Deathbed confession

and other awkward conversations

Dear Reader:

A year ago this month, I accepted a job as a fundraiser for a hospice. Hospice is a collection of services—medical, spiritual, social, practical—that help dying people and their families near the end, at the end, and beyond the end of a person’s life. (By the way, sometimes people get better, or stop declining, and then they are taken off hospice services. I say this because it’s a real relief to families to know that signing onto services doesn’t necessarily mean their loved one is definitely going to die very soon.)

Sometimes we think of dying as a train we board.

And so the idea of getting off of hospice services is like being able to disembark the death train and watch it roar off without you. Phew!

Hospice is also a service for super old people who are not necessarily sick with a known illness but just declining and dying. Turns out that it is incredibly helpful to be visited and cared for by nurses and aids who are intimately familiar with death and dying. They’ve seen it and know how it goes but also that each person’s death is as unique as a snowflake (I’ve always been skeptical of that factoid but don’t have the time to study a million snowflakes under a microscope).

One of the nurses where I work told me: “No two people’s deaths are identical. It’s amazing.”

But the deaths I’ve been close to do have some similarities, namely days of you lying on your back with your mouth wide open, labored breathing, and your face flitting between every conceivable expression—surprise, fear, delight, wry deprecation, skepticism, amusement, scorn, sadness, awe. It reminds me of when my daughter was a baby sleeping and her face would go through every conceivable expression, before she was old enough to ever have experienced wryness, delight, or scorn. It made me realize that maybe the feelings are hardwired into us.

These nurses and aids that I work with are not afraid, not overwhelmed with grief, not embarrassed, and also not avoidant. They look you in the eye and touch your hand, if you like your hand touched, and smile at you and ask about your breathing, your oxygen hunger, your bed sore, your sleeping. And if you have a hankering for a caramel sundae with whipped cream, they will bring it to you happily, or encourage your wife to get caramel sauce next time she goes to the grocery. Hospice nurses can crack jokes that are good. Mostly, they want you to be comfortable, whatever that means to you.

Once, on my weekly two-hour volunteer shift, I sat with a patient as he ate his dinner of pork chop and mashed potatoes.

He didn’t necessarily want me sitting in his room watching him eat, but I was in for a penny, in for a pound. It seemed too awkward for me to leave mid-meal, once I had settled myself into the chair and chirped, “I’ll keep you company!” But we had nothing to say to each other. I didn’t get the feeling that my presence was a comfort. His hand shook so violently that small pieces of pork chop flew off his fork and into his lap. I picked the pieces up and put them on his tray. I fussed with his drink, to get it closer to him. After he choked a bit, I cut the pieces of pork chop even smaller, but I imagined that the energy I felt emanating from him was impatience. I asked him what his favorite kind of music was and he said “rock.”

“Like classic rock?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said as his wobbly hand tried to bring his fork into contact with another piece of meat. He liked rock music. Useless information for him to have to relay.

A home health aid walked into the room and asked how we were doing. I said, “I’m just torturing Ron,” (not his real name), and for the first time since I’d entered his room, Ron’s face lit up with amusement at the truth of my statement.

Later, the aid told me: “He likes it best when I tease him or crack a joke. I’ll say, ‘I’m going to hit you with this pillow!’ and he loves it.”

“But I can’t think of any jokes when I’m with him,” I said. “What even IS a joke?”

With some people, you have a natural connection, an ease.

Those are the people that you might end up forgetting are dying. (“I don’t even think of you as black.”) There was one patient that I loved deeply and he loved me. We almost never spoke. I would just sit at his side and hold his hand and we would smile into each other’s eyes. I am positive that I brought him joy. He brought me joy.

There was another patient who didn’t seem sick to me at all. She was so chipper and vivacious and chatty. Some people are like that almost to the very end. And then they die and you look back at your last interaction with them and think, “I was not treating that seriously enough, like it was maybe the last time our two souls would meet in this life!”

The way I find out that a patient I’ve gotten to know has died is either by walking past their room and noticing the bed is empty and a single flower has been placed on the pillow, or I’ll tentatively ask the aid, “How’s Ron?” and she’ll say, “Oh, he died on Wednesday.” And my heart will sink or race and I’ll go to his room to stand in the emptiness and feel his absence, or his presence sometimes, depending. You go into an empty room to weigh the loss.

One of my nurse friends told me that sometimes, a loss will hit you only years later. You’ll be folding laundry or taking a walk or driving your car and suddenly the full force of grief at the loss of some patient you haven’t thought of in a long time will squeeze your heart.

It’s a worthwhile job, to raise money for a local nonprofit hospice.

But my taking the job has coincided with a precipitous decline in my output of funny cartoons and sparkling essays. I feel like my job used to be to be myself, think about things, compose essays and letters, report on the glory of life and nature, make sense of the past, be a mom, be a wife, be a person. That’s the artist’s life. Be totally human, be only yourself. And now my job is to ask people for money to help pay for hospital beds and nurses’ salaries and window repair and endowment.

The obvious challenge: to simultaneously have a job working for someone else AND still be yourself. Right? Or at least, still write or make art or music, etc.

My friend Lizzie always says (in the context of public speaking), no one came to hear your insecurities or problems! They came to hear your brilliance, your insight, whatever. They came to sit in their seats and have you conduct the train competently.

There really is no getting off the train, actually. The train of death is the train of life.

Oh, speaking of which! I read the BEST novel this past weekend: They’re Going to Love You, by Meg Howrey. It’s an amazing book.

OK, write to me and I’ll write you back! EmilyWritesBack@gmail.com. Or write to me anonymously HERE.

Love,

Emily

Coming Next …

The best cartoon boobs in the business, baby cats in space, what 8 cups of coffee can make possible, soap-making vs. soap buying, sustainability “pulses,” and your letters and my replies!