February 23, 2005
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Do you ever have the feeling that ….It’s like when you can’t remember a word. It’s hovering right beneath my conscious, trying desperately to wriggle free from my subconscious.
I saw a patient today, up on the fifth floor. That always means trouble. If you’re on the fifth floor your cancer has metastasized. And it was a women I have gotten to know. She stops by sometimes on her way to radiation. Plus I saw her after her mastectomy. She was pretty loaded so I didn’t stay too long.
This woman was married last year and her new husband was sitting behind her, on the window ledge, rubbing her back. They had just been told that it had spread to her liver. Normally, if the husband is there I don’t stay long so after a bit I made like I was leaving but she wanted me to stay. The husband looked like he was going to cry but she seemed unusually together. I got the feeling that the sooner I left, the sooner she’d have to deal with his grief, on top of her own.
I’ve never visited anyone on the fifth floor, by myself, but my boss is out of town. Her doctor asked that I go up and see her but for the life of me, I didn’t know what to say. Get this, I said, “You gotta roll with it.” I can’t even believe I said that. It so minimizes where she is at.
All I could remember was that I was supposed to mirror her. And the really strange part about this is that she’s never seemed better. I mean every time, and it’s probably been five times that I’ve hung out with her – Often she is with another woman that I like very much and we shoot the shit out in the hall, me and my boss and them. So you know, we’re all trying to be up and funny. But there’s always this edge to her, like she’s trying too hard.
Today, for the first time she was real. She must have known all along. But the funny thing was she said she was so surprised when she got the news; that she had thought she was fine after the mastectomy. And I’m looking at the husband and he’s a complete wreck. I think he believed that she was fine. Knowing her pathology report, after the mastectomy, I don’t know why he would.
There’s something on my mind about this but I don’t know what. I mean something’s bothering me, beyond the obvious. I just can’t put my finger on it. I used to hit the trail when I’d get like this but that’s not an option. Am I missing something?
Comments (10)
I’m always worried that if I edit it and someone’s in the middle of commenting, it will get eaten. Does that ever happen to you on my site? ‘Cause I have a tendency to fuss with it once I post it. Anyway, I just wanted to say, I got a little glimpse of what this is about and that is that I am on the threshhold of understanding death and that maybe I am to play a part in this woman’s death. And, hey, maybe she will rally. But I think there’s something big going on here.
PS I shouldn’t have said understand. Who, alive, is really going to understand death? I should have said, “know death.” I wonder if I am going to start learning about the process?
I always keep a post private until I have finished editing it.
I think, you staying with her when she needed you was really great. It is really difficult to deal with death. Not that we have any choice. At the moment, for me death is not something to dread (perhaps because I believe there is still time for me). But who knows how I will feel when I am near death.
I don’t know either. When I saw my mother pass–I stayed with her in the hospital room until the very end–I was at a loss for words too. I knew there was something to say, something profound, something meaningful. But all I coul feel was a huge hole in my stomach…
I always wonder why people think there should be something profound as you say….to say to the one dying. Why does it have to be some huge moment celebrated, and thats not the best word, but its what comes to mind. Maybe pomp and circumstance suits the idea better. Why cannot death be simply a blowing of the winds. One moment they are here, the next they are gone yet their memory always on the winds since they really are never ending.
Maybe whats got to you is that she seems ok with it. Perhaps shes settled in the inner turmoil, simple acceptance? They say death is usually more often about those left behind. Hence funerals and wakes and such.
I lost my grandpa at the end of January, he was 91, he told everyone he was ready to die. I spoke to him via phone a weekish or so before he passed. He said he was ready, no fear, calmness of voice and that he wanted me to have a good life. I cried then, I cried a little during the week and I basically came to terms before his passing. The day of I was in tears, but the majority of the pain was gone. He was ok now. He knew it..and I knew it.
Oddly, I don’t think some of my family thought I greieved enough or the correct way, as if there were such a thing.
Anyways, I went on tangent, but I hope this makes sense.
(in Forest Gump, when Bubba gets shot, he asks Forest, “why did this happen?” (or close to it) and Forest replies, “Cause you got shot” and he died.
I think that sums up a lot.
I’m interested to know what kind of job you have that you’re required to do that. I’ve always thought there should be classes in grief support, not just for certain jobs but for all of us. It’s the rare person that knows exactly what to do and say. Bravo to you just for showing up. You might try this book Grace and Grit I’ve been reading though.
I had a dream the other night that I had cancer. I couldn’t get anyone to pick me up from the doctor’s office, and when I finally got home, no one would listen to me because they though I was just being dramatic and crying. When I woke up though, I realized that it wasn’t that they thought i was being too dramatic, it was that they could see that there was something very wrong with me, and if they didn’t have to hear it, it didn’t have to be real.
Sometimes I think the “profound” things we say when someone is ill or dying is similar. We feel the need to say these things so we can make it more real for ourselves. Rarely do these comments inspire or help the person who’s ill, it helps us.
*sare*
People take dying in different ways, I’m told, so it’s really hard to say that one way to talk to a person in hospice or someone bereaved is the right way or the only way. Some people are placid, hopeful about the life to come, some are stoic, resigning themselves to a total death. My grandfather was like a second father to me; I spent ten percent of my life with him. Despite our closeness, I was happy to see him pass on. I didn’t cry at his funeral until my dad started bawling like a baby. My mother says she wants to die quickly. If she gets cancer, she doesn’t want to fight it, because she fears the pain. I don’t know.
And I lose my words a lot. I fear there’s something wrong with that part of my brain – something wrong with my memory. My brain thinks so quickly, but then I forget what it came up with before able to spit it out. Strangeness.
I would have no idea what to say either. But if I were in that position, I doubt I would expect anyone else to know the right thing to say. It’s brave and good of you to face death with these people.
There is an inescapable loneliness to death, at death, that death is, which is, perhaps, what makes it so hard to talk about. That and the grieving for what is left behind, what one has to leave. Thank you, Pru, for sharing this story, you make her very real, our hearts are with her too. xo