Saying goodbye gently

It was a good thing to do on the last day of the year, visit Bert in the nursing home on the day when the year is wrapped. Bert is wrapping his last chapter, though his memory is lessens he is coming to terms with it.

The city is quiet on this first morning, a couple of inches of snow and the general holiday combine on this blue-gray morning, a quiet, gentle morning.

Bert has both colon and bone cancer, he might also have lung and heart problems, is incontinent; the specifics of his condition are off limits to me a rule that doesn’t concern me. There is a scale they use to measure the level of life, 100 is someone who walks around and takes care of business unaided, 0 is dead, Bert was at 30 a couple of months ago, he has slipped since then. I probably wasn’t supposed to be told that, but what the hell.

He asked for a drink of water, butI am not allowed to give him one; all Ted’s liquids have to be thickened, thickener is added to his cup of water to prevent it going down the wrong way and choking him. Another reminder of his situation.

I have been told that bone cancer can be painful, and I ask Bert each time if he is in pain, he never is. Whatever drugs he is on seem to take care of the pain without making him drunk; but he is dying.

He is dying, there will be a time when I won’t visit him, that time isn’t far away. We had a nice visit, he thanked me for coming, couldn’t remember my name or if I had visited previously, a benign smile, maybe it was the medication, maybe it was the natural process of coming to terms with saying goodbye.

Goodbye is a quiet activity, it is the moments after the visitor’s car has left, the time when everyone has gone and the cleaning up is begun.

I did tell Bert a joke that made him laugh: “Bert I have a confession to make to you, sometimes I feel as if I am a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.” He got the joke immediately, the nurse who was nearby didn’t, she seemed uncomfortable hearing it; a dying man had a laugh, she might welcome that instead of acting otherwise.

I have shut the work radio off, bought groceries for a couple of days, sorting and put away clothes, papers, the empty box from the new tv, books and memories; putting on the shelf all those things that are not being used today. Playing a male Welsh choir recording, remembering my father’s memory of hearing the miners on their way to work before dawn, coming home after sunset, singing as they came and went in the dark, Sunday was their day off, the day to see the sun.

Saying goodbye is a quiet and gentle thing, but it brings great sadness, I am very sad this morning, and know that out of this sadness will come joy, later on today.