’Til Death Do Us Part

There’s nothing as definite as the separation of bodies when death takes one of them. On the other hand, it turns out that if you want a marriage to last “after death,” with that sense of still being loved, you can choose to go that way. Of course, I didn’t know that yet, as Dave and I began our day on April 3, 2019.

Mostly what I knew were these things:

That against all my years of care and intent, I’d taken part in hurting Dave physically a few hours earlier, as the hospice nurse and I struggled to insert a catheter for him — he could no longer leave the bed, and it was the only choice left. My heart still ached from doing that, and I’d had only a couple of hours of restless sleep since then.

That the morphine pump, installed just before dawn, was a blessing: Dave wasn’t in pain, had relaxed, was breathing calmly, and I could stop being on the edge of tears.

That this long “dying” wasn’t going to last much longer. Although the nurses resisted making predictions, one had finally answered my desperate question as she put on her boots to depart, a week or so earlier, saying (far from Dave’s ears) that his condition meant he’d pass within the next two weeks or so. My biggest doubts for myself involved whether I had the strength and stamina, as well as a calm heart and kind acceptance, to see this through to the end for Dave. But…