Who Watches In The Dark

Detail from the house my great-great grandfather built for his new bride. Copyright 2008, The OtterThree in the morning comes too soon these days.

I think I must be feeling my age.

We heard from M.D. Anderson today.  They've had a chance to review all the pathology reports and slides and mom's mountain of data.

They have nothing to add.

Technically, Stage Four Adenocarcinoma.  Colon cancer.  More or less what got my grandmother as well.

Mom went four months without a diagnosis, and eating very little, and she's very frail now, too frail to do the brutal round of chemotherapy that I know the doctors would like to put her on, if the goal were to save her life.

A certain delicacy though forbids anybody to say what everybody is thinking: they are trying hard not to ask, "Has she had a good life?  Can you all let go?"  We are all trying hard not to say either, "Yes, she's had a fantastic life, or given us one" or "No, think again, come up with something, one of those magic therapies that Time is always crowing about."

It would be a relief to the doctors, I think, to have us say, "It's not worth fighting, not when she's this weak."  It would be a relief to us if they said, "Hey, let's try this magic pill that Johns Hopkins has been playing with."

But none of that ever gets said.  It's all been weighed.  As a family, we've made up our minds how to approach this: and that's tucked in a place of very deep privacy.

We watch our own decline, and we dimly have the sense that we have been in the other person's shoes, where you nod and purse your lips and have nothing useful to say, and feel deeply but are shut out.

But there's no way to carve a door into this grief.  Grief's made up of moments, strung together on a fine thread, hung around our necks so we can feel a thousand moments, see a hundred expressions, and remember a million small instants that made mom who she is to us, things we cannot really invite another to share, except through telling stories. 

We're watching a fine thing in decay, and each, in our own way and in the unusual temper of our own minds, trying to find out what remains when all the heart is sifted and the flesh washed away.

Things decay.  Things change.

But the truth that hides in the daytime comes out now when the cat and I are the only two awake, and she's busy keeping vigil over the dark.

Condemned men wait for the footsteps of the executioner, it's said, and there is nothing else they can hear or feel but fear.

But I think that mom fears the pain only a little.

What she sees around her, what she remarks upon, is the way that the house is full of flowers, the refrigerator full of food, the conversation full of love.The family cemetery in the Georgia woods. Copyright 2008, The Otter.

You live (and you die) in the world you create.

I've been a little short at times with people calling constantly, ringing the bell.  I like quiet, and I am conscious of how I like my privacy too much, because love grows in the common spaces where each joins his voice to the other. 

But I think for mom, it's been much more satisfying to feel that love keeps putting one foot in front of the other, that we live in the world that she helped to shape in her church and the neighborhood.  Her own hours of service have come home to her.

As my eyes get heavier and heavier and I start to wonder how to close this post, I realize the enormous difference between waiting for death's bureaucratic footfall when you are alone, when you have pushed away the world, certain of your own autonomy, and waiting with other children of this universe gathered outside the door, determined to walk every step with you, and to sit watching over the dark as your eyes close in sleep.The house, once a show-place, is now falling to pieces. Copyright 2008, The Otter.

Comments

[Ignatius]

Otter,

You've got such a way with words. I was transported back to the day my dad and I were struggling to get him up and out to his chemo treatment. We probably shouldn't have bothered with chemo, but when we had met with the oncologist, no one had been able to force the conversation from "what can we try?" to "what should we try?"

The realization that the decision to call off that struggle to get dressed and into the car meant raising the white flag for good left my head spinning. He was too tired, too far gone, but how could I be the one to make that decision? Calling the doctor's office to cancel was hard, but nothing compared to calling my sisters, hoping that they would understand.

IJR

[Otter]

IJR: thanks for this. As I read your comments it occurred to me that we just forget so easily that staying alive is a valiant, but ultimately futle, thing. Facing the death of someone you really believe in takes both courage and humility. At least doing it well. Kind of disheartening to me that the recent healthcare debates had no significant component on what dying well means: and without that, how can you know when to give in and die?

It seems you faced that question pretty damned well.