Some years ago I was standing with my brother Bill and my father at my mother’s bedside as she lay dying in a hospital room. We watched the numbers on her pulse monitor going down, down, down in the last few moments—finally reaching zero.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” my 89-year-old father said.
At the time I thought his remark odd, even inappropriate. His wife—my mother—was dying in front of us. It was incredible to me that it could be happening. I cried loudly and inconsolably.
But my father was simply reporting his experience. Watching the woman he loved travel the path from being alive one moment to dead the next, was indeed something he’d never seen before.
It must have made him feel strange—odd—not quite himself.
At least, this is what I imagine now that I have had more experience, more intimate knowledge myself in this realm.
When Adrian was dying, and I knew he was dying, having helped to start the process by which he could take Oxycontin and morphine under the guidance of Hospicare—I felt odd and not quite myself.
It was as if I were a survivor on a deserted island, or in a large fish tank, watching life happen through water and glass.
I went through the motions. I followed procedures and patterns.
But I was utterly alone in a strange place.
Adrian died at home. After the Hospicare nurse cleaned him and dressed him in fresh clothes—his favorite jeans and t-shirt—I spent some time alone with him.
I hugged his body—it was still Adrian!
No, he wasn’t in his body any more, but the body helped me to conjure the man. I found comfort in holding on.
The numbness—or whatever it was—lasted until about two weeks after Adrian died. And then I began to mourn.
Did family members who came to the funeral and memorial service think it odd that I wasn’t really there?
Or didn’t they notice?
Adrian in 2005 in my art studio as it was being built.
