Another Day in Hospice

I wrote this last summer as I was sitting at Hendricks on the Hospice floor once again.


I’m sitting here, again. The year 2007, and the situation is no different. It’s the same smile, the same pain, the same “look.” Cancer doesn’t change shape no matter whom it attaches itself to, it’s there mutating, claiming the life of the one who bears the pain. It’s with a heavy heart, I sit here, again. My mind has the same thought process. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? I’ve looked into the same pair of eyes claiming the want to end the pain. The comfort of “I love you” but…. The pain, the pain is far greater than I could ever fathom. It’s the third time I hear those words. It’s the same tears I’ve cried out of selfishness. Again, another tear. Again, another heavy heart that sits with silence. My heart pours onto this page, but there’s not much to say. There are words that cannot express what dwells deep into my soul. I think the plethora of thoughts exudes beyond the cries of my heart. The thought becomes deep within my soul. I, at this moment, am broken on the inside. What’s the difference? There’s not, it will happen every time death knocks on the door of someone I love. What could I have done different? I wasn’t good enough. I could’ve loved more. You know, those same plaguing thoughts that consume anyone. Then, there’s nothing about the present. I cannot look at the past or future. I have today, to experience, to share in tears and laughter. You know the feeling when your being wants to make a sound that between frustration and disgust. A deep rooted sound that resounds, but stays buried underneath. It’s that calm before the storm. The calm of the scream or the tears will emerge in pain. So many can identify with “this” pain, yet I have to own this one, different from the next, nonetheless a sense of loss and hurt.
No one deserves what I have to see this sickness I see right now. NO ONE! Yet, there is a room full of Hospice people watching the people they love holding on to life, not wanting to face the idea and to hold on to what is real. The voices, the touch, the laughter of family of friends who share about old times, it’s a soothing sound, a sound that would be so hard to want to let go. (There’s that sound again.) Then, the other day this cry out to God demanding the want to die, she has prayed and prayed to end the suffering she has endured (I’ll never forget those words and the agony behind them). “Please God, I’m ready to go.” What is your response? What can you do? Do you affirm that, “ok” and be content that she is right and it’s ok to have this prayer?
Seriously, all that’s left are hugs that will last a life time. (There’s that sound again.) They fade. That hug that fell over my grandma, gone. What did that feel life? The last hug I gave my mom. What? It existed. The idea is there, but the touch. Not only is the loss by not seeing them anymore. What about that touch? The embrace by grandma that is indescribable. You see, one more person and your memory becomes a whirlwind spiraling around and around, hoping the feeling is JUST LIKE you’ve experienced before so the pain will not be different and you can convince yourself that “I’ve been through this” and you take a deep breath and enter right now in a different manner. Nope, or is it?
Who knows. No one welcomes death, especially those who sit and watch a life lose its shape. This time, you don’t have to wonder what’s going through her mind. She has verbalized very clearly what is plaguing her thoughts. The two other times, silence. There’s nothing to be said, it’s too hard. “I don’t want to die.” They had a life they can never replace and the pain they felt. She feels pain, but she’s hoping she can convince herself that death doesn’t scare her. She worries that something will go wrong and no one will be here, to comfort, to give her peace that she’s not alone. She wants to hold on or is it that she just wants the security of someone who loves her, knowing that again, she’s not alone. This is a big thing. A moment in their life where you can’t leave those who are preparing to die alone, a fear of death? No, a fear that they “wake up” and no one is here. Someone SHOULD be here. What reason, every morning she woke up for 62 years, 42 years old they woke up without the thought of someone was there when they awoke. They didn’t have this anxiety if they couldn’t see someone. This time, it’s the act of a little child; it’s the mind of a child who searches from the comfort in the presence of someone else. They go from a strong-willed adult to a plea of childlikeness. Who can blame them? Who can’t blame the need for other people to give them whatever they need, immediately. You don’t have a child who you want to make sure comforts are present. This is it, they are not just born, they are just dying. They are only little for a little while and they are just older for a little while, no one stuck in their “age” for a long period of time. You can only do what you can in their NOW despite the length of time.