A Prayer for the Dying
The house is small and unassuming. I sit in the safety of my sunbaked car, focusing my breathing as if I can inhale courage and exhale anxiety. Two of the adult children are standing on the lawn, smoking cigarettes in a similar exercise.
I hug the family hello as I enter the living room. The hospital equipment has made the familiar foreign but has not overshadowed the pictures of her in a different life, young and smiling. She left a convent for love, the fruits of which stand sentinel over her last hours. I greet her on her “good” side which is, ironically, the same side as the clot that has ravaged her speech and independence—the clot that marks the beginning of her end. She looks at me intently and manages a garbled, “Help me,” as her children speak of narcotic dosages and the business of feeling helpful when there is little to be done.
I am there for the sudden change from comfortably breathing to struggling for life. Death, I think, is rarely the Hollywood version, the gentle slipping off of consciousness. Even 96 year old bodies can fight.
I tamp the urge to save her as my stethoscope echoes the deafening silence of lungs not drawing in air back into my ears. Her daughter, stunned, begins to pray.
Hail Mary full of grace…
“Do something!” her son shouts. They are turning up oxygen that her lungs are incapable of delivering and I offer a gentle but firm reminder of a DNR order, that there is no hope of long term recovery, and that sometimes the kindest act is the one of letting go.
The Lord is with thee…
“She can still hear you. What do you want her to hear?”
Blessed is thou amongst women….
They weep and clutch at her. They speak prayers of love and thankfulness. A lifetime pours out of them and washes over her. Mother, mother who has fed us from your breasts, patched our skinned knees, scolded and cajoled, turned pillows to their cool side to ease fevered brows, worried furrows into your face for us.… Mother, say their desperate tears and broken hearts, we are orphans now.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…
A cell phone is pushed into my hand by one of the daughters. A sister could not be here today and she is sobbing and confused on the other end, hundreds of miles away. I speak quietly to her, knowing my words will not ease her regrets.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners…
“Some people believe when you open a window, it allows the spirit to leave,” I say to them. They nod as I invite in the glorious spring day. The scent of lilacs lift the gauze sheer curtains. The mother had planted the bush when her children were still small and close.
Now and at the hour of our deaths…
Stethoscope pressing into her chest again, my ears listening to the silence of her heart. I register surprise at how loud nothing can sound. I smooth her blankets and straighten her gaping clothing. I feel the stethoscope lift from my neck. My aunt’s kindness speaks. “It’s okay to be her granddaughter again now.
She waited for you.” I nod as my nurse self recedes and I am simply Granddaughter. The hot tears spill over my nose and onto her cheek. I hold her face in my hands. “I’ll miss you, you know? I love you.”
Amen.
About Lisa
Lisa Rich is finishing her Master’s of Nursing in midwifery and women’s health this May. She is married to the love of her life and is the mother of four fiercely wild children who make her laugh and love with her whole being, even when they don’t pick up their socks. She is currently in her midwifery integration semester on the Navajo reservation near her hometown of Gallup, New Mexico. In the beginning of her GEPN year, she once miserably stood in front a bathroom mirror and cried while she asked her reflection, “Why did you do this to yourself?!,” over and over again. Now, on most days, she looks in the mirror and sees a burgeoning midwife looking back. She is grateful to everyone who could see her, even when she couldn’t see herself.