lament of stuff

So, I know I am actually due to write part two of "Trampin' " but it is something that demands a long quiet moment and a laptop. Well, my laptop crashed a couple of weeks ago. So I am tied to my roommate's desktop (for which I am so greatful I have the use of), and I just can't seem to really write here. On top of my lack of computer, my bike was stolen Saturday night. Although worth less, I miss my bike more. I was expecting the eventual crash of my computer, but who would take what isn't their's? I am so sad and mad about my bike. Yesterday I went over to Chris' for dinner (which is where it was stolen) and I caught myself looking around for it, as if perhaps it was a lost kitten that just got too far from home and was looking to get back in the fold. If perhaps I just called it sweetly I could have it back.

the man behind the curtain

H's home bothers me so much. He lives with his daughter and his grandson (grandson is probably my age) in an apartment in raleigh, but no-one really lives in that apartment except H. There are still boxes everywhere... long since unpacked, but just empty and cluttering up the space. Opened and unopened envelopes scatter the floor around each place to sit- the chair, the sofa, the computer desk. Its mail half attended to.
The place is just so cluttered and stale. Its not a place to live, or die. And yet he is dying here. And dying alone. His grandson left yesterday to go back to California, so now H lives at home alone all day while his daughter is at work. He is mostly blind and in poor enough health to be on hospice. But, he would rather have it this way than to be in a nursing home. "Absolutly NO nursing home!" He is insistant. Can't say I really blame him at all. I would probably be the same way.

But I hate that its not more of a home. California is actually home for him, and he longs to go back, but he is too sick to travel. I wish he was in a place with a giant recliner and pictures of a life well lived all over the wall. Instead its just cardboard boxes. I broke a lot of them down today and hung his clothes up in the closet. I made his bed and brought him an ice-cold coca cola. And he asked to sit in the shower. When his wife died a few years ago, he said he had the hardest time sleeping. So he would get up in the middle of the night, 2am, and run a bathtub full of water and soak in the tub until morning. "the Sorrow would diffuse out of my skin, into the warm bathwater, and go down the drain" he said, "at least for a little while." "And right now, I am just so sad." he told me.
So we pulled a plastic chair in the shower for him to sit on. (sitting him down into the bathtub is pretty impossible for him right now) and filled warm water up around his ankles and sat with the shower water running over his head, his face, down his back and body. He sat in the shower for almost a full hour (How the water was hot that long I will never know). The water-conscious person in me cringed a bit, (scott harrison would have my head) but the hospice employee won out- "whatever makes him feel better". I sat on the toliet with the seat down as he sat in the shower, and we talked through the shower curtain for an long while about everything.. race, life, love, education, regrets. And then for awhile we both just sat, with the sound of water running, rinsing away the weight of the sorrow. at leaste for a little while.

james

you are 48.
you lay always in bed,
fingers interlaced over your chest,
eyes closed against the pain.
your wife died in december.
you will die too.
soon. june maybe.
your mother cares for your dying body.
socks on your feet.
a cotton gray t-shirt cut up the back.
diapers.
the nurse will change your bandages.
no one else can bare to do it.
infection is winning the prize of your flesh.
your skin is almost perforated along your groin.
one good pull and the skin would peel away from the oozing puss that drains and soaks your bedsheets.
everyone speaks around you in hushed tones.
and to you with words and phrases for a child.
i helped you stand once.
you got out of the bed to get to the toilet.
I was so surprised that you were taller than I.

back to dying

i am surprised at how frequently i forget that i am in the business of dying. that every single one of my patients will die. and usually pretty quickly.

the average patient stays on hospice for 13 days before "expiring". 13 days.

it is some strange draw of straws that most of my patients i get to see for months before they decline and pass away. and it is in the inevitable descent that i remember that i should have been expecting this all along.

so, one of my most favorite patients is now "actively dying". everyone is expecting him to pass some time in the night. his recent rapid decline surprised us all. and i am not sure we, those who do this for a living, were quite ready. i certainly wasn't.

i went to see him today. i usually give the courtesy knock, open the door and find him reclined in his favorite chair, where he bellows out his standard greeting: "who are you?? what are you doing here?? which he then promptly amends: "i'm just kidding! , comehereandgivemeahug. but today he was in bed, unresponsive, and breathing once every 25-30 seconds.
i pulled him up in bed, put him in his favorite blue shirt, and counted breaths and seconds between breaths for an hour. his daughter arrived and i surrendered to her the chair beside his bed. on my way out i kissed his forehead and right against his ear said my standard departure: "okay, my friend, im off. be good, but not too good." and added "i love you, tom." as i felt the looming, approaching loss swell up in my throat. he actually opened his eyes for a moment and brought my hand to his face to kiss the back of it. i suppose that was goodbye.

im sorry that this reads a bit like a lifetime movie. i try to steer away from the mushy stuff... but then again, i forget that am in the business of dying. mush is inevitable. pun intended.

the business of dying

i am sleeping at a man's house that is dying. he used to be a patient of mine. he is days away from death and the family had requested me to come be an experienced body, a stable, gentle body that could help make trips to the bathroom, change sheets, and just generally be there. so i am here. and humbled. i watch quietly from a chair in his bedroom the family trickle in, hug, kiss, whisper, sit, cry, reminisce. i keep asking if i should leave. "do you want a moment alone?" and no one wants me to leave. "no, please stay. in case he needs anything, you are here." i am humbled again as i watch intimate encounters with this gentle man who is dying. i am a fly on the wall, but the invited, wanted fly. how is this happening? when there is no family or friends, i take up the visiting chair, slip my hand into his and just occupy this space with him.
"when did you get here?"
"seven."
"how long will you stay?"
"all night."
"how many nights?"
"however many you need."
he closes his eyes and nods. i am not certain i am who he thinks i am, but in this moment i feel as if i am exactly what he needs, and that, even if it is not at all true, feels amazing.
i am so humbled to be here at this moment, in this place, with these people. how did i get here?