I sat beside her bed, watching her breathe. She looked so tiny, wrapped in mounds of bedcovers, her head softly resting on an oversized pillow. She no longer recognized me, or so I was told by her caregivers, but that didn’t stop me from speaking continu- ously to her as I stroked her hairless head.
I placed a tape deck next to her bed and played all of her old favorites, trying to keep her connected to this world. Everyone who was part of the hospice team confirmed what I intuitively knew: that even in her unconscious state, she could hear the sounds around her and feel us as we stroked her arm or caressed her face. Sound and touch, two amazing senses, were what kept us tethered to each other now. I loved my Aunt Gen, who was my “sometimes mother,” but more often my friend and confidante. It was hard to believe that in days, perhaps hours, I would no longer be able to pick up the phone and call her for a quick chat, a bit of advice, or a family recipe my kids had come to love.
I had never witnessed death up close before, and to be honest, I was terribly afraid. There were so many unknowns that I didn’t want to even think about, let alone witness. How does death look? How does it sound? What if she is in pain? How can I help her be at peace after all the months she fought so valiantly as a warrior against cancer? Slowly, hour by hour, something began to happen to me. The more time I spent with Gen, quietly watching the changes in her body as her life ebbed away, the more I grew comfortable with my fears and with the process of dying itself. I watched her like a new mother watching a sleeping infant – with wonder, amaze- ment and awe. I studied her every change – a slight loss of color in her right hand, a pause or hiccup in her breathing, a fluttering behind her eyelids – each time realizing that this is what death looks like. I didn’t realize then what I know now – that I was lucky to be able to view her death as a natural process. Like waves in an outgoing tide, her life force was drawn away from us as her body relinquished resistance and her soul found its way home.
Toward the end, I would get annoyed when visitors came and acted as if they knew what to do. “Turn up the music,” a friend would counsel. “Try to make her eat,” another would coach. Each person meant well, but only those of us who surrounded her daily could see that she no longer wanted to be drawn into the chaos of life. She had transitioned into a place of existence that no longer included us. What was hardest on me was the realization that, inevitably, we would all be left without her.
My thoughts during those final days were sharper and more focused than I would have expected. All the errands I had left undone and the work that was piling up on my desk seemed irrelevant now. What mattered most was being close, not just to Gen but to those of us who loved and cared for her. Being, not doing, was the only thing that made sense in that time and space. And in those long hours of being, I experienced an inti- macy with family, within myself and with God that I had never known before.
There is clarity of purpose that emerges when someone we love is dying. It helps us focus on what is truly important in our life and let go of things that no longer serve us. It makes us aware of the impermanence of our days and that there is no time better than the present to say the things we need to say to those we love. It forces us to recognize that we, too, will die and inspires us to make every day count. Soon after Gen died, I felt an urgency to set things right with a family member whom I had not been able to talk to in a while. Something had happened between us and we just couldn’t break through our discomfort. Gen’s death not only gave me permis- sion, it acted as a mandate to speak what was in my heart. The conversation we had not only cleared things up between us but helped me see another gift that Gen had given me. That it is not death we should fear, but a life not fully and honestly lived.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman is an award-winning author, nationally syndicated columnist, Jewish educator, public speaker and attorney. Learn more about her at amyhirshberglederman.com.
