meet virginia

meet virginia. virginia gives me perspective as i lay here in this hospital bed watching the hands on the clock moving at their own lazy pace during my own private pity party.

she doesn't say much. her main communiciation she shares with me is her guppy-like gasps for air. wheezing high-pitched and soft, wimpering sounds of a puppy, blind and searching for its mother's teat follows each gasp.

occasionally, she'll moan when the nurses come to poke and prod her. forgetting that inside the mask-like creature still beats a heart all by itself -- at least for today. a dramatic difference from the rest of the mechanical tools needed to continue her existence. but for now, her heart still fills itself with her warm blood, filling nerve centers still active and alert although her mind no longer is.

the first night, i heard her cry out. i imagine behind the thin curtain that separates our beds that her hands are crossed prayerlike at her chest with her body twisted to the side. i am not sure if it is real or if i am just reliving how i first saw her. before the orderly wheeled my bed next to hers and pulling the curtain shut, as if the busy abstract pastel cotton sheet would separate us before joining us together.

in her sleep, oh how her mind must race. she shouts for "beverly" and cries out as to where she is going, to wait for her. so weak when "awake" yet how vividly her mind recreates memories of people and places. i believe that before we die, our friends and family come to ease our journey into the next life or whatever comes next. they join us on our deathbed and make the transition less frightening because of our trust in them. i believe beverly was there for her that night. her mind in its little shell, burst out of her age, her illness and dementia to make one last call out for help on her journey. it would be her last words spoken.

i feel honored to have been a witness.

meet virginia. she isn't gone. her body lay still in that hospital bed, family pushing doctors to do things they wish they never had to do. well-meaning but ignorant, the sons push for answers for reasons that being 90 years old and suffering from pneumonia and dementia in a life that is no longer your own will not satisfy as an answer.

i lay silent in my bed, waiting, wishing, wanting to disappear or become invisible to their pain. activity rushes in the room. hushed voices. beeping and clicks. the whrrrrl of machinery now pushing breath into her lungs since they can no longer expel the air on their own. the heavy, sweating man pushes his way into the room and the air around us cannot expel him. he leans over and whispers to her that he is there to help her and gives her last rites. anointing of the sick with oil. grade school sacraments flood my memory.

but the priest in sneakers and black t-shirt doesn't understand. these are not her last rites. virginia has no rights. her decisions are not her own. her last rights were taken from her a while ago. these are a feel-good motive to absolve her of her sins but what sins could she commit?

blessed are those who care for the sick, who take care of the elderly. the young nurse who comes in soon after, chases the family from her side. she slides the curtain around to give some dignity while she provides her own last rites. the water sloshes in the tub and the smell of dove soap fills the room. clean and refreshing to chase the smell of death and tubes that permeates in this room we share. i hear the nurse squeeze the droplets of water from the washclothe. another son bursts into the room and rips the curtain open.

the nurse yanks it right back and clears him from this sacred space. "you can sit with her after i am done giving her a bath," her kindness with virginia contrasts greatly with this newly tapped anger and frustration. but her movements continue, water still sloshes until virginia is clean and reborn.

a little while later i am moved to a new room, a single room where i won't be witness to a families' pain and woman's last breaths. a few more days later, i am able to leave the hospital that virginia won't be allowed to do.

they say there is no dignity in dying and i believe them -- meet virginia.