It happens before my period, a great build up before the release. I admire them in her mirror. There is a loveliness to the shiny skin, gently stretched with swelling. A pink line runs over the top of each breast where my bathing suit ends. I push them together to make impressive cleavage. They are tender to touch. Alex Trebek is in the next room, drowning out the sound of labored inhales.
My aunt is dying. She gasps for last breaths. She has many last breaths. Stress builds among family members as our love for her becomes louder and desperate. My uncle drives me crazy. Not really. I drive myself crazy and use him as an excuse.
I put on a shirt and return to my perch. She holds on next to me. To what? Sometimes she will mumble, call out to her sister, sing a song from her childhood. Otherwise, her triumphant body continues to sink into the bed.
At first I wanted to be here for it, to heroically usher her through the transition. I wanted to be strong for everyone. Now the dying process tries my patience. At first it seemed so beautiful, so real and honest. After weeks of anticipation, our waiting has become rigid. We built a dam to hold back our grief so that we are capable enough to get dressed and give her medicine. Emotional constipation has us on edge.
Death, where are you? She should go now. This is her time. These are the words that crowd my head as I touch my living body, crave sandwiches, busyness, and the ocean on my skin. They seem true, but they are thoughts arising out of exhaustion and an eagerness to experience something else.
Her lovely scent is still somehow alive in the home. She dies with slow grace and fortitude. She dies quietly, so that we can hear coverage of the presidential race, reruns of Jeopardy and episodes of Forensic Files. She softens our tension by waking from near death with important observations. She sits up suddenly, wide-eyed and lucid after a long period of inert survival: “Donald Trump’s face must look like that because he has been eating too much pussy.”
We laugh and kiss her forehead and then return with her to the passing of languid hours.
Despite the sweet moments, I don’t want to hear her or smell her or watch her endure pain anymore.
I fancy myself a lover of Death - the equalizer, humbler, reminder of impermanent perfection. But Death isn’t all beautiful. It tests composure. How is she still alive when she hasn’t eaten in weeks and she is on enough morphine to sedate an elephant?
I am embarrassed in the face of Death. I am embarrassed to feel frustrated. To waste energy on ugly thoughts and interior grumbles. I promise myself to be better, to grow beyond this childish irascibility. I will be peaceful.
But this doesn’t happen immediately like I wish it would. She won’t let me run away. I can go into the bathroom, put on her makeup, make faces in her mirror, but I can’t escape myself.
Maybe Death is hiding under the bed. Maybe he loves to watch human folly. Maybe what he loves is giving us the opportunity to clean ourselves up before our individual journeys. He likes a lighter load and this is his way of saying, “Look, here is all your baggage. It’s going to be a heavy ride if you don’t put some of it down.”
But I don’t know how to do it. I’m afraid. And maybe, so is she.
