kvetching up

 Entry 1     8:56 a.m. Early mornings are the hardest. I wake up without the routine, the ritual. She isn't beside me, just the empty space where the hospital bed sat. I can see her dying in it, her final gasps mechanical, nothing more. Eyes shut, chest heaving every minute or so. Breathing was so intermittent, I kept believing she had died. But when it happened for real, I knew. "She's dead," I said to Leiney and Jane. We had been there with her, talking amiably.  The fish breathing, as it is called, started a day earlier. Her suffering, which had become such a part of her life, our lives, had entered the realm of the banal. Not for her, to be sure. She fought with every fiber in her being to stay alive. It only prolonged her suffering. I would rub her head and kiss her. I would whisper "its okay to let go. I love you." Her life already gone, her sentience a question mark, I just didn't want her to suffer anymore. I couldn't stand watching as the ca...