Another Week: Number 56

Since Amy’s hospital bed arrived, my nightly routine was to flatten our Coddle couch, add my foam mat, slide it next to her bed, and adjust her bed’s height to match mine. Lying right next to her there in my sleeping bag as the wind blew outside and the house creaked in subzero temperatures, it was like camping in western Wisconsin, or the South Dakota Badlands, or Rocky Mountain National Park when we were young adventurers. It was like the thousands of nights in our bed taking stock of the day that just ended and considering the one to come.

Despite all the enjoyments cancer had taken from us. we still had this.

On Monday, Amy’s hospice nurse drained another liter of fluid from her abdomen and detected a faint burble in her breathing. She opened the sealed box that was only to be opened under the direction of a hospice nurse and walked me through its contents, such as a liquid morphine dropper.

Amy’s sisters Donna and Kim visited on Monday afternoon, sitting on either side of her. In the evening, she pushed back her covers, looked at her body, and whispered, ”I’m physically trapped.”

Yep.

Overnight, at about one-thirty, she clutched my hand tightly. It was not from pain. She was requesting my attention: This was the beginning of a communication.

For the next forty minutes or so, we explored each other’s hands with the kind of subtle and tender intensity we did when we first fell in love forty-two years ago. All of her womanhood flowed like an electric current as she traced and gripped my individual fingers, tapped my palm, and mirrored my fingertips.

She was reminding me. She was reassuring me. I will never forget it.

At five-thirty, I got up, quietly removed my bedding, and went upstairs. I didn’t know what the day would bring, but stress seemed likely, so I wanted to clean up. I shaved, watching Amy breathe on my phone, then showered and dressed. Back downstairs, I thought it might be smart to eat something for a change. We had some leftover rice and some eggs so I started cooking.

Suddenly I heard Amy in the living room, strenuously trying to clear her throat. I ran in, raised the blinds on one of the windows to see her in the dim light of dawn, and grabbed a paper towel for her mouth while raising the head of her hospital bed with the remote.

She looked at me, looked toward the window …

And then everything stopped, frozen as if some pause button had been pressed.

Complete silence.

Amy had an expression of soft surprise. The clock read 6:50.

When I tried to listen to her chest, my own heart pounding made it difficult.

But she wasn’t breathing at all. This was it. I touched her arm and kissed her cheek. She was as warm as ever.

I paced for a few minutes and then, as instructed, I called Hospice Alliance, and a night nurse was dispatched from Paddock Lake. She made the official declaration at eight o’clock. My sister Karen arrived, and Amy’s regular hospice nurse arrived. The nurses set up at our kitchen table, making calls and filing forms while Karen and I sat in the living room with Amy — the three of us again, just like forty-two summers ago with carryout fish dinners at my mom’s house.

I started putting together Amy’s obituary. The coroner came for some quick formalities. The cremation service came and I helped Amy down our front steps one last time.

Her sisters Donna and Karen came and we cried. My sister Karen ran for Chipotle. I signed and scanned forms and emailed them back.

School let out. The sun set. A guy came to scan and remove all the hospice equipment, and I signed his phone screen.

Now I roam the house alone, doing chores, and it’s similar to when Amy was at work, or in North Carolina with her family, or up north visiting Donna — except that various friends and relatives regularly call or text to check on me, and my chores include throwing away Amy’s toothbrushes and running her prescription drugs down to the police station.

I canceled Netflix because what am I going to do, watch movies without her?

On Friday, my sister Karen, who is grieving hard herself, sent me a TED Talk by Nora McInerny, who lost a husband to cancer. It’s a good lecture. One line jumped out at me:

Love is not a contest or a reality show — it’s so quiet, it’s this invisible thread of calm that connects the two of us even when everything is chaos, when things are falling apart, even when he’s gone.

She was reminding me.