Tomorrow is a New Day…
It is a delight to be able to keep up with students I had in class years ago. I’ve long been impressed by Jen Bello, with whom I studied in the fall of 2002. Intellectually sharp and ever so gentle, she has kept in touch with me, even after starting medical school at SLU. She is soon to finish her third year and is currently doing an elective course of study with the Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma, focusing on accompanying Bosnian women to the doctor. She is also a poet.
On Wednesday 7 February, we met late in the evening at Coffee Cartel to catch up. She had just come from the hospital where her great uncle was gravely ill. We talked some about The Book of Mev, which she had recently finished, as well as Magan Wiles’ performance during Palestine Awareness Week. I received the following email from Jen late the next night…
Mark,
My great uncle died today. My sister and I were there with my great aunt…as we just begun grappling with the two options– perform a procedure that will “prolong the inevitable”, or make him comfortable as possible with hospice care. Talking, theorizing, trying to rationalize how this could be the end, that this time he would most likely NOT bounce back…we watched as his oxygen saturation dropped from 95% (which is very good/normal) to 83–75–68…it happened within a matter of minutes…and as the respiratory care nurse stepped out of the room to get the supplies necessary to do a breathing treatment…I rubbed his shoulder and told him to breathe through his nose to try to maximize the amount of oxygen he was inhaling….he was unable to follow the instruction. He pushed his head foreward, and with his mouth gaping open (as it had been for the past day as he was trying to breath while drowning in the fluid filling his lung, but denying any pain the entire time), tried to take 2 or 3 struggled breaths. His face turned pale, and as the thought began to cross my mind that this was it….his monitor read 0…0% oxygen saturation, 0 heartrate. He was ashen gray and not breathing. We ran into the hall to get the nurses who came running in and put an oxygen mask on him…but he was already gone. My great aunt stood watching..I don’t know how she didn’t cry…while my sister and I held her close…tears spilling down both of our cheeks. He had made the decision for us– he was gone. His body failed…I spent the rest of the day talking with various family members, hugging, holding– discussing the events. Somehow, talking rationally about the postulated mechanics of his death brought comfort– for brief moments. But no matter how many times I try to tell myself his body failed..people die…he was 86…he lived a good life…..it can’t take away the pain I feel knowing that this man– this crazy uncle with the odd jokes, the guy who taught my brother how to golf as a kid, who bossed people around, loved wine, chocolate, and desserts…will no longer be here. Nothing could change the fact that my aunt would be going home to empty house tonight (as she had since he had first began getting sick at the beginning of January), but would not be waking up in the morning preparing to go visit the man she had loved and lived with for the past 46 years….the father of her child– the two of them having watched their 30-something year old son die of AIDS many years ago. I spent the rest of the day surrounded by the people I love– left my aunt alone in her house to somehow muster the strength to wake up in the morning…stayed with my sister as we struggled with what we had witnessed together– we were so happy to have been there for my aunt..there was no place i would have rather been…but how painful and draining it had been– we both ended up with a splitting headache….and broken hearts. Today, we witnessed with our aunt the mystery of life– a body, a vessel becoming void of its soul. Death is a part of living. Loss is a part of life….i tell myself these things as I am, at last, alone in my room– allowing tears to freely flow down my cheeks….wishing nothing more than to cry myself to sleep.
Before I can sleep– i needed to write….get it out…process it. Thank you for sharing your time with me last night and thank you for letting me share my experience today. Tomorrow is a new day- you know that..I know that…
Jen