I'd only seen David at the nursing home
a couple of times in the past two months. A busy late spring and
summer, plus an extraordinarily painful wipeout on the tennis court
kept me at home more than I liked. The weeds grew high around my
yard. The usual outside chores went undone as I recuperated. After
a solid month, I finally began to regain the full use of my arm. The
bruises faded. My hip is still sore to the touch, the place where my
full weight came down on the hard court. But it slowly heals too.
I got an e-mail saying things had taken
a turn for the worse. On a Saturday, I made it in to see him. David
lay on his bed, under a few sheets, his eyes mostly closed, his
breathing labored. It reminded me of my grandmother's last days.
She slept while I sat with her, but her breathing sounded like she
was running sprints. These are contradictions we don't expect.
I felt like all I could do was to sit
with him and do Tonglen practice. This is the Tibetan Buddhist
practice of giving and taking—we take the negative from whomever
we're practicing for, and give out positive qualities—health,
loving-kindness, wisdom, in the form of golden light. We're
transforming the negative into the positive through this practice.
I'd done it before for David. It was good practice for me as well.
Initially, I was too overwhelmed with my own negativity to feel I
could transform anyone else's. David taught me a lot of things in
the brief time I'd known him.
Twenty minutes after I arrived, the
hospice aide came in, then the hospice nurse. He was supposed to be
repositioned every 45 minutes. The aide swabbed his mouth to keep it
moist. He worked hard for every breath, and his mouth dried out
quickly as a result. The hospice nurse looked long into his eyes,
trying to read some kind of sign. They talked to him, and his eyes
opened a little. The rate of his breath never wavered though. His
gaze never focused. I wondered what he was picking up from all the
activity around him. Another nurse came in and told him she was
giving him Roxillin to help with the fluid in his lungs. She
squeezed a few dropperfuls into his half-open mouth. I could barely
hear a difference as he rasped.
I talked to the aide as she performed
her minstrations. Her hands ran over his arms to check if he felt
warm or cool. She would adjust his blankets, if necessary. She told
him what she was doing, called him “honey”, and leaned in close
as she made sure he was as comfortable as possible. He was “actively
dying”, she said. One of those ironic terms, like “military
intelligence” or “affordable housing”. She said the process
could go on for days. She gave me a short pamphlet explaining this
process. I asked if I could take it with me, but she said they had
none to spare. I could order one if I liked. I noted the
organization name on the back, and the website.
She asked me if I knew David's
religious affiliation. I didn't. It was always a struggle for him
to talk. I'd ask him questions, and at times he would begin to
answer clearly, but then his voice would trail off. The words would
get caught in his throat. I spent a lot of time leaning in to catch
the words he did produce. It was frustrating at times. Since
conversation wasn't really an option, I tried to just appreciate the
time I could spend reading to him, or showing him pictures I'd taken
on my most recent hike. He seemed to enjoy those. The volunteer
coordinator had told me that he liked to read, but couldn't hold the
books anymore to do so. We spent many hours poring over his box of
National Geographic magazines, looking at the pictures. I'd read the
captions and the articles to him.
Golf was on the television. The PGA
was in Rochester, at Oak Hill. We talked idly about the event. I
tried not to observe the aide too closely, so she wouldn't feel
self-conscious. I was curious about the job though. She said she'd
been doing the job for 20 years. These people face a time in our
lives few of us are willing to even think about. They perform an
incredibly compassionate act...helping a dying person leave this life
and move on to the next. It takes great courage to face this, I
think. Since becoming a Buddhist, there isn't a single day I don't
think about it. Keeping it foremost in my mind helps me to be a good
person. All the rest of life seems like just so much trivia in
comparison.
Eventually I had to go. I said a few
last words to David. I hope he heard them. The man in the bed
hardly resembled the man in the pictures on his corkboard. They were
of he and his wife, posing with different locales as the backdrop.
They looked like they were from the 50s or early 60s. She had cats
eye glasses on and a shy smile. One of them showed the couple on a
couch, David's head thrown back in laughter. Now the skin of his
face was drawn tightly against his skull. His eyes were glassy. A
slim record of a whole life in those pictures, with all of its range
of emotions and experiences. Now David's body showed all of its wear.
I never knew his age. The knowledge rested heavily on my mind that
we're all headed for this end at some point.
I left after saying goodbye. A couple
days later, I got another e-mail letting me know that David had
passed away at 5pm that day, about 90 minutes after I had left. All
those years had reached a conclusion. I said prayers for him, and
wished him a safe journey through the bardo, that he may find his way
out of the cycle of rebirth. One of my best memories is sitting out
in the hall by the nurses station with him, watching the show pass us
by. There was always something or someone to make you laugh. David
turned his head slightly toward me and chuckled, as if to say, now
I've seen it all. His eyes then glinted with mirth. I'll never
forget that look on his face. I would liked to have brought that
expression to him more often. I only knew him for his final six
months on this planet, but he gave me more than he'll ever know.
