Saying Goodbye

F.D. and I don’t take “getaway” vacations, not in recent history. We take "visiting" vacations, which are a real mixed bag. We visit my parents, we visit our children and grandchildren. There are many cities to choose from and many combinations of people to see.

When my parents first bought in Miami many years ago I would visit them for a couple of days then slip back to Chicago, my absence virtually undetected by my patients. At some point F.D. would see the sun on my face and think to himself, What a dolt I’ve been. I could go, too..

So he’s been joining me for a few years now, and since two of his elderly aunts had lived only a few hours north of Miami, we would take the opportunity to visit them, too.

Well, this time we hoped to visit Aunt Sherry. F.D.'s cousin told us that she wasn’t doing very well. At 95 that’s not uncommon.

On the day we had planned to visit her up in Lake Worth, F.D.’s cousin Kenny called to say that she was doing really badly. In fact, she was nearing the end.

“Well at least we’ll say goodbye,” was our thinking.

Except that when we got there Aunt Sherry was in a coma.

She was lying peacefully in her bed. We approached slowly. F.D. took her hand and checked her vital signs, asked his cousin Rita about things like "oxygenation." He tried to ask Aunt Sherry things, too. Aunt Sherry, do you hear me? Can you open your eyes?

She didn't respond.

I felt very uncomfortable. I didn’t know if I should talk to her or not, and certainly didn’t know what I’d say if I did open my mouth. Being quiet in serious situations is a good thing, I always tell myself, but I was fond of Aunt Sherry. I wanted to somehow “say goodbye.”

At some point I blurted, “Hi Aunt Sherry, it’s me, Linda.”

Joanie, another cousin, gently corrected me. “Even if she hears you, she won’t know who you are. She hasn’t recognized any of us for a week.”

“Oh.”

We all slipped out of the room except for Rita, Aunt Sherry's daughter, and tip-toed around things to talk about. Rita joined us and wept for a second, squeaking out, “Who am I going to talk to now? Who’s going to listen to my complaining? Who will help me with my problems?”

Pretty impressive, isn’t it, that Aunt Sherry was still the person her daughter talked to every day for support, turned to for advice about life all the way to the end?

We left that one rhetorical and looked at pictures, took some digitals of old ones, commented on family resemblances. F.D. continued to check on Aunt Sherry. He never lost his “serious look.”

When you know someone for over thirty years you know their “looks” and their “faces.” I particularly like F.D.’s piano face, the one he makes when he’s working hard to get a piece right.

Anyway, I got a little worried that we were actually waiting for her to pass away. I was willing to wait, of course, if that was what F.D. wanted, if he thought that he would be helpful somehow.

But the more information he collected, the more convinced he was that this family was well prepared for whenever the worst would happen. At some point he said for all to hear, I guess we better be getting back before the traffic gets too heavy.

We went over the obligatory turnpike directions (had already had a great time on the 95 coming up from Miami) and took off.

In the car F.D. turned to me and asked, “When are you going to blog about death and dying?”

“Do you mean end of life when it’s expected, like this one?”

“Uh huh.”

“Oh, I don’t really have much experience in that,” I said.

“Really?”

“No. It’s funny. Personally I’ve never seen anyone quite this close to death before, in a coma like this.

And professionally, although I’ve certainly talked to people who’ve gone through this, it hasn’t made it into my secondary trauma registry. It’s not like the unexpected deaths, the gunshots, the stabbings, the overdoses, the hangings.

A peaceful death like this one has never registered distress. I mean, I empathize for sure, but my personal experience falls short, makes me feel a little shallow, honestly. I don't have hospital privileges or it might have been different, maybe. But I haven't got a real fix on this, you know?"

“So you’re saying you’ve never seen anyone in a coma?”

“Not near death.”

“Hmm.” He paused. “So what did you think?”

“It’s very sad. Are they all like that? Do people generally close their eyes really tight like she did today, as if they’re retreating from the light, running away from this world, saying, Just Go Away?”

“There are many different presentations. But this is one of the more common ways of dying, yes.”

“I found it so natural. I don’t know. It did seem right to me. Anyway, I still don’t feel I know enough about this to write about it.”

“Okay.”

“You should though, F.D.,” I told him. "You've seen it so often."

“Yeah, but I write about bunk on health. That’s the only thing I’m going to write about right now. The dumb things people think are true about medicine drive me crazy.”

“Okay.”

We drove back to Miami and took a walk on the beach, got back early enough to get ready for dinner with some close friends. F.D. got the call that Aunt Sherry had passed away. He had warned me in the car that he was sure it would be today, that it she was hours, if not minutes away from expiring. He’s rarely if ever wrong about anything medical so I wasn't surprised when he gave me the news.

The next day he was leaving for Chicago and I was staying on another day. I drove him to the airport early in the morning. As many times as I’ve been to Fort Lauderdale International, I always worry that I’ll make a wrong turn, get lost, and that someone will miss a plane (usually me). It took only minutes to get there and before I knew it we successfully accomplished Kiss and Fly.

After he slammed the car door I zipped into airport traffic on my way back to Miami. I wanted to get back on the beach to walk and take some pics while the sun was low in the sky. But as soon as I zipped into traffic I started to feel really badly. The saying goodbye thing made me cry. Probably like most people, I appreciate people more as soon as they're not with me. And to make matters worse, I realized that I hadn’t done my look back thing. I hadn't watched him as he walked away, watched until he disappeared into the airport

Usually when someone that I love is leaving me I wait and watch. I wait for that person to disappear into the school, or the house, or in this case, the airport terminal. I get that one last look.. I create the snapshot picture of the person walking away.

It's just what I do. A lot of people do this, I'm sure.

When we left Israel following our Sabbatical I burned images into my brain, my own images. I could have looked at photographs of the kotel, the "Wall,” or bought postcards of the beach in Tel Aviv or referred back to my own photos. But I wanted the images in my head and stared at the wall and the ocean long and hard enough to create them in my head.

So I kicked myself for not getting that last one of F.D. as he left me in Fort Lauderdale. It just didn’t seem right at the time that I neglected to do that, silly though it may sound.

So I took a few pictures of the ocean (like 70) and watched the terns for quite awhile. It's a long winter in Chicago. Here's one.



Copyright 2007, TherapyDoc