This story is not about Covid

This story isn’t about covid though it happened during this stolen time.

It is one about being human....circumstances of which have been both violently argued over + brought to the forefront of awareness for change in differing forms over the course of this strange unyielding portal

I want to show you a man laying in his last physical moments. His air slowly

replaced by its antithesis. Fluid filling into spaces once patent and ready now create a rattling accompanying his slow fatigued breaths.

His mouth had spoke words, tasted foods, kissed, exchanged gases, oxygen. Now incapable of the first three and slowly relinquishing the last. Surrendering what no longer serves.

Four letters compromised the word “LOVE” sprawled across his four left fingers in oddly unsure or unskilled handwriting

They watch back at me as I lean over him listening to all the places organs speak from within us to tell me how far he is out of this life

Edges of the tattoo ink fray into ever widening crevices separating soft cool swollen skin. Making the tattoo appear with a unintentional halo

This was a theme throughout the work on his body, like a message less obvious than symbol or word, it became clear to me this man held sentiment and significance in things other than appearance/skill

I would be remiss to not mention I never heard him say or confirm this. This failing body & our moment in time separated me from his voice and therefore thoughts; the way time allowed permanent ink to bleed past its edges deep into wrinkles dividing previously protectively smooth skin. I never looked at his eyes open with intention so I can’t explain what I think I knew.

His dying was anticipated, therefore I was assigned to watch for it to come while keeping my others alive, under permission of a cousin who made such decisions for both patient + his spouse.

I just watched his pupils react less to light while wiping away layers of debris the body collects as we become increasingly and then forever still.

I honored the pale blue surrounding the black center of his unanimated eyes

Knowing comfort from my daughter, my sister, and my mother’s eyes, in this iris color.

The tiny ways I will make this stranger my family as his would want to ask of me when given a chance.

A pandemic is a both master thief of chances & a mother of inventing new ones

Being at the bedside during it all makes you more aware than you ever knew you could be.

There are some things older than even this virus, that you + all caregivers know.

We are all kinds of people out there but inside these spaces we know that near the end we all share a common language of things never taught, spoken, or given.

We transcend every filter ever created, deed ever done, dollar spent, goal achieved or dream chased. We become greater than our title, color, religion, or Identity or belief. Finally unencumbered by so much with so little time to have it known.

Those of us close enough to so many ends may find without precipitant or warning.... we think and dream in it.

It takes great effort to Walk beside so many extremes and go home to where ever you left your own life that morning. One forgets where one ends and the other begins.

———————————————

I make his passive-to-mine movements as gently and as fluidly as I humanly can as I complete tasks to clean comfort and care for this man.

Something encourages me over and over to speak to him. Lean in close, be easy with my tone of voice to say how loved safe seen worthy valued and beautiful he is.

Hours pass with dizzying changes of direction/priority per second and phone call though walking into his room my abrasive ringer seemed to misplace it’s reach of me...trading longer stretches of silence over constant ring but only in his room.

Until

Invention mother called to say the request I’d made was approved by the CNO for a one hour only final visit from his spouse, before he left for his turn on the second trip every single one of us is guaranteed in this life.

I tell him his girl was coming to see him. I knew both this man and his wife moved through the world under labels like “delayed” & “disordered”

Serving injustice to the bearer.

Our truest teachers of purity, innocence, empathy, compassion

She arrived to his room, she was so tiny compared to the man who dwarfed her even from his pillow supported horizontal position

Her face noticeably collapsed inwards behind a bright white mask juxtaposing a bright red-lipped smile decal on the center

Tight white-dyed blonde curls fell around her face as she buried her face against his “LOVE” stained left fingers.

She left more tears and masked kisses then words in that room

Before her cousin returned for the lightspeed hours end. A chaplain walked her down to the hospitals main entrance to ease the alone, I Imagine waits for a person leaving their dying spouse, in an elevator

I promised her I would take good care of him. Moistening the mouth, medicating the atropine, morphine; turning the body to circulate what’s

Left and prevent more pain....

Yes all of that + more.

But mostly Id see him removed from

The sounds of the hospital & his own dying. Above the ambient music channel displaying pictures of nature’s finest we’d left playing to fill moments he’d be alone.

I willed him into a held cloud of thick sweet scents, gentle breezes, and hazy pastel fractals of color flooding out all other senses.

I called for the guides he would recognize to take his hands in the way he’d had them tattoo’ed In “LOVE.”

Call home your teacher, your warrior; in the way that best honors his work

In this lifetime.

Again something higher moves me and I say out loud...”you did good work, thank you, go be in bliss, babe”

Something in the middle of me

Knows this is true without knowing this man a single other day in his lifetime except his next to last.

Call it grandiose. praying. wishing. dreaming. any of those work but I always feel and see in my mind’s eye as I do it...

And on this day this man came into my hands I saw them extend to every single person who’s breath now is silently still, also wishing layers of glowing light around them, will someone near them

To honor their lifetime,

injecting remote love into moments I will never see will, People I’ll never meet...

Those doing their walk with death out of this life alone, untimely, with pain, or at hands of injustice

Reflecting back the morning after the day I spent with him

I pull it all back to the front of my focus. To my mind, senses, my heart, The middle of me...

And I pour metaphoric water on what feels like too much to continue to exist with

To make room for So much reverence for each of these souls I encounter

Life, the walk with death, why we came here at all

How beautiful it truly is for love to witness itself in unexpected places

I make a small bow within myself to the existence of so much pain alongside of so much love+beauty, knowing my time so close to it can’t be sustained forever.

May I maintain this level of gratitude for the opportunity to witness it all