Unanswered Questions

The hardest thing is the people that you don’t get a chance to know, the ones who come already at death’s door, who barely make it through the day and succumb to the “dying of the light.” The ones who you take care of for that shift, and you know that you won’t see again. They’re the ones who sneak up on you, the ones who haunt you. Their faces stay, long after their names start to fade from the list in your mind. The list of the dead people you knew and cared for that you carry with you. I think everyone who works there has that list, some longer then others.

Recently, there was a new patient that had been admitted. We were told of his condition during the shift meeting. I always think that I’m used to the dying. I mean, it’s a hospice, they’re here to die. They’re in such agony that death is their only option, their only release. I’ve sat beside patients in the past and asked for their suffering to end. I’ve asked death to come and take them.

I was in the hallway about to get another resident in the shower when I was asked me to help reposition him. It was the first time I had seen him. His family had been in the room with him all morning so I gave them their privacy.

I knew the instant I saw him he wouldn’t last long, the wasted body, the sunken eyes that rolled back, the shallow breathing that seemed such an effort. I know what death looks like now and I knew he didn’t have far to go. I helped turn his body, move his pillows, adjust his bed. I felt his skin, waxy and cold, already dead, and avoided the expectant eyes of his family. They had hope, they thought he seemed better. “Maybe this will pass.” I kept hearing from all the brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, that descended on the house. They wanted him to live, even though he was trapped in that useless body that was already dead. They wanted him to hang on, they weren’t ready to let go yet. Thankfully he was ready. He died shortly after my shift ended.

I may have spent all of 30 minutes with him. I didn’t know him or his family and yet for some strange damn reason he haunted me all night long. It makes no sense, I don’t understand. Why him?

I found out that two other patients had died as well. Them I knew, had taken care of, sat with. They had been at the hospice longer, and yet, their deaths didn’t hover in my eyelids at night. I didn’t see them in my dreams.

Where do you put it? What do you do with all that death at the end of the day? How do you let go so you don’t become consumed by it? A social outcast unable to connect because everything seems so silly, every goddamn thing is so silly and trivial. It pisses me off to even have to entertain the stupidity of it all.

Maybe I’ll just go to the gym………..