The Slumber Party
She’s been moved to hospice.
Question: How on earth did they gain her consent?
Answer: They didn’t.
A cold, bitter walk to Bellevue felt effortless. There are no companions on this snowy, slippery journey. I have raised my shimmering sword at the sacred roundtable of eternal female friendship and claimed this quest as my own.
Turning left and right and left again. Winding, dingy linoleum halls are my yellow brick road. Hospital guards are waiting. They seem excited about exerting their newly granted power prerogatives. My bags and body are carefully searched, my grieving mind briefly questioned, and at long last, I’m mercifully pointed towards the proper elevator. Ascending, I remember with guilt when such a mission had been declined, when I had been too weak and immature to go the distance. This time, I would not fail.
Look at me! I am growing in my earthly responsibilities. Instead of seeking a holy grail, I will wait patiently for a shrouded, scythe-bearing apparition and accept judgment. Instead of a farewell telephone conversation, here I am. Without a second thought, I enter her room and plunge into the abyss.
“You’re here! You’re really here!”
“Of course I am.”
True. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Like a grand invitation-only party, a Truman Capote “Black and White Ball”, this is where I’m supposed to be.
“I hate being here. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.”
“Of course you do. Why are you here?”
“The doctor said there wasn’t anything more to be done and that this is the next step. Tell me, how long did Art Buchwald live in hospice?”
“Wasn’t it two or three years?”
She nods her head.
“And isn’t Valerie Harper still alive?”
“Yes. She keeps going. Like the Ever Ready Bunny.”
“So we don’t know how long it will be?”
“No.”
“Has anyone told you?”
“No.”
It’s true. Nobody has told me and I haven’t asked.
“I don’t want to be here.”
“Of course you don’t. Who would?”
“Do I have to stay here? I want to go home. ”
“We will figure this out. Somehow, we will get you home.”
“It is my home. I pay the mortgage. When will you be leaving?”
“Not for a while. In fact, I’m planning to sleep over.”
“Really? Here?”
“Absolutely here. See that overstuffed messenger bag? I’ve packed clothes for several nights.”
As the sun set, I tried to make sense of hospital room geography. It was a cavernous, cocktail party sized room, with a large window that lacked a view, and purplish abstract art adorning otherwise dull, bare walls. There’s a portable toilet near her bed, sink and closet nearby. There’s a heavy door to keep closed. She must not hear the sounds of the dying and the keening of mourners rising in the night.
“Can you help me use the toilet?”
“Of course I can.”
“I don’t want to wait for the nurse and soil myself.”
“You don’t have to wait. We can do this together.”
Perfect timing and flawless choreography deployed. Years of child and eldercare experience are put to use. We marvel at the smoothness of our mutual coordination. Safely returned to her bed, she grins at me.
“You’re really here. When are you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for the duration.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“There’s a large chair. The nurses will probably bring me sheets and blankets. I’ll be fine. “
“Thanks for being here with me.”
“This is where I’m supposed to be.”
“I’m not supposed to be here.”
“I know this is not what you want. Your wishes will be respected. We will get you home.”
I’ve come to stay. I cannot leave. I’ll go back home when she does. We keep talking – except when she naps, or I leave briefly to pick up dinner or use the visitor restroom in the next wing. She’s frightened when I leave and gratified upon my prompt return. Only when necessary do I wander the hospice hallways, desperately trying not to know too much, a veritable “Sergeant Schultz.” A young man lounging in pajamas breaks my heart. He can’t be even twenty-five. A sheet-covered gurney passes swiftly. Shutting my eyes, I march onward to make a cup of tea in the dayroom. When she sleeps, I sleep. When she wakes, I’m on guard and ready to serve.
“What’s happening next door? They are so noisy!”
“I think there’s a large family visiting. They’ll be leaving soon.”
Evening becomes morning and our conversation flows. We speak about rock and roll, politics, love, and death. Her older brother arrives in the early afternoon and finds us in good spirits, smiling and laughing.
“What’s been going on?” he asks.
“It’s been like a slumber party”, she answers.
Yes. The last time we’d spent so much time together was back in her teenage bedroom, listening to “The Beatles, “The Who”, “Cheap Trick, “The Stones”, “The Jam”, reading Creem Magazine and Rolling Stone, dreaming of bohemian futures. Now, we’re middle-aged, married, living in suburban exile, and facing untimely death.
Her brother and I have a brief, private conversation in the hallway.
“You can see how anxious she’s become. Being in hospice terrifies her. She does not want to die here. She wants to go home to die. Shouldn’t she have that choice? I’m not saying this isn’t a good place or a good enough place, but remaining here is not what she wants. Help me. Help her.”
“I will speak to him. But he says he can’t handle it.”
“He can handle it. He will handle it. We can help him handle it. He needs to come for a visit and see that she is far from ready to pass. He loves her. He needs to see that she must go home.”
“I’ll speak to him. He needs to come see her.”
“Yes, he does.”
Hours pass. Her husband arrives. We make small talk. The menfolk thank me for staying overnight with her at hospice. I lower my head and murmur that my continued presence is a given. They step outside and confer in the hallway. Her husband loves her – heck, they are soul mates. He’s scared but will rise to the occasion – as all of us must. Marriage is like the “Deep State” – it endures due to mysterious organic and inorganic forces and the whole is way more than the sum of those frustrating, heart-breaking, and ecstatic parts. Despite seasons of disappointment, inertia and conflict, and in recognition of episodes realizing of heaven on earth, marital moral obligations, akin to those of samurai, endure. Until death, you are not to be parted. Ten minutes later her request is granted. She’s leaving hospice and going home. Her husband kisses her and hurries through the doorway. He will prepare their modest Hoboken apartment for her return.
Hours pass. I pack her bags, clear garbage, and await the ambulance. Then it was time.
She slowly pulled on furry Ugg boots, brushed her hair, boarded the stretcher and waited for safety belts to be strapped tightly across her chest. In that moment, she was the bravest person I have ever known.
Emergency medical technicians gently pushed her gurney out of the room. To our surprise, there’s a cluster of nurses and orderlies assembled in the hallway. The hospice staff has come to say goodbye. A chorus of lilting Caribbean voices rising upwards: “You fight, Miss! You fight!”
She did. For three weeks. Living longer than anyone who’d read the discharge report expected.
So I am here, she elsewhere. Yet she’s granted me rare visitation in a suburban Macy’s dressing room. My beloved Anglophile softly taps my shoulder and insists:
“For a trip to Scotland, one must be properly clothed and accessorized.”
While I made the trip to my son’s University of St. Andrews graduation, the elegant floral purse I purchased remains tightly wrapped in the Tod’s original paper. A fancy clutch, eternally unclutched. Her death at fifty remains my despair.
During her final months, she comforted me as I mourned a lost ex-lover, reciting the Kaddish for him each morning. She knew what would be done to honor her memory when the time came. We emailed every day, marveling: How thin life is! Death so close, just on the other side of human experience… During her last days, I would keep blowing her dating game kisses, sweeping hand to waist, and then extending my arms heavenward.
A final telephone call:
“I’m really dying now.”
Her brother and I shivered our way to the PATH train. For three days and nights we mopped her sweaty brow, sang into the night, blessed her, and wept. I praised her with every superlative that Webster’s Dictionary contained. I tried not to cry when the master bedroom light fixture burnt out, when her oxygen tank briefly stopped functioning, when her husband briefly forgot where he’d put the instruction box containing color coded morphine syringes. I hummed the lyrics to “As Tears Go By” and “Waterloo Sunset” so she’d know that I would remember her love of Marianne Faithfull and “The Kinks.”
While the visiting nurse checked her vital signs, her husband, brother, and I held a secret kitchen rendezvous. Was there such a thing as a “good death” from breast cancer at the age of fifty? If so, we were determined to provide it. I’d like to think we succeeded. She passed quietly on a Friday afternoon, looking out the window, the only time her brother and I had left her bedside.
In the aftermath of her death, what came hardest was honoring the requests of the living.
“Could you do one last, great favor?”
“Yes. What do you need?”
“I cannot imagine her in a shroud. Can you set aside a plastic bag of suitable clothing for the funeral home?
Dressing a rock and roll chick for burial meant selecting ebony boots, slim black jeans, a silvery button down blouse, and a green beaded bracelet. I hoped she would approve of my fashion choices. I also hoped she would forgive me for not returning to the apartment and taking more of her personal possessions. She was not ready to part with them, as she was not ready to leave this life.
Three years later, I’m pleased about an unexpected mid-March snow and a further delay of spring weather. Frigid fingers snatch at my sensible cloth coat, weaving us together in perpetual winter. Once again, I’m not ready for the world to be reborn without her. Tonight, I sit with her memorial candle burning brightly beside me. Our slumber party is over and it’s my turn to cry.