Editor’s Note: Marlow chimes in this morning with some thoughts about the road ahead we all share. We held off on running this piece during Holy Week to stay in tune with the turning of our world from winter gray to the promise of bright blossoms amid fresh new green. Our contribution? Stay alert. And love the life we live!
– Vic
My Turn Now
What’s it all about to be at death’s door and ready to walk through it?
I’m a bit thinner now than I was back during the Christmas holidays but not much so given the bountiful, tasty treats W tempts me daily with. I’ve lost muscle tone and the curve slope of my function loss has increased but not scarily so. Yet. But it’s coming. Our in-house living arrangements have evolved a bit with me living exclusively on the first floor, acquiring assistive accoutrements of chairs, bathing helpers and such for the activities of daily living.
I no longer want or need to tell folks that I am dying, I just wait for signs of their inner stillness to gently tell than what’s happening and that I’m OK with it — sorta like Butch Cassidy and Sundance jumping off the cliff into the river canyon’s raging torrents. Someone’s gotta push off first, no? It’s just my turn.
With the doctors this talk’s been tough, since their primary task is managing the hope file cabinet of Hail Mary pass play diagrams, we might choose to call and run on the patient’s behalf. It’s a strange sensation to sense the arbitrary switching of roles between the sick and provider.
There are no accepted signals that it’s safe to talk about dying, so I as the patient surfaces it using the D word. Maybe we say to our providers we don’t want any more of these off-label use of drug ZSWira or that our affairs are in order or that we’ll go out to dinner with them next week. I have started this death talk or its prelims long before some of them appeared ready.
Deathbed miracles strictly forbidden: a good death, newfound wisdom, last minute reconciliations, regrets dealt with, our lives’ tasty spiciness simmered into a bland tomato sauce, and neatness of the death process – it ain’t. It’s also NOT the dying’s showtime for the living.
Even if I tell them I’m ready, nothing can lessen the blunt force of their grief of loss – the hard reboot control-alt-del of the human condition.
Just put this into your backpack — I’m still okay now, since I look down at the dirt and not up. It’s just my turn now.
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