The house is quiet now without the burbling humidifier on the O2 tank or the click of the on-demand oxygen concentrator. I can sit in his place at the head of the kitchen table and enjoy the full spectrum view of garden and trees from here. I can turn on lights and make noise in the middle of the night and throw away the old fashioned Corelware dishes we've had for 28 years.
And I can wail and rant because I have all the opportunities for changes and adventure I can create and do alone. It's just that I don't want to do any of them today.
In one short moment, in the early hours of 8/28, his life stopped. Our life together came to an end.
I never, ever, thought I would be a widow. In the middle of the morphine and tube drainings. . . while I was immersed in and focused on his needs and wants, I lost myself more totally than I had before his illness. I craved the proximity of his body, patting and rubbing it whenever I was near. A dose of medicine or a bite of food always concluded with a kiss . . . a hug . . . a meaningful stare.
On the day before he died, I began letting him go in a ceremony for myself where I regrounded thickly with Earth and Sky. On that afternoon, I retrieved the energetic cords binding me to the layers of his body and chakras. I feel those cords now, writhing like octopus arms, searching for a hand hold on something or somebody else. Each time I sense the grasping, I wrap my arms around myself and hold on tight to this person I think I am at this time.
I know I am not broken, only overwhelmed with an indescribable sadness for the loss of this man who shared his life with me and the daily opportunities we gave each other to do just that.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
And Watching
What to say? Nothing bubbles from the well of numbness beginning to creep beneath my skin. My face feels dead, a mask with dark circles and sagging cheeks unable to lift into a smile unless a special moment occurs to warm my heart.
He is being brave and cracking jokes about his situation. Then he quiets, and we stare at each other. That's when I try to memorize the way the lines crinkle at the edges of his eyes, and how his mustached upper lip pulls back across his teeth, and notice his eyes glint with a shade of his old, merry twinkle.
To watch him struggle to breathe breaks my heart. To see his strong frame shrivel from lack of food that won't pass the pressure-filled sac around his heart makes me want to scream at this cancer, “Leave him alone. Let him die with a robust body.” But cancer doesn't work that way, and neither does death.
Dying in the prime of life happens by accident or design. For too many of us, we have to have our skin and muscles wither until they turn to dust or ash.
My only consolation with this anguish is that when he stops breathing, I will probably say, “Thank God.”
He is being brave and cracking jokes about his situation. Then he quiets, and we stare at each other. That's when I try to memorize the way the lines crinkle at the edges of his eyes, and how his mustached upper lip pulls back across his teeth, and notice his eyes glint with a shade of his old, merry twinkle.
To watch him struggle to breathe breaks my heart. To see his strong frame shrivel from lack of food that won't pass the pressure-filled sac around his heart makes me want to scream at this cancer, “Leave him alone. Let him die with a robust body.” But cancer doesn't work that way, and neither does death.
Dying in the prime of life happens by accident or design. For too many of us, we have to have our skin and muscles wither until they turn to dust or ash.
My only consolation with this anguish is that when he stops breathing, I will probably say, “Thank God.”
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Waiting
Feels like I'm sitting on a powder keg, watching a lit fuse slowly burn closer and close to my perch. I'm not tethered to the keg, more like immobilized. There is nowhere to go, no way to escape.
Anxiety builds in my chest, making it tight. I frighten myself with feelings of left chest pain, tendrils of dull to sharp aches moving up and down my arm. Then I take my Chinese anti-anxiety pills or my Rescue Remedy and settle again, trying to ignore the flame moving closer to explode the reality of what has been my life as a wife.
Looking at whatever is around me helps. Daytime helps, unless I become overwhelmed with my need to control. I pester my husband, “How do you feel? Do you need oxygen? Or Morphine? Or what do you think we will need to do toward the end? Or what do you want to eat? Or how do you think you are going to feel when the accumulation of fluid around your heart squeezes it to death?”
He looks at me, shaking his head, and a grin spreads underneath his beard. “I don't know. I've never done this before.” We laugh. I settle again.
Nights are hardest because the darkness makes my worries more apparent. I startled awake one night and heard no breathing next to me. Patting his warm back reassured me, but I wanted to know his pulse so I scooted out of my side of the bed to his and searched for his wrist. His deep voice resonated from the pillows, “I'm breathing. Go back to sleep.”
So I returned to my side of the bed and counted his respirations as if they were sheep jumping a fence and finally drifted away, for a time, from the shortening fuse of his life.
Anxiety builds in my chest, making it tight. I frighten myself with feelings of left chest pain, tendrils of dull to sharp aches moving up and down my arm. Then I take my Chinese anti-anxiety pills or my Rescue Remedy and settle again, trying to ignore the flame moving closer to explode the reality of what has been my life as a wife.
Looking at whatever is around me helps. Daytime helps, unless I become overwhelmed with my need to control. I pester my husband, “How do you feel? Do you need oxygen? Or Morphine? Or what do you think we will need to do toward the end? Or what do you want to eat? Or how do you think you are going to feel when the accumulation of fluid around your heart squeezes it to death?”
He looks at me, shaking his head, and a grin spreads underneath his beard. “I don't know. I've never done this before.” We laugh. I settle again.
Nights are hardest because the darkness makes my worries more apparent. I startled awake one night and heard no breathing next to me. Patting his warm back reassured me, but I wanted to know his pulse so I scooted out of my side of the bed to his and searched for his wrist. His deep voice resonated from the pillows, “I'm breathing. Go back to sleep.”
So I returned to my side of the bed and counted his respirations as if they were sheep jumping a fence and finally drifted away, for a time, from the shortening fuse of his life.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
A Metaphor
The idea of death being an ugly, scaly, fire-breathing dragon challenges me to fabricate a shining sword and take on the conquest to try to eradicate this demon from our lives. Staking out a protective bubble around my husband, I thrust and parry until I'm breathless and fatigued.
It is not my fight.
Even when my husband describes his vision of the next experience as 'his next adventure', I want to help by using my sturdy implement to slash the energetic filaments connecting him to this world in an attempt to make his transition quicker and easier.
It is not for me to untie the knots binding him to this life. I can only release my ties to him.
My imaginary sword seems useless until I secure it, warrior-style, in a scabbard along my spine. There my steely blade strengthens my being so I can walk beside him until we part, and I have to go on alone.
It is not my fight.
Even when my husband describes his vision of the next experience as 'his next adventure', I want to help by using my sturdy implement to slash the energetic filaments connecting him to this world in an attempt to make his transition quicker and easier.
It is not for me to untie the knots binding him to this life. I can only release my ties to him.
My imaginary sword seems useless until I secure it, warrior-style, in a scabbard along my spine. There my steely blade strengthens my being so I can walk beside him until we part, and I have to go on alone.
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