I will forever remember those words, the last of tiny white petals to bloom from his soft pink lips. How they shot over and through me - not a rain of flowers, but a torrent of water - engulfed by waves. I remember the numbness, the fighting for my breath as I felt the sea pull me under, my need to repeat the words, seemingly through mouthfuls of sand, when, in fact, they were as clear and as deafening as any words ever spoken.
"I think it is time to go."
"It's time to go? Okay," I said in a voice I did not recognize. A voice as fragile as cracked glass, as surprised as a newborn.
No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you think you've prepared, you can never be. Not for those words. How can you? They are the beginning of the next world, the ending of another - only one of which you can be a part. At that moment, again, the universe has changed. Shifted. Hold on! You know what the next wave will bring, the power and force of its energy. It will take you under, swallow you low into its belly, if you don't find your anchor. Now is the time. Toss it over and let it settle, deep.
He nodded, weakly. His face resigned, sad from the words, the finality of his decision, the letting go.
From what depths does one pull in finding the strength to utter those words? How does one feel when the final decision is made, when the leaving behind, however painful, is far more preferable and right than the unknown?
I had never seen him look so sad. Even in the freedom of decision, of releasing himself from stillness and torment, his eyes were shadowed with sorrow. But as the days went on, that would change. The color that began to bloom in his hollowed cheeks was that of acceptance, of peace.
There were some days when he would smile. No bodily movement, no voice, just a small blooming of the lips - a flower, one last time from this earth. Was the flower for me? Or was it what he was just beginning to know as his new door opened little by little each day?
He stopped eating. That was how he would release himself, let go. In a body that had nearly disappeared, frail, shattered, weighing almost nothing at all, it still took thirteen days. Thirteen days before he joined the wind - blowing like dandelion spore, riding the thermals on a wish. His wish.
It is hard to go about your business when your husband is dying in the next room. Does he smell the food I prepare for myself? Does it make the starving process all the more difficult, to resist sustenance, resist life? It took me a couple of days to fully digest that one - the different dynamics playing out in each room, the sheer determination of each of us separated only by a narrow threshold - one of survival, the other of death. But, I had to eat. I had to retain my strength, my health. Somehow, amidst the turmoil of the last few years, I remained strong, my health intact. I could not falter now. I still had things to take care of - John, his final wishes, my life. If only one of us was to survive, then I would walk away as strong and as unscathed as I possibly could.
As I look back on those last days, on my questions, concerns and heartbreak over the processes of living and dying, I realize that much of what plagued me were the philosophical questions and angst of a healthy human being.
When one is dying, when one has made the decision to release himself from disease or illness, the mind must surely function in a way that we cannot comprehend. It is not ours to understand.
One evening, I asked John if the smell of my dinner bothered him, made it more difficult. He smiled and whispered, "no." There appeared to be no internal struggle of want or need for food. The idea of sustenance, hunger, satiation, were no longer part of John's world. When I accepted this, to the degree where one can understand such a foreign concept, I was able to abandon the feelings of guilt, despair, the need to feed and nurture him even though I knew it could not or should not be.
Each day, a new wave rolled over me. When I felt myself going under, I would slip out onto the deck, if only for a short while, and regain my footing from the temple of nature that surrounded me. Always, the natural world had sustained me, and now more than ever, as my husband lay dying, as my closest friends and family were thousands of miles away, Nature's reassuring embrace kept me grounded and forever grateful.
I missed the sound of voices, of interaction, of the days when John and I would engage in hours of effortless discussion about everything and nothing at all. But in exchange for lost voices, I received the gift of birdsong, of wind rustling through leaves, the gentle lapping of waves along the cove, the delicate rift of butterfly, bee and hummingbird wings.
A native Californian, Jan Baumgartner is a freelance writer currently living in Maine. Her background includes scriptwriting, comedy writing for the Northern California Emmy Awards, and travel writing for The New York Times. She has worked as a grant writer for the non-profit sector in the fields of academia, AIDS, and wildlife conservation and anti-poaching for NGO's in the U.S. and Africa. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous online and print publications in the U.S. and internationally, including the NYT, Bangor Daily News, SCOOP New Zealand, Wolf Moon Journal, Media for Freedom Nepal, and Banderas News in Mexico. She's finishing a memoir about her husband's death from ALS and how travels in Africa became one of her greatest sources of inspiration and hope. She is a Managing Editor for OpEdNews.
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