I'm not familiar with everything in the medical world, but what I do know, is that hospice is another word for "death bed." I crowded into a 10 by 15 foot skilled care room with two beds in it, along with my mother, father, grandmother, and two of my uncles from Iowa. My grandpa was on the bed, with enough morphine to leave him senseless, but still not enough to dull the pain of breathing. Chronic pneumonia had wrecked his body; his muscles had atrophied to the point that he could no longer shift positions on the bed, let alone leave it. My grandma refused to leave his side, and the rest of my relatives were all standing around, telling stories. "He would have made one hell of a priest," said Uncle John, and I smirked a little at the irony, but no one else noticed. For most of the night, I sat on the adjacent bed reading The Invention of Wings, and by some twisted coincidence, I read about Sarah's father becoming ill.
In that particular passage, Sarah says, "If Father was sleeping, I would stay at the window and watch with a lump in my chest until the white flag came down." (181) The image hit me with a symbolism about as subtle as a slap to the face, and I knew that was exactly what I was doing. A few weeks ago, my grandfather had stopped fighting to stay alive, and my family and were sitting here, helpless but to wait for death to come knocking at the door. I might have felt bad for reading if I had felt like there was anything else that I could do.
When my parents finally told me that I should go home and do normal teenager things, I had an acute awareness that this moment would be my goodbye. I wanted to be at peace with my final words to my grandpa, and thought about everything that I wanted to say. Prepared to speak, I bent down close to the hospital bed, but all that came out was, "We love you grandpa." I corrected myself, stumbling on the words, and said, "I....I love you." I kissed my fingertips and pressed them to his forehead, which was "as thin and sheer as a veil." (181) And then I left. Once I got home, I though about the book, and Sarah's character, because it was easier than thinking about what tomorrow would bring. I was "flayed open, all pulp and redness." (183) In my head, I wondered, Is that how you're supposed to say goodbye to someone? Is it right for me to be here when I know that he's dying? I thought of Sarah, floating into the ocean, and the rise and fall of the waves. Trying to clear my head, I laid down, but exhaustion finally caught up with me. I fell asleep on the couch and didn't wake up until late the next morning. In a daze, I drove back to the skilled care facility, but when I got there, my grandpa had already passed on.
I thought more about the ocean, and what it could symbolize. I think that it's a kind of free-float, without any cares or worries, or any concrete passage of time. As strange as it may sound, it made me think about being in the womb. Humans like being surrounded by water and find it comforting because that was our home for the first nine months of our lives. When Sarah become emotionally raw, she retreats to the comfort of being wrapped in water, and just floating. I believe that there is something about death that bring us back down to earth, and makes us stop thinking about our lofty ideals. Instead, we retreat back into our most basic stage, and simply seek comfort. The ocean waves, they feel like a heartbeat, soft and steady. Speaking from experience now, I can say that the most basic comforts can sometimes be more soothing to the soul than the best of words.
I would like to note that butterflies have wings, too. Why has everyone been giving birds all the credit? Come to think of it, so do wasps and bats, but those aren't nearly as cute as birds. Why must everything be cute? I would totally post a picture of a bat if I didn't think it would turn people off of my blog. Alas, cute always seems to win in the end.