And His Name That Sat On Him Was Death

It’s a lot of work, dying of terminal illness. So much work, in fact, that the sheer effort of it will quite literally kill you.

To die is the only task on the to-do list of life that you absolutely must do. Everything else is a choice. You are not required to go to work, or bathe, or brush your teeth, or care for your loved ones, or eat or even breathe. But you must die; that one thing is non-negotiable.

I write these words sitting on my mother’s couch, in her little apartment which she will never set foot in again. She is only a few blocks away, in fact, but for her it may as well be a million miles separating this place from the little hospice where she now lives out her final days.

About a year ago, as the cancer was starting to really take its toll on her, the range of her possible movements had already shrunk down to just this little town. As her strength and mobility ebbed, and people stepped in to help with grocery shopping and other tasks, that range would then shrink again, to just her ground-floor apartment and the adjacent little park where she would go for occasional walks, for as long as her body allowed it.

As the disease accelerated, so did the contraction of her possible movements. At some point she took her final walk in that park. We don’t know what day that was, and she probably didn’t know it was her last, either. These things just kind of creep up on you.

Upon being admitted to hospice, her life crystalized into its last trajectory, from which it would only shrink further, down to a final point. At first she would be able to visit the garden, assisted, then only the balcony on the second floor where her room is. Then only that with the aid of a wheelchair, and then not at all. The space of possibilities for her shrunk down to just her room, and now, just her bed, which she will never leave while she still lives. She has reached the last place she will ever be, until she ceases to be my mother and becomes merely the body of my mother.

It’s a rough way to go, cancer. Ever a slender woman, I have watched my mother wither away to little more than skin and bones as, unable to keep down more than a bit of broth or milk each day, her body has consumed its minimal reserves of fat and then moved on to cannibalizing the last available source of energy that could keep her alive: her muscles.

As this progresses, the form of the underlying skeleton becomes more apparent. Electing not to take chemotherapy for a third time in her life, she still has a full head of hair, but it is perched upon a head that now more closely resembles the skull just beneath the surface. Her thin hospital gown does little to hide the ribs and sternum that now so rudely protrude from her chest, and when she lays on her side the shape of her pelvis and femur are uncomfortably clear. One is reminded of the jaggedness of the human skeleton that is normally so well hid, and realizes that at this point, there is literally no position in which she could possibly be comfortable. A hard and lumpy mattress can be remediated; a hard and lumpy body not so. As I look at the angular point of her hip, with the frail skin stretched so thinly over it, I wonder how it is possible that the bone does not simply slice right through it.

Barring some sudden accident, the sufferring will come for me too, in due time, and when it comes I, too, will moan and thrash and clutch at my sheets and in the end I will die just like her. No one escapes this. It is the debt we all owe the universe in repayment for the loan of a temporary life. Some are afforded more favorable repayment terms; a sudden heart attack, an invisible brain hemmorage, a serious car accident. Their sufferring is perhaps shorter, but with the caveat that they must repay the debt sooner than they otherwise might.

I have little wisdom to draw from her impending death. In time, I will reflect on the odd and obscure life she lived and find some greater meaning in it, perhaps, but not yet. For now I will just sit in the thin light of a candle that was once a bonfire, and appreciate what meagre warmth it still provides.