The Bath

I was not inside my physical body at that point, hovering somewhere along the ceiling watching the events unfold below. The length of his still body was now stretched across the living room floor surrounded by paramedics. I stood a few feet away meekly mumbling unanswered questions, a card given to me by a stranger on the streets of San Diego a year ago with an unknown saint depicted on it clutched between my trembling fingers. To this day, I still cannot tell you the name of that saint, but I was praying to whoever would listen. It was the first time I had prayed since I was a child.

I could hear the questions my physical body was asking. “Is he going to be okay? Will he wake up?” The prayers inside though were much more desperate. “God, please let the man I love live.” When one of the paramedics began to use the defibrillator, it started to become clear that the situation was beyond prayer. Prior to that moment, I had never seen how violently a defibrillator will make a human chest jump, and watching his body remain lifeless still after each thunderous bounce made my questions and prayers suddenly fade.

Before an onset panic attack catapulted me from my physical body and I was still operating from within, I had also seen and experienced a few other things for the first time. For the first time, I had seen a man’s face turn completely blue before he collapsed. For the first time, I had felt the weight of an unconscious man over six feet tall as I dragged him into the shower to get his skin to return to its proper color. It was also my first time seeing syringes outside of medical use in person, when I found them in his pockets and stashed in hidden placed in his truck. It was the first time I had seen an unconscious body breathe in such a way, hyperventilating but low and quiet, struggling, slower and eventually slower. When I opened his mouth to put my ear to it to feel for breath, I had never before seen this strange white film on a person’s tongue. It was my first time, with the assistance of the 911 dispatcher, attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I never knew how small the rib cage of a grown man feels while doing chest compressions, fragile beneath your palms. I never knew how strong the human jaw was until his clenched down around my fingers as I struggled to pry it open for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Up until that moment, I was also unaware that a dying or potentially already dead body could, from the combination of chest compressions and the force of my breath, vomit the birthday dinner I had cooked for him back into my mouth and onto my sweater. I hope all those first experiences were the very last.

I remained outside of my body still as I gave my statement to the police officer, sitting in the passenger seat of his vehicle, breathlessly rambling as many details as I could, some useful and some probably useless. As I finished giving my statement, the officer gently told me that we could exit the privacy of the vehicle and go check in with the detective now. As I watched my hand reach for the door handle, a gigantic crow, larger than any I had ever seen before landed on the ground outside the door and spread its massive wings. I knew already what the detective would say, but still hovering above I watched as I approached him and hinged forward at the waist, not necessarily screaming but howling more like an unrecognizable animal as he said, “I’m sorry, but he did not make it to the hospital.” The noise that came out of me could not have been my voice. I could not tell what animal it was though.

I still had yet to return to my body when I went to his bedroom to discover his scent still present on the pillow covers nor when I packed a small bag of my clothing nor when I entered my brother’s car nor when I picked up my then four-year-old son. I was not in there still when my grandmother held me by the shoulders and said, “No matter what, this was not your fault”, wise in her prediction that eventually I and many other people would begin to place the blame on me. My body was still on autopilot as my mother sternly said “eat” when I paused and stared at the food she provided me in the morning, knowing well that the first thing to always vanish was my appetite. I watched myself travel in the backseat of my mother’s car with my brother at my side for the three-hour drive to her house. At one point my brother turned to me and said, “I’ve never seen so much red in your hair before.” He paused thoughtfully and in attempt to inspire some strength into his ghostly sister said, “Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.” He also pointed out that one of my angel wing earrings I had been wearing the horrific day before was now missing. From the driver’s seat my mother said, “He needed it.”

Much of the first evening at my mother’s house was a blur, as I continued to remain interstellar, completely disassociated, up until it was time to give my son a bath. My eight-year-old youngest sister was lovingly fascinated by her nephew and always enjoyed helping take care of him since he was an infant, her automatic best friend. She was excited we were home but did not quite understand why. Eagerly she followed me to the bathroom to see how she could play mother’s little helper. I watched myself run the bath, undress my also unaware child, and place him in the water. Again, I froze, staring at my son as he sat in the warm water, unable to bring myself to move. The sweet voice of the youth sitting close at my side said perkily, “Do you want me to help give the baby a bath?”

That is the moment that I began to reenter my body. Yes. Yes, I needed help from an eight-year-old to bathe my son because I couldn’t do it myself. I needed help. A lot of it. I needed help or I was not going to get through this. With unbearable shame I admitted to myself that I could not do this alone. To my youngest sister though I smiled, pretending it was just like before when she would help dress him or feed him during visits, and said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

I did not shower after my son’s bath however. I remained in the same outfit in bed for five days until my mother finally came into the bedroom and stated as gently as possible, “It’s time to get up and take a shower. You’re starting to scare the children.” Guilt ridden, I obliged and made clean of the mangled mess I had become over the days so that I could be present in the house with my family. I did unfortunately not leave the house past the front or back porch for almost two months until my mother finally addressed me, again stern but lovingly, “You need to go get a job. You need to get out of the house.” So, I got a job as a waitress, thinking it was just about the only thing I could handle mentally despite having a degree and a resume suitable of starting a career.

She was right though. I needed to get out of the confines I was keeping myself in, to move, to occupy my mind, to see people’s faces, to hear people’s voices, to speak, speak about anything besides what I would never be able to forget. For the next few months, I became acutely focused on working as many shifts as I possibly could, not for the money but for the noise, the distraction, to stay moving. I would also unfortunately stay out late as often as possible after work because when I would return to silence of the dark bedroom, I would have to face the empty cup in the corner. It was the cup of water he had set next to the bed when we came to my mother’s house for Easter shortly before his passing. She had not had time to clean the room before my unexpected return. I would look at that cup, imagining his hands around it and his lips around its edge, and sink into the ground, suffocating beneath an invisible weight that threatened to take my entire body underground. My mother, very determined and very ruthless in her need for me to get through this, one day threw the cup in the garbage when I was at work. I hated her the moment I saw it was gone and interrogated menacingly for its whereabouts. This very strong woman was trying to send me a very strong message that I understand now. Let go. Stay present.

After months of being a whirlwind presence in the household and probably disrupting the comfort of everyone around me with my moments of complete silence followed by moments of being too big and too loud for the room, a very simple but very important epiphany occurred. It was a random morning. My mother was driving me to work for yet another double shift I insisted on volunteering for because they were the usual cure for my unruly, misdirected energy. I was calm though that morning, and for the life of me I have no idea what triggered the sudden realization. I realized I was not dead. I was alive. So, I could either choose to die with him or live as much as possible. My state of mind at the time would have fooled anyone, but I, in a manner as simple as picking out a pair of socks, thought to myself, I’m going to live. I thought of the bathtub, my son before me, my sister next to me and surrendering to the aide of a child to do the simplest task a mother could do. I had to live. I had to do it for them.

The grieving process, from what I read in a medical book I found on my mother’s bookshelf, will generally take a year. I cannot say that my grieving process was at all textbook or had an expiration date on it, but I can agree that at about a year I was back to living as normal of a life as possible. I was back to feeling like a mother, a sister, a daughter and a human being. Would certain songs still make me cry while in line at the grocery store? Yes. Did it take longer than necessary to stop sleeping in one of his shirts? Definitely. Did I need repeated firm nudging from my mother to take the next step in the healing process and the next one and the next one? Absolutely. Did it take a lot longer than a year for me to finally put away the shrine I made for him in my bedroom? Without a doubt. I did it though, and with the support and inspiration of my family I became ten times the woman I was when I originally entered the doors of that house. I built a career, bought cars, found my dream apartment, traveled and did everything I could to show my son a life he would have never had a chance at seeing had I not become this woman.

Most importantly though, I stayed alive. I stayed alive because an eight-year-old girl helped me give my son a bath when I could not. Despite it being probably a faded memory for her at this time, over a decade later, I considered it life changing. Someone not even half my age helped me come to age, and she did not have the slightest clue that she was doing it.