Death Bed

Dear Mom,

Within hours of them taking you, I found myself in your bed. It still smelled like you. I breathed you in deeply, trying to make that smell a part of my being. I was suddenly overcome with anxiety that I might smell it all up and it would be gone.

I laid in your bed, clutching one of your pillows, burying my face in another.

The evening golden sun filtered through the blinds that I had opened earlier that morning so that you could feel the sunlight on you one last time.

My body was awash with golden rays of parallel light.

I tried to sleep, but couldn't. I was afraid I might miss something. I wanted to take it all in.

 One of my favourite authors, Claire Bidwell Smith, who lost her own mother at age 18, wrote about eating some of her mother’s ashes after she died, to make sure her mother was always a part of her body. I thought it was morbid when I read it at the time. Now thinking about it, I understand.

As I lay in your bed, I enveloped myself in all of your being that remained in that sacred space. I cried and thought and reflected and cried and looked around and cried some more. I also talked to you, on your Death Bed, where your body lay just hours before. I ran my fingers over the bars of the bed, where I knew your hands had been. I traced the designs on the pillowcase where I knew your hand had adjusted that same pillow. I was desperately trying to soak in the remnants of your fingerprints.

Every few minutes I breathed deeply to make sure it still smelled like you.

I spent hours in your bed.

At some point, I noticed your slippers on the ground, where they lay from the previous night when Cris took them off your feet. The polka dot blue slippers I got you this Christmas from Costco.

 A floodgate opened.

We didn't know those slippers wouldn't go on your feet again. They seemed to hold such promise to be filled again by your feet in the morning. Of course, that was never to be.

I told you out loud that I was sorry I hadn’t thought to put them back on your feet before they took you.

They seemed so lonely and forgotten there on the floor.

Your bed and air mattress on the bed is still on. I didn't have it in me to turn the switch off. A huge waste of electricity, but I couldn't bear to flip another proverbial switch. Another thing gone.  So it remains on.

The bed, as of course you know, isn’t ours, it belongs to hospice. I don't want them to take it away, it seems like such a sacred tomb of you. What will I do when they take it away?

I made Dad promise to not do anything with the bedding or get rid of the bed without telling me first. I know it is just a bed, but I just feel so close to you there.

----------

Today, my first full day without you.

When I arrived at the house, I stood on the porch and cried for a long time before I could make myself walk in.

I was acutely aware that this was the first time I was coming home without you in it. I hadn’t expected to be so overcome with grief over crossing this threshold, but it was so painful. When we approached the door, I didn't see you in the living room through the window sitting there in your wheelchair.

It was like taking a bullet to the back; such an unexpected source of pain.

I could also see Dad had moved the recliner back to where it originally stood. I know everyone processes differently, but it was so fucking hard to see that.

I stood on the porch and hugged myself, and let the silent tears stain my cheeks.

After a few minutes, Cris came back out, put his hands on the sides of my arms and said,

“Your Dad has moved some things around, I don't want you to be surprised. He hasn’t gotten rid of anything. Just remember, everyone processes differently and they have been living here in this.”

I silently nodded in understanding, wiping away the tears.

I crossed the threshold for the first time, without you.

Upon entering, I was immediately awash with your smell.

It hit me like a freight train.

I was beginning to realize there would be a lot of these moments in the early days.

I found myself back in your bedroom. I spent quite a long time just sitting on the bed, clutching that pillow and crying.

I am just not ready to let go of the final physical vestiges of you.

I took the white fluffy blankie home with me, along with one of the pillows hospice gave you. The same blankie that got tucked around you each night these last few months, and that I wiped your face with before you left me.

Those pillows are fucking ugly as hell; but they smell like you.

It smells like home.

Like love.

Like my Mama.

You.

Last night I decided I would sit down to write, hammer away at some of these feelings. I unfurled the blanket over me and was instantly hit with a wave of your smell.

How something so soft and light can feel so heavy is beyond me.

It suddenly felt like an elephant was on my chest.

I wept and bunched up the blanket and clutched it to my chest in hopes it would relieve some of my physical suffering and ache in my chest.

Needless to say, I didn't write.

I am afraid to use up all the smells. What happens when they go away?

What if I forget what you smell like?

I told Cris I wanted to bottle it up.

Forever is such a long time.

---------

I got a call on day 2 without you, from Dad. He was calling to tell me that Hospice was coming to take the bed in the afternoon, and if I wanted to spend some time with it, I should come soon.

Oh, it seems so simple. It wasn’t our bed, and it was actually only a bed you had for a few days as they changed your bed a few days before your death.

But –

It is the bed you died in.

The bed where I said goodbye to you.

It feels so sacred and like a complete desecration of you, your memory, and that day to just haul it off so soon.

I have been so surprised at all of this “death admin” that seems to come so swiftly.  It has been incredibly overwhelming for me.

-----------

Cris and I made our way up there. Entering the house was still hard, but not as excruciating.

The fact that it wasn’t as excruciating made me breakdown; I don't want things to become easier.  

You are dead.

Things are supposed to be hard.

I went directly to your bedroom.

I immediately rolled back the covers and crawled into your bed. I hadn’t actually gotten into the bed the past two days, I had just laid on top of it. But today? Today I wanted to be as close to your final location on earth as humanly possible.

I buried myself in your blankets, nestled into your pillows.

And I cried.

I wept for you, for me, for us, for the future, for the past, for the pain, for the heartache, for the longing, in that bed.

I spent hours beneath the blankets. Sometimes I thought and reflected, sometimes I just laid in an almost meditative trance, trying to be fully present in the space. I studied the view from the bed, what you had seen while lying there. I took mental pictures, and then real pictures, of my surrounding view.

I asked Cris to take photos of me in the bed.

I want to remember every bit of these early days, of this unbearable pain.

 These portraits of love overflowing with nowhere to go.

One of my favorite photos ever taken of me

 I am so afraid I won’t remember something. And because these moments around your death feel so connected to you, I want them permanently etched into my heart and brain.

I am afraid if I forget, I will lose my connection to you.

People deal with death and loss so differently, and I realize that people might think this strange, as they may have thought my behaviour on the day you died strange. However, I feel like I am creating rituals around this loss that feel so important. We have lost so many rituals and rites of passage we used to culturally associate with death.

There is no mourning time.

There are no black dresses.

Kate Braestrup, my go to personal bible of the last few weeks, explains,

“Mourning, that excruciating conspiracy of human memory and human love, demands rituals that can prolong the relationship between the living and the dead.”

She goes on to talk about placing proverbial stones upon a loved one’s grave as part of mourning and grieving.

There is a Jewish tradition that when a person dies, you place stones upon their grave as a way of memorializing them. There are various stories that cite the origin of this practice; some state it was before there were gravestones and this was done so someone could easily find the gravesite later, others state it is done because stones last longer that flowers.

She explains that on the occasion of the death of her husband,

“Drew’s body was remarkably undamaged in the accident that killed him. My mother, Drew’s good friend, two state police sergeants, and I bathed his body and dressed it in his uniform. We cried the whole time we did it, when we weren’t laughing. It is what Drew would have done for me or for any of us. It was important, and it was lovely. Later, his family and friends accompanied Drew’s body to the crematory in Portland. We cried all that day too, when we weren’t laughing. It was another stone, placed with care, upon his grave.”

So, my time in your bed, my time preparing you for them to take you away, were just placing stones upon your grave it would seem.

Kate Braestrup goes onto explain:

 “Faced with a significant loss, we might spend years piling and repiling stones, grooming the grave, contesting the will, making rooms, houses, whole lives into shrines. … In traditional cultures, the rituals of mourning are strictly and perhaps comfortingly, preordained. Jewish Law, for example, sets aside a full year for mourning the death of a parent. That twelve-month period is demarked at psychologically astute intervals of decreasing intensity – seven days, thirty days, with various rituals and requirements until, at last, the veil is removed from the tombstone and the year is up. Mourning is complete, and, while the dead are not forgotten, life is now emphatically the business of the living. Go ahead. Arrange and rearrange the stones on top of your beloved’s grave. Keep arranging those stones for as long as it hurts to do it, then stop, just before you really want to. Put the last stone on and walk away. Then light your candles to the living. Leave the stones where they are, but take your heart with you.”

So here I am: placing stones upon your grave.

I cherish the photos Cris took of me. It is such a raw portrayal of my grief and anguish.

More stones upon your grave.

I could feel you all around me while I lay in your bed.

I could hear you in my head, and I imagined you sitting on the bed next to me, brushing my hair with your hand and fingers on my head and over my forehead like you always did when I was sad or upset, to try and make me feel better. The memory was so clear it almost felt like you were actually there.

Maybe you were.

I made you promise to never leave me, that I couldn't face the rest of my life without you physically in it if your presence leaves me.

Did you hear me?

Are you here?

Cris came in and told me the guy was here for the bed.

I was instantly taken backwards 48 hours when I was told the guys were coming to get your body.

I broke down into heavy, heaving sobs. I gathered the blankets and clutched them to my chest.

Cris went to get Michael.

He later told me that he knew I was struggling to let the bed go and that Michael would be the only person that could get me out of it.

Michael came in, and sat down on the bed next to me, just like you had always done.

I turned over and looked at him through a heavily tear streaked face.

“I just miss her so much. I feel so close to her here, I don't want them to take the bed away.”

“Kimberly, she isn’t this bed. This bed isn’t her. She is always going to be with you, she is the voice in your head, the feeling in your heart. She is not this bed. She is your compassion and your love of animals. They can never take the memories and love, those will always be with you. She will always be with you.”

I sat up and we hugged, and I cried so, so hard. He rubbed my back.

Stones upon your grave.

Michael is such a compassionate soul.

Oh, sweet Michael.

We unmade the bed together, ravelled all of the layers up.

Stones upon your grave.

At least the bedding is all ours, so I get to keep it.

I bundled it up and hugged it tight. I brought it out with me to the living room, and sat in the same recliner as 48 hours before, and watched yet another man go back into the bedroom and steal another piece of you.

I buried my face and my heart into the bedding and cried.

I actually felt kind of bad for the guy, the scene into which he arrived.

 Cris made the right decision sending Michael in. He was right, no one else would have been able to get me out of there.

Otherwise, they might have had to roll me out with your bed.

Maybe a piece of me did leave with your bed, just like a piece did when they took your body away.

Another stone upon your grave.

-------