Geese

We did several surgeries, changed and went to the memorial service for a 19 month old child of one of our surgeons. Our office manager arranged a shuttle. The surgeons on duty split their day. I have been to more funerals than I can count, but this was heavier. Infinitely more massive. I guess about 500 people attended, cried quietly, did what they could, which was not much. Piano player as the crowd straggled in, fine, until one song, and the tears became choked and smothered sobs. Only after did I completely figure out what it was, the one song as a child that irresistibly forced tears. Baby of Mine from Dumbo. Obviously, I was not the only one who reacted so.

The surgeon, well, I've heard the term gutted before, but I've never seen it until today. Grey and gaunt, if his guts had been yanked out of him, tripping him as he walked, it would not have seemed worse. When his mother, speaking German, bid her granddaughter adieu at the grave, I had to restrain myself from running to her, to hold her close. I held myself in, this is not my grief, I only carry a slight weight of it for an hour. Not enough to notice, but a gesture, only.

Waves of grief, echoed around, gaping empty loss, not just this one, but all our griefs. I wore Aunt Evelyn's kilt, and although this added to my tears - it also comforted me. The minister at one point asked us what song was sung by those we had lost. It took me a while, and he had not meant it so literally, but it came to me. Aunt Evelyn sang:

Hail, hail, the gang's all here!/What the heck do we care?/We don't wear no underwear! (Around my mother, I had to use the expurgated "We don't need no car fare") / Hail, hail, the gang's all here/ What the heck do we care, now?

Then we went back to work, and finished the day. My head and eyes are swollen, eroded. Brain exhausted of thought, drained of emotion. A furry black sponge sits beside me, a comfort, a joy.

When I spoke to my mother yesterday, she told me how she's tried to ease my SIL's anger at me for my decade out of contact, explaining it as a defense of my husband. My mother seems to see my father's abuse as me "not getting along" with him. (Apparently, it was my job - as the child, to create the relationship, and he, as the adult, was not.) My SIL believes in family above all - and never saw my father's malevolence. My mother also spoke of having more money now than she ever expected to have, I believe from various life insurance policies my father set up. Good for her, he did work hard and saved money - one of his good points - no question. Especially given that we lived on the edge of the poverty line. But then she makes a point of telling me she's done her will, which divides what is left among the three of us. My stomach sinks, I won't be bought. My love has no price.


D helps me work through this. Because of him, I have the courage to drop my end of the rope, and wait to see. (After all, in the ten years that she may well live, it will be all gone anyway.) That kind of non-action slowly rolled my brain around through the night, and kept me from sleep for many long hours. Part of me wants to make a statement, refuse any inheritance. On the other hand, the Army paid me $300 a month in separation pay from the (not then yet) ex for six months, something for the years of hell. I want to tell my eldest brother, the executor, to leave me out of this, I won't take a penny. And I may not, in the end. If there is anything after all, which seems unlikely as ever.

I don't know what will happen, and I'm not yet content with that. Time enough to defer, and ignore. To bide.

As we approached the gravesite, three Canadian geese honked overhead. I imagine a little girl would have been delighted. I will remember the geese. Much loved child, she lived a perfect life, never been lonely, never been lied to, never had to shuffle in fear, nothing denied to. The suffering is to those left.

Loss

One of our well respected, and well liked surgeons, lost his young daughter to a fluke virus over the weekend. The people who have children seem to be taking it much harder, as one would expect. I sense the enormity of it, knowing no words are of any use at all. Grief overwhelms, the loss engulfs even the peripheral observers. It's not my grief, but my tears swell in sympathy. Every death elicits tears from me, always has. Not exactly for those gone, absolutely for those left to mourn.

All of my experience has been with death in adults, I know what to say when someone has lost a grandparent, or even a spouse. But a young child, there is no comfort, no solace. I think about granny, born herself in 1890, who bore ten children, with only six reaching adulthood. A single child dead, the twins dead, all in their first year. Another died within a week. Then the oldest, a son, drowned at 16. She was expected to get over it and get on with it. I don't know if that's good, or helpful, or cruel. Certainly her fervent religious beliefs provided her reasons and consolations. If I'd been her, and believed in a god that had taken those children, I'd've taken it personally, and as proof this was no god worth the trouble.

But to even consider the function of justice in the death of children seems to me a gross affront to how life works. There is no injustice in viruses, or bacteria, causing death. Fairness doesn't enter into it. Goodness is a poor weapon against septic shock, even with proper medical care. No one past the age of twenty should ever whine "but it's not fair!" No, it's not, so? Crying over rain when I wanted to play outdoors didn't get me anything but a red nose and a headache. A high school friend of mine got in touch a number of years back. After a while she told me about her young son, who died because of a car accident, her fault, and he was not in a seatbelt. No tidy moral will make a damn bit of difference there, won't revive the dead or assuage the remorse. No murdered child lives again once the killer is caught, or executed. Any more than 90 years wasted gets another shot at it. One lifetime, that's it, a day or a century, same thing.

We want to see causes, cures, solutions. There are none here. There is only the love we keep alive, the life we continue with - once the worst of the shock passes. Only the laughter will break up the thick concrete grief that will never be gone, only cracked and covered with leaves.

Convolution

All day yesterday, I shook, blurred, struggled to keep my focus. Less today, but as though I teetered on the edge of an anxiety attack. Spoke to my supervisor, who surprizingly has also had the experience of the loss of a bad parent, and unexpectedly encouraged me to take some time.

I got an email from my Massachusetts cousin in the afternoon, my original kith had not contacted her. This shoved me further off balance, and I took supervisor up on the day off this week, Thursday. Because it is slow and I might be called off anyway, so I won't have to explain to anyone else what I can hardly explain to myself. M. the secretary will code it as funeral leave, and I trust her to keep this in confidence.

It's all a bit convoluted, that the people I'm estranged from ignored me. But it has to do with their professed value for family, no matter what, unconditional love (so they said), and adherence to form. I expected, though I no longer know why, that they would contact me - at least. That I would be offered a choice. Foolish of me, to think better of them. They knew our cousin could contact me. With my real name, and especially with D's first name, I'm actually quite findable online. Instead, silence. I'm not saying I don't deserve silence from them, only that I hadn't anticipated it.

Funny, how common this experience, that is so rarely mentioned. How to deal with the death of a disliked parent? How to grieve when what you feel isn't sadness, or loss? But you all wrote so eloquently in yesterday's comments. I could say no better, not with my mind hamster-wheeling around, squeaking all the way.

To feel one is alone, bereft of close kin, is one thing. To know one is disliked by the figures of one's childhood, to know one is adrift afar from those who first professed love, and insisted on one's love in return, is quite another.

I still have no idea what to do. I feel this intense need to do something, but no idea what. Some ritual, some rage against the petty horrors of a useless connection, some act of will amidst the avalanche. But nothing suggests itself, and words fail.


Let the dead bury the dead.

End

Apparently, my father died two weeks ago. Searching online for exactly this sort of information, I came across his death notice. I feel no joy nor grief, no anger nor even relief. A huge wave of something broke over me, as though I'd bashed my head very hard, and am left stunned and shaken, but without pain. Jostled and odd.

I thought, "Well, 42 years of wishing finally worked." But I don't feel that way. I do not know what all this is that overwhelms me, leaving my hands trembling.

The next choice is if I should even bother to contact the remaining genetic kin, who made no effective effort to contact me. Cleaner, simpler, if we just all keep it polite and distant. I let my dear cousin in Massachusetts know. She may not even have been told. I expect not. I did sign the online guestbook, offered my condolences on their loss, and left my email. So they know, if they chose to look, no excuses later. The door is unlocked, that is all.

Please, do not offer me condolences. That would be completely inappropriate.

He was 88. He was a soul in torment all his life, that he blamed and spread that misery does not negate his own suffering. I sincerely hope there is nothing after death, no hell, no heaven, just a recycling into the eternity. He is, for my part, now utterly and unconditionally forgiven.

Cemetery

We took a walk in a green and quiet place today.

Give them an

... as they say.

This one had so much going on, it felt a bit of a mess. Designed by committee. Worse, a family committee.


We were amazed at the number of masonic markers. Lots of familiar names, which may or may not be related to the still living with the same ones, or the various buildings around the University.


And, well, I would never trivialize anyone's grief. But they seem to have done it themselves with this kitsch hollywood treatment. Which makes it seem even more sad. I think real art might have been more of a comfort, if anything could be.


The deer live here, wary of us, but content to let us wander.


Let me decompose as cheaply and cleanly as possible. Let me mulch a garden for deer.

Bucket

"Do you know what I miss about Easter observances, growing up Catholic?"
"No, what do you miss?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all."

I think the chocolate bunny, malted milk egg candies, were all just rewards for enduring Holy Week. And it is grueling, done properly. Every day in church, Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, hard benches, pews, endless services, some at school - since I went to catholic school as well. I felt the words, the dogmatism of the words that choked me. Couldn't shut off my ears. I did not feel good about this, as saints were the epitome of being a good child, and they all loved the mass. At least in their stories. I found mass to be a trial, a misery. It was a lesson in self discipline, patience, and critical listening - worthy skills. I got that out of it not because that was the point, but because I pulled that out of the experience.

My mother put me in pastels, which I detested at the best of times, and the shoes always hurt. The hats were good, though. I've always liked hats. Often, in Detroit, Easter was not warm, and frilly clothes were inadequate for a raw, even snowy, day.

Oddly, or maybe not so much, Holy Saturday, a day of mourning, of death, of defeat, even with it's long service with the litany of the saints, call and response service - not a mass - sit, stand, kneel, sit, repeat, wasn't so bad. I respected the acknowledgment of death. Just as the vigil service, lighting the new fire, candles, ancient hymns (especially after I was in the choir) resonated, even though it all went on way too long. I got it when my childhood religion dealt head on with death and loss, Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, though I was not comforted with the idea of resurrection. I preferred the idea of reincarnation, and eventually came to like the idea of Nirvana. Although I now, I'm good with dead is dead, and now is life - better live well.

I never bought the idea of one person, one man, even if he was God's son, having to get tortured and killed, as a way to save souls from hell. What about all those who came before? All the other religions with different ideas about what happens after death? It was all so far fetched, so much had to be taken on a faith I never had. Once I started hearing other myths, it seemed obvious the christian story was one more.

The reward for a life well lived, is a well lived life. To want more is greedy and ungracious.

But, have a chocolate bunny, and eat the ears first.



Why contort oneself to drink out of the bucket? Why not?

Shard

Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin'. Everything is broken.

My pottery whittled down by time. But I am not about to stop using it, since that would kill it immediately, rather than allowing it life until it's time to go.

This one slipped from my fingers, I shouted NO but it hit the tile floor to break and shatter. And I sobbed in grief for a few minutes, mostly because I can never throw another one. I took some comfort in knowing I had made it well, nice even bottom and sides. It's held a lot of salsa over the years. A favorite of D's. It will be missed.

I'll throw the shards away tomorrow.

Nodes

Lymph nodes are swollen.
Winter settles in, deeply.
Distress works outward.

Been overwhelmingly fatigued, with body aches. At least my airways are reasonably clear. Guilt, as work is pitifully understaffed. I allow the stress to accrete, dust gone greasy and hairy, resistant to half measures and good intentions. Damn old back is objecting, and must be coddled. I let my healing have what it needs.

More moments:

When mom started to tell me, and dad butted in to say "Walt is dead." Her beloved brother, my adored uncle, his perceived rival. My first real grief.

The first time I yelled back effectively at him, and the amazement as it (temporarily) worked.

Every time I was hired.

Telling my mom I was divorcing, and she offered sympathy instead of objection.

Seeing the ex at the student union, in the moment I was already changing direction, in a flash seeing his eyes darken. Glad, I used the moment as though it had been intentional.

Sitting at a table at South Station, no one to meet us, no place to stay, and after a few frantic tears, we discuss possibilities, and know we can cope no matter what.

Seeing my cousins walking toward us, familiar, friendly faces, as promised, to lug us and our baggage away to their home.

Seeing a photo of "Midnight" on the Boston Rescue League website, and knowing I wanted that cat.

When we both saw him in person, and both fell in love. Moby would take longer to be convinced.


Funny, how those moments so often come in pairs?

What are your moments, when your universe changes?

Stroh's

Once, long ago, in fictional dystopia called The Narrows, I struggled up out of the mud of dark and dull urbanity. Neither Princess nor street Urchin, neither destitute nor middle class, I had neither the advantage of money, nor the charity of poverty. I ate sufficient, mediocre, malnourishing food, and had a creaking but not leaking roof over my head, and wore cheaply unfashionable clothing. I had a solid education, without sports or music, save for a nun playing a record of meaningful pop music, and expecting us to write profound responses to it. I drank the milk my mother wanted to have had in her childhood. And the City rumbled and belched around me.

But this sovereignty held a secret, since debased, long gone now. There were men toiling to create a beverage of such flavor, such subtle bitter undertow, and gentle magical properties, as to bring penitent tears to the unholy. I had come of age, and was found by an apprentice-master, She Who Taught Me About Stroh's. She thought she was teaching me about Tea, and I certainly love and know much of the properties of Tea. But the secret teaching, the real message inadvertently disclosed was that of the golden liquid, Beer. And not the tawdry, street corner whores of that juice of joy. No, this was meant not for shameful drunkenness and debauchery. This was ambrosia, food for gods. Gods not for the wretched poor, nor for the pretentious nobility - who needed the sweetness of wine, or the potent numbing of usquebaugh. No, for gods who knew neither luxury nor squalor. For the godless in between.

As I sadly foreshadowed, Stroh's is gone now, although the name lives on, a grotesque zombie, a degenerate bastard heir. But its spirit soared, escaped and scattered a thousand seeds to the winds of the universe, to grow in the bramble of arcane laws and unlikely cracks in the sidewalks. And heavenly brew flowed forth, foaming onto the happy and discerning tongues of acolytes of the Brewers Who Really Care.

Amen.

Muppet

I wanted to be a Muppet. A Muppeteer, to be precise. And I think I would have been rather good at it. I always had an old, modified sock on my hand, talking to people, or more often not talking, just looking and reacting. Very expressive, socks could be, on my hand.

Not puppets, but The Muppets. Jim Henson and his gang. Learn how to make the mouth move so it looked more like my hand movements actually talking. Moving felt arms with wires. And normal-feeling interactions with other beasts of extension. I was in love with the Muppet Show. As a fan, certainly, but more, for the technical and creative elements. I say without a trace of humility, I could have excelled with a Muppet on my hand.

Jim Henson's death was, from what I read, a blow to all who knew him. It sent ripples out as far as me, and my ancient dream. Like knowing I would have made the worlds best buggy-whips, it was wistful and hopeless.

Henson's Muppets were aimed at adults, and children could enjoy then. He didn't talk down to children, nor did his furry, feathered mouthpieces. They were decidedly eccentric, and proudly askew. They made sly adult references, like Rocky and Bullwinkle did. After Jim was gone, the respect and affection faded. The twinkle was gone.

I don't like that his son took over Kermit, who is a zombie frog to me now. I don't like how slickly commercial Muppets have become, nor their close association with Disney. The soul of Muppets died with Jim.

I have more friends with young children these days. I wonder where they will get their subtle view into the adult world, without having it shoved in their faces too soon, so blatantly. Or get truth from those who lie by ignoring the brutal realities, covering it all with a thick coating of sugar. They Might Be Giants can't do only children's records. DVDs of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and the old Muppet Show only go so far.

I have hope, though. There is always at least one crazy uncle or dotty aunt, syncopated drummer or off center wobbler to reach the kids with no interest in mediocre conformity and saccharine bubbles.


I just don't want to miss whoever does it right.

Suicide

I can't think of a time in my life when I did not imagine killing myself. As a small child, growing up in a Catholic environment, this was the darkest sin. My small misery was such that I still imagined it, even as I felt deep guilt about it. My teenaged angst was variations on the theme of death and self destruction, even as I lived exactly as was expected- explicitly.

I read mysteries obsessively, both fiction and True Crime and came to the realization that a botched suicide was far worse than any circumstances that were the impetus for escape by that route. I also believe I extrapolated that murder was a more reasonable alternative. Why kill myself when I could kill my tormentor? I began to plot my father's murder. But, as anyone who reads mysteries knows, murderers always get caught. I could never come up with a plan that would not leave me in far more chaotic trouble than before. I also thought it through, to foster care or prison, or to adulthood and escape. Just as I could not figure out a sure way to kill myself, the failed attempt being more damnation than the completion. Outliving current troubles seemed the surest path, so I endured.

In my darkest hours, this is what really saved me, imagining who would have to find me. A child? Stumbling upon my bloodied body, perhaps after a day or so? No. I did not hate anyone enough to leave them to deal with my mess. I delayed the act until I could see it through, leaving as little collateral damage as possible.

I began to fantasize escape, a fantasy that lasted until my late 20s. I would drive off and begin a new life with a new name, lost to those who claimed to care. It became acute when I was training for the National Guard, and full time Army was a real option, and my "marriage" was disintegrating completely. It was also the closest I actually came to a realizable plan.

I was in Kansas, OJT for the Army, alone, fights over the phone becoming exceptionally toxic, and I wanted it all to end. My CO, seeing me at the breaking point, sent me to an Army shrink. I knew that confidentiality in the military isn't even a fiction, and "suicidal ideation" was grounds for commitment. I talked about stress to the doc, and silently formed a plan- which effectively calmed me down considerably. I was going to catch a cab, go to a town pawn shop and buy a gun "for self defense", and late at night on the weekend, go to mid-stairwell in the hospital and shoot myself in the heart. Rationalizing that medical people could most easily deal with a dead body, and it would even be near the morgue. I see some potential flaws now, but it wasn't too bad a plan, all in all.

It was payday, I was on my way to call the cab, I had cash in hand. The hall of the barracks was lined with the full time Army folks, celebrating with lots of beer, and extra beer. I tried to politely get by, but they were having none of it, I was cajoled into a beer and a chat. It was the first time in a while I felt included, felt like laughing. I could always go tomorrow, right? I wound up very drunk, and kissing a very nice guy in the wee hours, and generally enjoying myself. Hell, I figured, might as well wait it out a while longer. So, I did.

It would be a hellish year when I got back, but I would survive it. And escape, and find myself again at the behest of the US Army, in barracks. With yet another nice guy. Who would turn out to be wonderful. My only regret being that my time when I could have stopped trying to live anymore, was over, because he would be so hurt, and have to clean up after me. No. Damn.

The fantasies continued, never ever admitted to in any therapy that I would occasionally turn to when I was in a bad knot. Every night, every morning of nursing school, I imagined myself killing myself, a knife through the throat, IV K+ (painful, but fast and certain), not really wanting to end my life, but to not have to get up the next morning and struggle on and keep going. To sleep. And not to dream.

Suicide was the option in extremis, like putting down an animal. Not so constant a mindset by now, but solace if I were to outlive D for too long. I could sell off or give away everything, and finally lay my burden down.

Then I had this brush with mortality for real. In the following week, I had the chance to talk with a therapist through my new employer's EAP. He asked me at the end, somewhat apologetically, "I have to ask if you have any thoughts of harming yourself."

I laughed, genuine relieved heartfelt laughter, "No, not at all," and I was telling the whole truth. I could not harm myself, even in my dreams, anymore. I had not realized what a trap my "escape hatch" was (had become?) I know, for real, down to the basement, that I love life. No conditions, no matter what, I had finally committed to living.

I'm still having flashbacks. My work in surgery means I am there to assist with intubations and extubations, and that bothers me viscerally as it never did before. When an anesthetized patient gags on the tube, I gag and blink back tears. I am even more emotional than my usual easy-to-cry self.

I am also calmer, more forgiving, happy.

I've stopped killing myself. My death will come in it's own time, not to be feared. But, now is the time for life. While my candle holds out to burn, this humble sinner will live with a whole heart, grateful, troubled, whole.

I breathe.

Hold

My job as a small girl was to hold the hands of elderly relatives and neighbors. It was what I did. Mrs. G lived across the street, and I would visit with her, listen to her stories, talk to her, hold her hand, pick at her wicker porch furniture. Later, when she was just lying in a hospital bed in her house, her sister caring for her, I would hold her hand quietly, fascinated by the pattern of blue veins and the soft fragility of her skin. She died the week I started kindergarten.

Mr. M. was also on my rounds, and he told me of being a railroad engineer, and promised to take me for a ride one day. I listened, holding his large, once powerful hands, and dreamed with him of driving a locomotive, and coupling freight cars.

Mrs R. was my next door Italian grandma. I'm told she was the only person I always smiled for as a baby, her hugs were all encompassing. I can still hear her singing my name, welcoming and embracing. I could spend hours in her company, leaning on her as she read. I think she missed me when I grew older, and busier with my life. I missed the simple joy of disappearing into her bosom.

My Grandmother was bedridden for most of my life, her daughter caring for her roughly, she only got up once a day, and later not even that. Her right ear eventually became deformed from lying only on that side, the bed being pushed against the wall on the other side. She seemed a very tall woman to my small self, even lying so still in bed. She spoke very little English, I spoke no French, I held her hand kindly, but with very little attachment. I wonder what kind of mother she actually had been. My father and his sister and brothers often said she would not live through the winter, through the summer, through the winter. She lived to be 95. She remains a cypher who never got my name right.

My Granny, now she was a pistol. Busy, cantankerous, bright and active right up to the end at 93. Had her cane taken away from her the week before she died because she was hitting people with it. Infuriated and monopolized my Aunt Evelyn, coddled my Aunt G. played favorites and Euchre with equal aplomb. My memory of her is largely her relationships with her children, not with me. She had wonderful hands, of great age.

I hold hands. In the face of overwhelming disaster and global suffering, I reach out to one hand, and sit quietly, observing the texture of the skin, the color, the map of veins. I am a tiny girl, being warned not to make a pest of myself, holding very still.

Death

Death was no kind of taboo subject in my otherwise silent family, and for that I am grateful. Unavoidable, I think, I grew up going to funerals. I attended more than I can count. (In contrast, only went to three weddings before I was 21.) I met my cousins and much of my family attending viewings and rosaries for the Great Aunts and Uncles, then aunts and uncles, then both grandmothers- all by the time I was 24. Funerals I understand. I go in, be respectful, offer comfort, listen, hug, and it is sad, so I cry quite easily amist grief and loss and shock. And when the guest of honor had lived a long life, especially if they had suffered through a long dwindling, then, after the tears (often mixed in with them) the stories would start. Everyone would have some funny remark, a favorite joke, and the tears would ease. We got a bit loud, we laughed and celebrated. Healing and comfort and connection.

Not to say I was comfortable with death. I hated having to pray while staring at that waxy, frightening form in the satin lined casket. I tried to stare at the flowers, the wood, the rosary in the stiff hands, rather than the painted face, especially if I had known the Aunt well. I feared the dead. I obsessed about dying and all manner of gruesome ways of ending up a stiff. Normal for an adolescent, and I was especially morbid. A girl in high school died of leukemia. A neighbor boy and his cousin died in a car crash the night of their graduation- the naked grief of that funeral was breathtaking.

I was terrified of cemeteries, in part because there was one under the turn of the bridge that my father always took way too fast, and I always figured I would die there. Not buried, thrown from the car and killed in the cemetery. Nightmare fodder. My father worked as a custodian at a cemetery from the time I was about 12, after his factory closed and he was glad to have health insurance and an income as an unskilled worker in his mid 50's. I did everything I could not to go with my mother to pick him up. And when I was learning to drive at 17, guess where they thought it would be a great place for me to practice. I hated it.

Death became part of my job, at 33, when I had my shiny new RN license, working in a hospice/rehab floor of a nursing home. About a week in, a CNA called to me as I came on shift. Terrified, unprepared, I walked into that quiet room, alone with my stethoscope. I listened, heard nothing, and called the other nurse in. She found my bother amusing, but backed me up, and helped me make the calls and fill in the paperwork, while others did the hands-on that morning. That would be the first death of many requiring my presence. I came to know that look, the "um...." the tone to my name as the aide notified me of a death, often very much expected, occasionally not. I would wash the dead, talk to families, call the funeral homes. I would watch for the last breath, and hold the hands of the dying. I always cried, not sobbing, just a few minutes of pouring tears, then or later at home.

Weird things happened when people died. A sweetly demented woman who never got up at night, came to the desk at 2am saying two men were in her room wearing black suits. This was highly out of character for her. There was nothing when we went and checked, she calmly went back to sleep. One of our men on the other end died in the midst of this.

Another elderly woman, confused but more or less coherent, had been admitted for pneumonia. Every night she asked us if she was going to die. I always told her I thought she would live a while longer, which seemed to satisfy her. Then one night, after she was much better, and was being evaluated for going home, she told me "I'm going to die tonight." I stopped, and considered my words. "Then we will watch over you." Which also seemed to satisfy her. About midnight, she stopped breathing, her heart stopped. But neither the other nurse nor I were convinced she was dead. We moved her roommate to an empty room, washed her and called her family. They were not surprized, said she had told them earlier and they had said their goodbyes then. We called the mortuary, SOP. And went back to make sure we were right- repeatedly- not usual. She seemed still there, still alive, as though still confused about what she should do next. We went down to listen again through that night, even saying out loud "You are dead, you can go now. " Glad that the particular mortuary, normally so on time, didn't show until 6am. Because by then, the sense that she was still there, was gone.

I watched one woman heal up bedsores in a week. I had cleared her throat, when she turned her head with a startle, stared and took a last, sighing breath in my arms. I was told by a woman dying miserably of esophageal cancer that it (death) was "Not so bad."

I have seen those dying of lung disease keep breathing intermittently for a half hour after their hearts had stopped. Normal impulse to breath is a high CO2 sensor, long term pulmonary disease burns this out, and the secondary impulse- low 02 will continue to function. Nothing like dying to reduce oxygen levels. One such had died during lunch, we closed the door and would take care of her in an hour, but her friends came in, then came to tell us they had just made it, and seen her "Last Breath!" We did not clarify that she had died somewhat earlier than her last agonal breath.

In Surgery, death is far more rare, and more bitterly fought. A 14 year old boy hit by a bus, cleaning the gore from him after the attempts at resuscitation and surgical repair, so that his parents could see him in those poor remains. The old-school nurses wrapping his hands in warm blankets so he would have warm hands, and perhaps not seem so dead to his mother.

A young woman killed in a climbing accident, her organs harvested for others, for a while I'd held her heart. I stayed to wash her, as I had the most experience of any present to do this for her. I cried as I did so.

Another woman, damaged at birth, and losing to an overwhelming infection, whose heart I had shoved into a few more minutes of work. I later sat with her in a surgical education room, until her family could come, they braided her hair.

A elderly woman, seemed to me supremely disinterested in her impending amputation. I figured she had other plans that evening, regardless of what we did. She died in surgery, after an hour of intermittently working resuscitation. Her family insisted we put her leg back on. The surgeon wrapped it in place, all that seemed possible at that point.

A young man, receiving a liver transplant, the surgeon losing self control, the man losing way too much blood, the family insisting on coming into that chaos to see him alive one last time- to all our astonishment. They were eventually brought in, allowed to kiss their son-- intubated, invasive lines, his blood permeating the room, all the noise of the surgeons continuing the useless fight, but we found out later they understood better because they were allowed in.

Death is not a fearful prospect for me. It is too familiar. I do not know what happens, but it is profound, with much the same hot press of a birth. A blessing when the suffering would be far worse. Inevitable, impartial. I have seen those who stare into the face of death, and there is beauty there. I'm told it's not so bad. My own death awaits me, the path where my soul will walk alone.