The First Thursday in March

A year ago, on the first Thursday of March, Leiney, my sister Jane and I were lying in the bed that abutted Jenny's hospital bed set up in the master bedroom. Jenny hadn't been conscious in days. In fact, she had very much been in the active stages of dying. We were facing her and chit chatting. As you sit next someone in the throes of death, someone taking days to die and who is unconscious, and suffering, fear dissipates. Compassion and love fill your heart. I remember the day before, I sat alone with her and sang every song I could remember that meant so much to the two of us, that she loved so much, that we loved so much. 

On that Thursday, none of the three of us could leave Jenny's side. Some days ago, before she lost her faculties, she had seen her dead mother and father standing in the room, a common happening as you near death. Fish breathing, which had been going on a few days before and is another feature of impending death, had passed, and now, she was taking a breath maybe once or twice a minute. Once or twice a minute. We kept her highly medicated to make the pain abate, bleeding from your internal organs is, in fact, agony. We lay there, the three of us, not wanting her to go, but wishing the suffering would end. We were laughing about something or other we were discussing, when I looked over and noticed that Jenny had left. It snuck up on us, given the distance between breaths. Before this, during the last couple days of her life, with her intermittent breathing, any number of us prematurely called her demise. 

I didn't cry for a few minutes after she stopped breathing. People in the house that wanted to, came up to the bedroom to say their goodbyes. When everyone was finished, I asked to be alone with her. I laid down, and put my arm on her lifeless body, and stayed that way, going in and out of sleep, for 6 hours. I may have stayed longer, but the body retrieval people showed up at that time, and needed to take her to the UW morgue--Jenny donated her body to the UW where it will remain for up to three years.

It doesn't seem like a year since I lost that part of me who did so much good in the world, and yet caused us so mu h pain in her choices. My "better half." No irony intended. 

I still haven't gotten rid of her clothes or other things. It's hard to move on, harder to let go of 31 years. The only person who knew me well, and she is gone forever. The shared history, gone. The memory of romantic days together, gone. Shopping for Christmas ornaments every time we traveled, gone. Our shared experience working at MDA camp, gone. Shared memories of our children's births and their rearing, lost. It would all disappear into the ether soon enough, it was just far sooner than I had expected. I miss her so much, despite everything, I ache. The focal point of this Thursday is almost paralyzing. She died on the first Thursday, an hour from now. An hour from now. An hour from now. 

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