Last Breath

She took her last breath on June 8, 2017. I honestly don’t remember when. Time was either standing still or careening past, I can’t exactly recall which. I thought I’d never forget that time, but here I am almost seven years later and I can’t put my finger on it. Pretty sure it was around 4am.

I was there for the duration, to witness her last breath as she witnessed my first.  I hadn’t spent much time in this place, her room at The Kathy Hospice in West Bend, WI where they called her the “Comeback Kid”. You see, mom was admitted there a few times, based upon how her doctors determined she was managing her Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer. I guess three times is a charm, as that was her last.

My mom and dad told my sister and I that they decided that she would die in a hospice home (if that was to be within her control). She didn’t want to die in the home they enjoyed for so long. Knowing her man as she did, that wouldn’t be comforting. She was taking his feelings into consideration even as she was dying. That wasn’t the first time I witnessed her doing that either. It was one of the many decisions they made over the fifty-six years they spent together. She had seen one too many spouses “get completely spent taking care of their loved one dying.” She didn’t want that for her husband. She didn’t want her dying and this disease to also take a part of him. I guess, even in this last chapter we try to control the things we can, for all our own reasons.

On Tuesday, June 6th, 2017, lines of communication with my dad were degrading in ways I might have better understood if I was sitting there with him. I called to say, “I just booked a flight home for this coming Monday, was that good?.”  On the other end of the phone all I heard was, “There’s nothing you can do, nothing you can do.” This from my Dad, who had never left my mom’s side since the moment of her diagnosis nine months ago. Four weeks earlier I had been in Wisconsin with them, and I talked to my mom a few days ago, but her condition was changing fast.

In hindsight, I recognize that my dad and sister were already mourning her death, and were communicating the best they could. I called back, but to the nurse’s desk, not my mom’s room. I asked for an update. The nurse said, “You need to get here now.” I said, “Now? Like, now-now? I live in New Hampshire.”  She said, “Like, now. I don’t know how much longer your mom has.”

With the last flight out from Boston I arrived just in time. Not in time to talk to her, but to hold her hand and keep telling her how beautiful she was and how much I appreciated her. It was only then that I realized I should have told her more often how beautiful she was inside and out while we could look each other in the eyes.  I believe she heard me.

It was my first, last-breath experience. While I may never recall the time, I will never forget how grateful I was for that moment. My dad and sister had said their good-byes in their own way and shared that they could not bear being with her as she died. Which really meant they couldn’t bear to be without her. We were all reeling inside, doing our best. Not one of us had ever been with someone actively dying, let alone for their last breath.

 Before the sun rose, I was sitting at the desk in her room and found a little notepad, the kind my dad always had in a shirt pocket to jot down notes in for things related to the farm. I opened it up. In my father’s neat handwriting was a highly detailed account indicating dates and times medication was administered to my mom, what she ate and when, fluids, the regularity of her bowel movements….all on repeat for weeks and weeks on end. The closer my mom came to death, the more information my dad wrote down…as if he was capturing every last detail about this woman he had loved and cared for, for over fifty years. This was one of the ways he was trying to stop time, slow time, or just be in time with her.

I was struck by the love and devotion captured in that notebook. I wanted to stuff all that in my own pocket, but knew it wasn’t mine to keep or hold. I may not recall the exact time my mom took her last breath, but I will never, ever forget that notebook.

by: Laura Cleminson

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