An hour later, Grandpa and I walked back to the apartment with our chosen books under our arms—him with a thick biography of the scientist Louis Pasteur, me with a comprehensive guide to a mystical village of gnomes. I knew exactly how we’d be spending the rest of the afternoon. Grandpa would sit in his corduroy armchair, I’d settle into a beanbag at his feet, and together we’d escape to different worlds in the pages of our books. And once in a while, he’d pat me on the head, as if to reassure me he was still there.
I walked quickly so we’d get home as soon as possible. Since it was an unusually warm winter’s day, the sidewalks of our West Village neighborhood were packed. As I trailed Grandpa’s stride, weaving in among the pairs of legs, I examined the people bustling by, imagining each one as a partially burned matchstick.
Gazing up at Grandpa’s towering physique, I felt a small pang of panic in my stomach. How much longer would he burn for?
10
I always had the best intentions of putting away my clean laundry, but those intentions usually dwindled somewhere between the laundry room and my front door. So for the past week, the basket had sat in its usual place in front of my closet, ready to be cherry-picked. Lola and Lionel had reclaimed their positions snuggled in among the clean clothes, ensuring that I would continue to be a woman whose outfit wasn’t complete unless it was sprinkled with cat hair.
As I retrieved a sweatshirt from between the two cats, I caught my reflection in the mirror hanging on the closet door. I rarely stopped and studied my face, so it almost felt like running into someone after months of not seeing them. I’d always wondered whether age snuck up on you gradually, or if you just woke up one day and looked old. So far I’d escaped any significant signs of aging—the two lines on my forehead were the same ones I’d had since my early twenties and only a few gray hairs had sprung up. I leaned closer, my breath fogging against the mirror as I scrunched my face to see what I’d look like with permanent crow’s feet. Distinguished, maybe. Or haggard. Not that it mattered—except for Leo, there was no one in my life to notice me getting older.
I switched my focus to the photo tucked in the corner of the mirror. It was of my parents standing in the door frame of a house that existed to me only in sensory snippets—the itch of the carpeted stairs against my bare feet, the spicy scent of damp hedges outside my bedroom window, the ceiling fan that beat the air like helicopter blades. Grandpa gave me the photo soon after I came to live with him. The few memories I still had of my parents were an amalgamation of what really took place and what I’d conjured from staring at the same photograph for decades. I imagined that the slight smirk on my dad’s face was a sign of his rebellious spirit, while the vibrant red on my mom’s lips conveyed her elegance. And the way they held hands—fingers interlocked tightly rather than loosely wrapped—signaled their deep passion for each other.
What I knew for sure was that my dad was some kind of lawyer (I liked to imagine it was for human rights, but I think it was closer to corporate litigation) and he traveled abroad frequently. My mom had been a moderately successful ballet dancer before I was born. Based on the few details Grandpa had revealed over the years, my unexpected arrival into the world had paused her career, halting her aspiring trajectory from ballet corps to soloist. It was probably why she preferred accompanying my dad on his overseas trips instead of spending time with me.
Otherwise, my parents were a mystery to me. The photo mostly made me wonder whether I was supposed to miss them more.
When I walked back out into the living room, I almost gagged at the smell—the stagnant odor of cat litter competing with the mustiness of Grandpa’s old possessions. How long had it been that way? I was so used to it that I often didn’t notice until it was almost rank.
Decades-old paint flaked from the window as I pushed it open. A slight breeze sidled in, dissipating the stale air as I struck a match and held it against a stick of incense until the flame made its leap from one to the other.
I preferred the spiced-wood smell of palo santo, but it felt wrong to use it as a mere room freshener when it was such an important tool in the rituals of the dying. I’d spent part of a college summer vacation studying with a shaman in the Peruvian Andes, learning about the Incan traditions of death. My favorite was that they had sometimes buried their dead in the fetal position, so as to better their chances of rebirth in the afterlife. I loved the idea of preparing someone for a journey rather than simply saying goodbye.
The scent of palo santo always ignited my memories of that time. It was surreal being on a mountain so high that you were above the clouds, as if you were somehow navigating the barrier between the real world and the spiritual. Ever since, I’d found a quiet peace in the ritual of smudging—the process of clearing negative energy with repetitive strokes of lit palo santo or sage—whenever a dying person requested it. I’d studied enough religions and spiritual credos to acknowledge the existence of an invisible energy that coursed through everyone. Even if the clearing of it was little more than a placebo effect, I’d seen firsthand how it could give someone hope and the feeling of starting over.
Or at least letting go.
Setting down the incense ember in a clay pot, I watched the smoke curl its way to the open window like a snake to its charmer. The usual soundtrack of siren wails, over-sensitive car alarms, and aggressive conversation floated up from the street. I never really minded that ambient noise—it kept me company. But then a far less frequent sound pierced through the urban din: the ringing of my phone.
When I unearthed it from under George’s belly on the sofa, the caller ID of a hospital on the Upper East Side lit up the screen.
A new job.
Within an hour, I was on the 6 train (which I loathed only slightly less than the R train) rattling uptown. I usually preferred at least two weeks between jobs, a loose rule I’d developed after experiencing a hellish burnout a few years ago. It wasn’t being around death that I found taxing—more the burden of being an anchor when everyone else around me, usually grieving family members, was emotionally unmoored.
But this job likely wouldn’t last longer than a day. The nurse on the phone explained that the patient, a twenty-six-year-old unhoused woman named Abigail, was brought in after she was found collapsed in an ATM vestibule in Midtown with end-stage liver failure. It was likely a result of cirrhosis—and the entire bottle of gin she’d consumed. Even though Abigail was lucid and talking, the prognosis wasn’t optimistic. Her parents were on their way from Idaho, but they’d probably arrive too late.
I wouldn’t be paid for this job, but there was no way I could let her die alone. And in situations like these, my task was just to be there as a presence. Hospitals were so full and understaffed that it wasn’t realistic for a nurse to stay with a patient around the clock. So they’d begun offering the services of volunteers, some of whom were death doulas like me, to provide comfort to those who had no one else. Or even those who did. Unfortunately, death isn’t always the peaceful slipping away that movies depict it to be—often it’s prolonged and very unpleasant. The sensory chaos of bodily functions shutting down or going awry. The gasping. The look of panic as people cling desperately to their final moments. Sometimes family members turn away or run out of the room to spare themselves from having such a confronting scene seared into their brains as the final memory of their loved ones.
That’s why it’s so important to have someone like me there. Someone who won’t look away, no matter how harrowing it gets.