Last Words

Almost immediately after Vicki's diagnosis of terminal metastatic breast cancer, I started mentally preparing myself for her death by picturing it.  Constantly.

But since I had never seen somebody actually die before, I really had no idea what we were all in for, and imagined it quite wrong.  I'll blame TV for that - the image of healthy actors and actresses lying comfortably in a clean bed and saying something poignant at the end is ingrained in everybody's psyche as the way it "should" happen.

So, months before her death, I imagined the conversation we would have before her last breath and it went something like this:

Scene:  a modestly lit hospital bed, possibly in a real hospital, with a sick-looking but still recognizable Vicki looking deeply into my eyes and bravely sharing a final joke with me.

Me, with gentle tears glistening in my eyes:  I love you so much, I'll miss you.

Vicki, maybe with a labored breath or a wistful smile:  It was terrible.  She was a breech...

Me, also smiling with reminiscence:  You're all right now.

Vicki dies, I cry photogenically and end scene.

In case you don't recognize it, the dialogue is from She's Having a Baby (a classic John Hughes movie from the 80s with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern), and something that Vicki and I had said to each other thousands of times over the years when one or the other of us was complaining about something minor.  You know, like dying.

There are several things to note about this fantasy:

• Yes, I was the star of Vicki's death scene, which was pretty much in keeping with our relationship before her diagnosis.  She gave, I took.  She delivered the straight lines and I got to be funny.
• We were both quite calm and stoic about her impending death, as though she was doing something as mundane as getting ready to go out to dinner.
• We both understood that it was our last words to each other and wanted to share a final sweet moment together.

When Vicki was really dying, though, there was nothing cinematic about it at all.  Grim reality does not belong on the big screen.

She spoke her final words, not from her death bed (which was, indeed a hospital bed, but it was positioned just two feet from her real bed in her real bedroom), but on the seat of a hospice-issued bedside commode.

It was Tuesday, and she was quiet but restless.  She had stopped recognizing me the day before and had spoken very little since Sunday night.

The hospice nurse the day before had classified Vicki as "imminent," meaning that her time was likely coming in the next two weeks and issued us all kinds of meds to help keep her calm and pain-free.  The nurse had explained the end-of-life process in a reassuring way that was still just utterly overwhelming.  I was wildly under-prepared for any of this.

The hospital bed had been delivered the night before, and we struggled to get Vicki into it.  She was so weak she couldn't stand or really even pull herself up.  Her husband Wally and I rolled her over and positioned her in a way that we could transfer her... well, not easily, but with the least amount of effort from her.  It was sweaty, heart-pounding work and I knew it was hurting her.  She moaned and protested, but it had to be done.

Vicki was quickly losing her control over her motor functions and the box of hospice personal supplies hadn't arrived yet, so Wally left to run to the store for Depends while I stayed alone with our girl.

I was terrified.

She was so frail and seemed to have so little comprehension anymore of what was going on.  I hoped she was comfortable in the hospital bed and that she could simply rest.

So of course she tried to get up.

Fuck.

"What do you need, pretty girl?"

She was making noise, but none of it was words.  She was trying to move, but was unable to go anywhere.  The only time she'd made any attempt to sit up in the past two days was when she needed to go to the bathroom, but there was absolutely no way she'd be able to walk all the way into the bathroom anymore.  I didn't think I could help her up by myself, but the thought of her lying in her own shit in a hospital bed was so unacceptably indignant to me that I sprang into action anyway.

I told her to stay put and grabbed the bedside commode, getting it as close to her as possible, between her hospital bed and the other bed.  I helped her roll to the side and sit up.  I told her I needed her help and she had to stand for a second and pivot onto the chair.  It was impossible to tell if she understood me, but I wrestled her into position and up we went onto her feet, then - plunk! - unceremoniously she dropped onto the commode.

My heart was thudding out of my chest.

What if she fell?  What if I was hurting her?  What if she fucking died and it was all my fault?

She clawed at the arm rests on the commode.  I told her it wasn't a chair, it was a toilet.  She could go, it was okay.  She made noise and I wasn't sure what she was trying to tell me.  Did she understand what I was saying?

She protested and tried to move.  I held onto her and explained again, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

I had wedged my right hip up against the big bed and spread my left leg on top of hers, braced against the hospital bed.  I held her around the middle as tightly as I dared, as she swayed like a drunken sailor on rough seas and groaned with frustration.

Nothing about this situation - my beautiful, confident sister sitting bald, skeletal, half-naked and uncomprehending on a temporary toilet, in pain and unable to do even the smallest thing for herself - was like anything I had ever wanted for her.  I felt sick and helpless.

"I'm sorry, baby.  I'm so, so sorry."

She looked at me in the way that dying people look, which is to say that her dull, unfocused eyes were aimed more or less in my vicinity, and she said, "I know."

I'm pretty sure that everybody else in the family got "I love you, too" as their final words from Vicki.  She said it so many times in her last weeks of life, responding to all the love showered on her.

But I got something different.  Perfect for me, perfect for our relationship.  Vicki said something to me that was better than a joke, better than love, and - even though I would have greatly preferred another 40 or 50 years of "last words" together - better than I could have imagined all those months before.

In that moment, holding on to each other, I wasn't just apologizing for the indignity of the commode.  I was sorry for everything:  the cancer, her pain, my failings as a sister, every slight, every insult, every hurt big or small that she'd felt in her whole life.  I was sorry for it all.

And she knew.

Merry Christmas EVE

I woke up this morning already crying.  I know it sounds foolish and naïve to say that I didn't think Christmas EVE would be this sad, but there you go.  I didn't.

I mean, I'm not dumb.  I knew Christmas wasn't going to be easy.  Bereaved people everywhere are missing their loved ones on Christmas.  That's a given.

But this isn't Christmas.  It's Christmas EVE, and that's harder.

Vicki's husband Wally and I were talking about grief recently - I think it was before Vicki even died - about how it's not the big, obviously sad things that will get to you, but rather that you'll be standing in the kitchen, looking at a spatula, and burst into tears because you remember that one time that Vicki did that one thing, and suddenly her loss is unbearable.

I made it through this week of planning her funeral service, choosing flowers, looking through old pictures for the memorial video and picking up her ashes from the crematorium almost entirely dry-eyed.

But Christmas EVE?  Christmas EVE is a god-damn spatula.

Vicki and I had a long-standing (30+ years) tradition of wishing each other a Merry Christmas EVE.  In all caps.  Generally spoken at top volume in a mocking, challenging (but oh-so loving) way.

It all started waaaay back when we were in high school, with an otherwise unremarkable scene from the soap opera Days of Our Lives:  Shane (do you remember Shane?  Charles Shaughnessy was SO swoon-worthy) wished his daughter Eve a Merry Christmas.

That's it.  Just, "Merry Christmas, Eve."

But in a way that is only funny to teenagers, Vicki and I thought this was hilarious and repeated it to each other endlessly. It was an instant Christmas tradition, and - because we're sisters - it immediately became a competition, too, complete with a set of arbitrary rules and a mental scorecard of who WON.  (In case you're wondering:  to win, you had to be the first to complete the sentence out loud - not via text - in the presence of the other person, on the day before the holiday.)

Yep.  Stole it from Google Images.

Over the years, it expanded well beyond Christmas to include birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year's, the 4th of July and pretty much any major or minor holiday.  Because more holidays meant more chances to win, obviously.

Or - now - more chances to miss my sister.

It's only been nine days, but honestly, I've been doing pretty good on the "missing her" front.  Denial and her companion Disassociation have been very helpful to me, keeping the sadness at bay, and getting me through the tough moments where I almost - but not quite - acknowledge that Vicki is actually gone, and that the last time she wished me a Happy EVE was the last time she was going to.

It was the day before Thanksgiving.

I don't remember why I was at her house, but I seem to recall that it was just a quick visit.  I climbed the stairs to find her lying in bed, awake and semi-lucid (already getting more and more rare - a real treat that I savored in the moment and have thought of many times since).

I climbed on the bed.

"Hey, pretty girl.  You're awake!  Do you have something to say to me?"

"I'm sorry…??" she said, looking mildly concerned.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about!" I laughed and kissed the top of her sweet bald head.  "But.  Haaaaaapppp…" I prodded.

"Haaaaappppy…  Thaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnksgiving…  EVE!" she said in unison with me, with some confusion.  "It's Thanksgiving tomorrow?"

I assured her that yes, it was.  And even then, there was a part of me that knew.

Technically?  I won Thanksgiving.  But oh my god, in the weeks since then I've lost everything.

The silly traditions, the stories, the memories.  All the hundreds - thousands - of strings that bound us together at the core snapped and floated away from me when Vicki died.  And today, I find myself leaping and shouting, desperately trying to grasp those cords and pull her back to me for one more laugh, one more hug, one more EVE. 

But she's gone. 

And I'm here, with my hands empty and my eyes full of tears.

Merry Christmas, Eve.

My Sister is Dead and I Don't Know What to Do with My Hands

Vicki died last Friday, December 15th at 12:12 pm, nearly seven months after her diagnosis of metastasized breast cancer.

In her last week, pretty much everyone and everything was in constant motion.  The nurses, her kids, the meds, coming and going, visitors, people bringing meals, rushing home to attend to my own family.

I barely slept, I barely ate, I barely had time to think.

And now, now that she's gone, I have nothing but time.  I have the rest of my life to think.

So, I'm starting this blog.  Mostly so I'll have something to do with my hands, but maybe so I can work through some of those thoughts.

Grief is funny.  Like, not funny ha-ha, but funny odd.  It changes from hour to hour, minute to minute.  It's changing as I type this sentence.

I want something to do.  I want a LOT of somethings to do.  But today, just sitting on the couch and watching Season 3 (yes, nearly the whole thing) of The Office felt like a lot of work, a serious effort.

My mind is manic, but my body is sluggish.

I guess I'll figure this out as I go.

Pre-diagnosis, early morning workout with a friend

Soon after Vicki's diagnosis, we were sitting in her front room, just talking.  I had left for vacation, scouting out colleges in southern California with my youngest son, just a few days after she received her life-changing news.  I had missed her first chemo treatment and we were all trying to understand and accommodate this "new normal."

We talked about inconsequential things.  Celebrity gossip, if I had to guess, and maybe neighborhood gossip or something about our kids and families.  I asked about her treatment, of course, and she asked about the campuses we had visited.  It was awkward, almost like small talk with a stranger.

Over the next not-quite seven months, things would change dramatically between us, but on this particular day, she was still my big sister.  The protector, the one in charge, the one who could always make things happen.

We didn't really talk about the cancer, or at least about the fact that her diagnosis was terminal.  We talked about wigs, and how we would continue our weekly Thursday morning walks.  We danced around the subject, but didn't address it directly.

As I got up to leave, I hugged her, and looking back now I think that was the last really good strong hug I got from her, because very soon afterward was when the port ("Natalie Portman," as we not-so affectionately referred to it) was put in and she started putting her left hand up to protect it.

Hugs changed, too.

I held her tightly and could feel myself starting to cry.  She felt it, too, and she said quietly, "We'll figure it out."

I've thought about those words a lot since then, and repeated them dozens of times in the last few weeks, as our world is again rocked by change and I'm struggling to adjust to another "new normal."

I guess I'll figure it out.