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These are the things that are never discussed; not in public, not
between ourselves.
We do not speak of how the wasting now lets us see the curvature
of the metacarpals in your hands, how I can see the fine variations and
concaves of your skull through your paper-thin skin.
We never talk about the fact we can see your heart beating through
your frail chest or your pulse quickening through the veins in your wrists.
We never mention the intrusion of noise the bed makes as it
repeatedly adjusts the pressure in the air mattress under your body—the last
resort against the breakdown of the integrity of your skin—a never-won war.
We do not how to respond as your breath slows, drags, trips, stops
and then lunges painfully forward again. When your breath stops, ours does as
well—waiting to see if your body will involuntarily jerk itself back into the rhythm
of breathing, this time.
At some point, it just won’t. I asked the nurse.
I sit here and think of blood and piss and shit and drool. I think
of watching another sleep and of trying to guess what a non-verbal person needs
or wants. How mothers bouncing cranky infants at playgroup or story time will
compare battle wounds and horror stories, but when it comes to the end of life
(and not the beginnings of it) we are silent.
Deathly silent.
These end-of-life truths, so similar to the care we each require in
our infancy, they are things of which we do not want to speak. We’ll tell
everyone about birth plans and spit up and blowouts and the overwhelming
emotions of the major life-changing event of birth, but the facts of death go
unmentioned.
