Peggy's Passing (Part 2)

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April 16 2005     1:30 pm  Royal Jubilee Hospital2

Sitting beside this loudly breathing body, a tiny room all hard-shelled, but they brought in a pink-shaded lamp, so a least the light is warm.3

Her hands, her arms, so cold.4

I keep seeing her passport photo. I found it yesterday in a tin biscuit box, with all the Most Precious Papers. There she is, puffy looking, with an impish grin She was preparing for her trip with Lorna to Hong Kong and Japan, the only trip she ever took overseas, the only trip she ever took without Dad. She was my age, 52 years old. I don’t look like her at all, she doesn’t look like me.5

I see her dad in the distinct bones of her face now, the Roman nose, the jaw. Just before that passport photo, her own mom had passed away, four days after a car accident. They told me Grandma didn’t die from injuries, but from a spike in blood pressure. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but Mom was never one to try to understand medical things. Sick was sick, and death was death, and it didn’t much matter to her, the mechanics of it all.6

But she was my age when she watched her mother die, the mother she thought was so pretty, but didn’t resemble much, unlike me, who never wanted to look like my mother.7

I can’t help but think she must have seen what I see now, the opaque eyes that never quite close, the gaping slack mouth that sucks air, shallow and slow, the body so thin, like a molting bird, a soaked cat, things showing that shouldn’t be showing.8

Sleep, Mother, sleep. Let go the dreams and drift away.9

April 16 2005    8:15pm10

Quick death is familiar. From the barrage of movies we’ve all seen it: the crack of bones (or guns), the jerk, the splatter and the raw spill - death as sudden violence, the ultimate horror, or so it is portrayed.11

But slow death - this is the truly horrible. The slow slow wither, life evaporates as on a cool, still day - imperceptibly. A few hours, a day, bring the change in breathing, a new pattern, strenuous and shallow now, the exhale sudden with the weight of ribs, the burden of bones and gravity.12