Death Rattle

Today, I grieve.  It is not quite a year that Dad has been gone.  Some days the feeling of loss is greater.

 

Also, in the last few days, I’ve been giving a fair bit of thought to death.  I’ve seen death more than once, and it is most unpleasant.  I’ve been present when many (> half a dozen, so it’s relative) have breathed their last.

 

If they are family, it is hard and confusing.  I remember Dad’s labored breathing.  The pauses.  The pain and the struggle to even breath.  He would stop, and I would wonder, “Oh my God, it this it?  Right now,” only to have him take another breath.

 

I remember feeling emotionally tired, and part of me wanting the suffering to be over.  But, who’s suffering?  Mine or his (his physical suffering or my emotional), and then the burden of that guilt?  “Oh my God, what kind of monster am I?”  I remember the dawning of the surreal realization of the finality of it all.  There would be no laughing about it later, about how “this was really a close one this time”.  This was it.  The guilt of time wasted, of hurts rendered.  The body broken.  The pity, for what we all must ironically become.