NO WORDS TO CONTAIN OR EXPLAIN IT
By Lorel
A disclaimer
Gentle reader,
I wrote the essay that follows to the writing prompt “no words to contain or explain it.” It came to mind when I read the theme of this edition of Love Kitchen is “Receiving.” Most receivings in our lives are gifts of one kind or another – a touch or word of affection, a realization of joy, a greatly desired experience, a deep and sudden understanding, something we might call a blessing or precious gift. And so much of life is all of these things. But sometimes we receive things we don’t know how to receive.
Life is beautiful, you know. Receive all of it.
NO WORDS TO CONTAIN OR EXPLAIN IT
I wanted to write about my first kiss. I wanted to write about holding my first child, or witnessing a full-blown moonflower suddenly pop wide open at dusk, or the time I rounded a corner in Florence and saw the Duomo – the moment where the eyes widen and the breath sucks in. But the “something beyond language” that overwhelms me these days is the death of my best friend, my husband, my one and only and forever, right before my eyes.
The comic tragedy of life, I once read, is that everyone knows they are going to die someday -- but no one believes it! That’s so true. And when you marry, you vow to stick together for richer or poorer (you’re thinking richer), better or worse (you’re thinking better), and in sickness and in health (you’re thinking health) ‘til death do you part. Death. Death is pretty far from your mind most days and a wedding day is nothing but now and forever, so perhaps you can be excused for failing to imagine an upbeat side to death. There isn’t one mentioned. But come death will. And it will take more than your breath away. It will take everything.
Steve had been dismissed from oncology and handed over to Hospice care on May 3rd. On May 19th a friend asked him, “How long do you think you’ve got?” as Steve lunched on pears and cottage cheese. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe a couple of months?” But only two days later, as we slept, I heard his breathing change around 4am, and by 8am he began slipping into a labored breathing that seemed to take all his attention.
Our daughters – both nurses – were with us. We were at home. Our older daughter had ICU experience and knew what to do. They gave him morphine and checked his pulse and, after a while, began having to clear a brownish foam from his mouth – pulmonary failure. His lungs were dissolving because his heart could not beat hard enough to keep them stable. The cancer was too large now and was pressing his heart too hard from below. They kept him sedated and death took over. There were no long last looks -- requests for a cigarette, eyes fluttering open at the sight of flights of angels – no movie-style farewell. At 11:20 he just stopped. It was finished. He was dead. These are all words and they report what happened. But they do not contain or explain it.
The next 8 hours were a strange dream of people coming and going, of me and his brother washing him and dressing him, of people talking in the kitchen, and of me sitting alone with him, trying so hard to come up with words or even the next thought. His brother Andy, a hospice nurse, had arrived early in the afternoon and around 6pm suggested we call the funeral home. It’s easier to let him go in the daytime hours, he said. Then three nice people came and after talking quietly with me they put his body in a large black leather- like bag, but they left it open at the top so we could see his face. Then they put him on a gurney and took him away. And that was all. He was gone.
It’s been 9 months since Steve died and I still can’t comprehend it. A kiss is a momentary experience; a baby comes and grows up with you; a flower spends its life, however fleeting, in the garden. But this event changed everything after it, and took away all of our before.
I am learning the language of grief but I am not at all fluent in it yet. I don’t know how to grasp it, but I do want to embrace it. I am hoping the words will come.
