved on.
“So it goes.”
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
Sobbing. Oh, dear heart. Thank you sharing this, letting us in, allowing us to bear witness. I’m so very grateful he had you and you had Elissa. ❤️
This is a most beautiful description of his transition and your experience. 💜