Weeks ago, we entered a new phase in our friendship during her home hospice. Here, life and death are not linear. They overlap, they share space, they cede ground to one another, moment by moment. “Living” is very different when that living is an active dying. It is breath labored and slowed, lost words, a voice barely a whisper. We started sending short videos daily, to accommodate Mel’s irregular waking hours and inability to write or type.
The things you talk about when death is imminent are both mundane and transcendent.
We talked a lot about the past, because there was no future to speak of, not one that we would share, anyway. Even the present was tenuous, as our conversations were often asynchronous; what we saw of one another was no longer taking place by the time we viewed it. The lag and playback was a constant reminder of how our timelines would keep diverging, with only one of us continuing to keep time. She said “I love you” a lot, in each short video.
I think about Mel’s husband often, and how he shouldered so much alone in her last days. Caretakers are often invisible, but especially so when death is so abundant that we become numb to the numbers, to the sheer scale of it all. Death is everywhere, but most especially where they are.
In her last weeks Mel required lots of sleep, a source of frustration. “I’m sleeping my life away. I am so angry at it. People say to give your body what it needs, but it’s really hard to give yourself grace.” I think of the meaning of “grace,” of the idea of mercy and forgiveness that may be both received and given, and its link to both benediction and suffering. Grace hasn’t been easy to come by during the last year, but it is perhaps all we have to offer ourselves and to each other. Death will take what it has come for, but in between we can show and give love, offer empathy, and share time. Compassion and presence are grace we can give, the only peace to be had. Carrying the weight of one another is what we are called to do. Offering one another grace, even if we can’t give it to ourselves, is how we round the bend of this pandemic, and beyond.
In the days after her death on Feb. 8, I played the Fugees alone in my car.
“Now that I escape, sleepwalker awake, Those who could relate know the world ain’t cake.”
Life looks different when it is bookended, when you can see its beginning and end with equal clarity. I selfishly hope there is a beyond, and a way to tell me she is OK.
Ready or not, I knew Mel’s escape was near, that she would be released from the body that had betrayed her. I am the one grasping now, listening to recordings and looking at old photographs, trying to find her. Those left behind each grieve alone to a degree; the texture and contour of grief is unique to each of us. Yet ours is a time of communal sorrow and loss, of empty seats at too many tables.
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