The End

The clock on my phone says 3:12 am. The only sounds in the apartment are the snores of our exhausted family as they take their turn catching up on sleep, the concentrated oxygen machine which has a low rumble like a clothes dryer followed by what reminds me of the air brakes on a semi truck, and the tower fan cooling the living room. Seems strange to write the words “living room” when this is literally the room in which my mother in law is dying.

Tonight it’s my turn on the night watch, and really that is all I’m doing, watching. At this stage in her cancer she doesn’t need anything from me, aside from the occasional oxycodone we were instructed by hospice to squirt into her mouth every four hours, keeping her sedated and comfortable. Truth is I’m mostly watching for when she takes her last breath, and so I watch and I count. Sometimes she takes five or six rapid, though shallow and labored breaths, other times she goes as long as a minute before taking a somewhat violent, heaving gasp. It’s been like this for three days. We don’t know when it will end, but with a mixture of guilt, shame, and hope, mercifully we pray it will be soon.

It’s strange how a room can be so familiar and so foreign at the same time. Everything seems to be a two edged sword. The furniture that has occupied her home for years is still here, though now it’s rearranged to make room for, and share space with, the hospital bed and other medical equipment populating the area. These things are welcomed for their utility and yet, they are foreign, and they make us uncomfortable because we know why they are here. Their job is to compassionately usher her transition from the land of the living to the realm of the dead. 

The digital picture frame, running on a continuous loop, supplies precious memories, but it also pixelates our pain with a montage of people long gone and laughter that has fallen silent. Every twenty-two minutes it takes us on a journey from when she was a child, to a mother, to a grandmother, to a cancer patient, and every time it ends the same. It always brings us back here to this room with these sounds and this reality. Presently, it’s late August but we have a cloth Christmas tree on the wall and stockings above the fireplace. We put those things up today because she loves Christmas and this is going to be her last Christmas. Unlike most years, there’s no mountain of presents under a tree that is way too big for this little apartment, no baked ham, and no special dip or cheeseball like usual. This is a silent night, but there is no joy or peace here tonight.

The worst part is knowing this isn’t the worst part. Seeing her like this, a woman who has always been defined by her strength, lying helpless and weak, is painful, but at least we can still see her, speak to her, touch her. We are literally hours from her being gone. She’s 60 years old, she has been a mother for 43 years, and I’ve known her for 26 years, but in just hours she will be taken from us for the rest of our lives. We’ve had our last conversation, and it was a good one, maybe our best one, but still it was our last one.

I came across these words, never finished, while going through my notes this evening. I’m sharing them here, like this, because in many ways these old emotions are being stirred presently. The mixture of foreign and familiar reminds me of that night. One month ago we moved to an area that is very familiar, and yet it is new — a new house in a new town, halfway between two places I’ve lived before, Pulaski and Florence. We are new members of a church that we’ve known for a long time, but haven’t yet got to be with. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a prettier place on earth than the Tennessee Valley in Spring, but fear and dread are lingering over us like dark clouds on the horizon. Familiar, comforting, yet strange and sad. 

Sitting here tonight, I’m reminded of ancient stories, that tell of foreign people and places, and yet those stories are as familiar to me as my own story, because I’ve also known them all of my life. Stories of people who didn’t know how their story would end, but they set out to walk by faith. Despite the particulars of how their story, our present story, or our personal story will end, I know tonight, just like I knew that night in August in that little room at Tanglewood Apartments, how it will ultimately end. “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). We have very little control over how things end, but we have complete control over how we want to spend the time we have until the end. Our family spent the final days of Debbie’s life together, laughing, crying, eating, telling stories, praying, and holding tightly to every minute we were gifted. You can do what you want to do with the time you are gifted today. You have that choice. You may not know or get to choose how and when this time will end, but you can decide what you do with it. “Make the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16).