Andrea, Linds, Donna, Max and I are all here. Holding the vigil, holding the fear, our collective inhalations without exhale.
Another night of idol TV, my only respite from thinking the unthinkable, feeling the terror running through my veins, filling my heart with the horror of what is in front me. Like Christ at Gesthme, I want this cup to pass, and I will not accept this as God's will or anyone else's for that matter. My mind is weary from the battle with sarcoma, my body aches from the tears that I carry, stored up for the last 5 years. I am drowning, I need a life raft.
Thinking that watching TV with Chris would again bring sanity to the insaneness of this life, this watch on hospice. If we can just forget we we are for one moment, I just need relief. Chris was too sleepy to help me in my fantasy of "just another night of idol worship. We retreat to the back to the back room. I left him, alone. I feel guilty about needed a respite. If I only had that hour back now, to hold him to caress him to make him feel safe. What was going through his mind? Was he aware but unable to say I am afraid, stay with me?
I kept checking on Chris...... Adam was way safe......No chance he is getting voted off the show, Chris is in danger. I wonder when he dies will he see a montage of his life? Will it hurt? Will he be frightened?
We needed to go to bed. I was frightened, Andrea said that she should stay because it might be hard for me to give Chris his medications, take care of Donna etc. When pressed (What do you think, I can't handle it?) She told me it would be soon. It?? What "it"?? When I realized what she meant, it was like cold ice poured through my veins.....oh yes he had been fading away since we got home, but death never entered my mind, funny how the brain works. I was seeing it, smelling it,liver failure is fowl, like decay from the inside where the body is not processing toxins so that the organs just decay and the smell seeps through the pores.
At 10 PM I surely didn't know it could be tonight, yet I was afraid that I would go to bed with him and wake up and he would be gone,and I was afraid of sleeping next to his dead body. Little did I know that death is not a slipping away quietly until the last second. It is a rough ride.
I laid down with him giving him our traditional good night kiss. Lately for the last several months it has seemed like it is a stretch, he was uncomfortable and I was straining to get our lips to touch, twisting my neck around as I slept with my back to him in a contortionist way to plant one on him. Many times I had given into the urge to drink, so the buzz must have made it harder. On nights when I was not, I was more energetic about it.
I was not drinking (or drinking much) Wednesday night..... I kissed him he kissed back. We slept.
At 2 AM I awoke to the sound of something hitting the floor, he was not in bed so I assumed he had fallen out of bed. I went around to his side and he looked like he was slamming his head on the floor. But I think he was trying to lift his head up only to be without strength enough to finish so it was bobbing onto the floor. I put a pillow under his head. I tried to lift him, couldn't. He said something like it is only natural to be in the position (Laurie the yogi told me that child's pose is one of surrender of the spirit).
Lindsey and I and Andrea a managed to get him back into bed. He groaned in pain, Lindsey and I had his torso and Andrea with a surprising amount of strength grabbed his legs and lifted him into bed.
He was clearly uncomfortable and said his legs were cramping.He was restless and Andrea thought we should call Hospice which we eventually did after giving him the morphine and haldol drops 2 times.
Soon it was 3 AM.
We stayed with him the whole time calling Hospice, giving drops, I was holding his head and telling him to relax go to sleep (his mantra for sleepless nights) kissing his forehead still not comprehending, I looked at Andrea as if to say what is happening. She either mouthed or whispered this is it.
I was like oh? This is not what I pictured. He seemed to be struggling so much inside. A turmoil of spirit versus sarcoma. Who would win, I think Sarcoma had all the votes from Arkansas.
Struggling,struggling. Restless of leg and of lifeforce.
Towards 5 AM I went to the bathroom, he asked Linds to get me or where I was. I came back he curled into me from lying on his back just curled right up to me to snuggle. I don't want to go..... he said. I know I said........ struggling still at about 5 30 he said "god"........and the labored breathing, the struggle that was not so much physically expressed as internally happening yet we were aware of it all, like a hurricane inside of his human walls, we could sense it, feel its presence knew it was there it was a tightness of legs almost imperceptible jerking of limbs, tightness of breathing as if each breath was a victory against the evil sarcoma that was tightening around his liver, his liver 's death causing toxins to sweep through his cardiovascular system shutting down organs in a way that a slowly dying computer starts to act. Programs get funky windows open slowly.....breath just stopped, just like a switch one minute it was all there in constricted yet very powerful way all the life force energy struggling in a 175 pound vessel.......the forces of good and evil meeting and colliding.....
then he said "god or oh god" and it stopped just like that. It was so quiet after being so loud. Not loud in a decibel way loud in tensity of the struggle. So much power fighting in such a small space.
The quiet was like the air had been sucked out of the room.
I looked at Andrea as if to ask is that it? She said yes. He was gone, except for the emptying of his lungs of the last of whatever air was left (they call it chain stoking) If I had not known that it would have been terrifying, he exhaled many times without the inhale bizarre and yet necessary.
His death was like a vacuum, the struggle the hurricane; the breath was all gone.
Andrea opened a window. I kept kissing his forehead.
Dawn was breaking the sky was pink (it a new dawn it's new day)
TOD: (time of death 5:38....)
