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.
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