I take my wife’s cold hand, rubbing the pale, pale skin with my fingertips, holding it tight as she jerks and twitches, and I whisper, “Are you remembering us, baby?”
The hospice nurse told me that hearing is the last thing to go, so I talk to my unresponsive wife often. For three days, I’ve hardly moved from the bedside. When Grace isn’t sleeping, I hold her and feed her at Lena’s side. Sometimes we even get in bed with her and play until Grace falls back to sleep.
I do everything by my wife’s side, with our daughter present as much as possible. I can’t bear the thought of her dying alone. I want her to feel the presence of the two people who love her most. If she can still feel at all.
The absolute absence of anyone from my family makes me wish things had been different with my parents before they died, and that I had siblings. I could’ve used not only their emotional support, but their physical assistance as well. Since my life revolves around Lena and our bedroom, it’s hard to keep up with much of anything else. Nissa comes over every day to help out. But even more help than my wife’s best friend is Lena’s mother, Patricia. I don’t know how I’d manage without her. She offered to stay. Until her daughter passes.
And I let her.
It’s what Lena would want.
The night that we caught lightning bugs had been the last time Lena’s eyes were open. It had been her “golden day.”
The final words spoken between my wife and I had been declarations of our love as Lena held Grace and the two drifted off to sleep in front of a jar of fireflies. Or lightning bugs, as my beautiful wife called them.
I’d known it was coming, but still I’d been unprepared. When nearly an hour had passed that night, I tried to wake her so that she could go out and tell her mother goodnight, but she wouldn’t rouse. I hadn’t been too alarmed because her sleep has been extremely deep since her illness took a turn for the worse. That’s why I thought little of it.
It was Mrs. Holmes who first realized what was happening. She knew it when she went in to kiss her only remaining child’s cheek before she left.
I watched her bend and press her lips to Lena’s forehead and then her temple and, finally, her cheek. Then she stepped back, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, and pronounced, “She’s gone, Nate. She’s… gone.”
I’d wanted to argue, to tell my mother-in-law that she was wrong. Wrong! That Lena is hard to wake these days.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t want to upset her. I knew Lena wouldn’t want that. So I held my tongue and waited. I knew time would tell.
And it did.
The next morning, Lena didn’t wake. The next afternoon, she didn’t wake. The next night, she didn’t wake.
The day after that, hospice came. That was the moment when I knew without a doubt that Lena’s mother was right. This is the end. My Lena isn’t coming back.
It was the sweet nurse, Donna, who explained that Lena had ordered their services before when she was… “Well…before,” she’d said with a kind yet sad smile. Nothing else needed to be explained.
Donna has been a wealth of information and help to me and everyone else who loves my wife. She knew all sorts of tricks to keep Lena comfortable, like putting in a catheter and giving her oxygen. Although it seems counterintuitive to me to do these things for someone who isn’t responsive, Donna explained the different physiological processes that are taking place and why they need to be addressed.
“We want to keep her as comfortable as possible. She didn’t want to be in pain. I know you don’t want her to be in pain. And this way, when her body is ready to let go, it can. She’s at rest. At peace.”
I had to leave the room after that conversation. It was all becoming too real.
Time is up.
My wife, my soulmate, the person I’ve loved above all others, is dying. Her body is holding on by a thread, and still, I can’t bear the thought of letting it go. Letting her go.
But that choice is soon taken out of my hands.
On the eleventh day of Grace’s life, Helena Holmes Grant, mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend, and nurse passes away.
Her pain is over, her struggle at an end. Now only I need something for the pain. But I know, as surely as I blink and breathe, that there will be no way to ease it, no drugs that will help me.
There is nothing I can do to stop the pain.
Not for the rest of my days.
Twenty-seven
Always
Nate
The days both creep and speed by, alternating between things happening so fast I feel out of control, and moments passing so slowly time felt never-ending. The hardest parts, I quickly learn, are the ones that crawl by at an excruciating pace.
The second Lena stopped breathing, her body going eerily still, had felt like hours. I sat staring at her, willing her to breathe, to open her eyes.
Only she never did.