Last Wednesday night, I sat with Uncle
Marvin on his death bed in a nursing home in Llano, Texas. He struggled to
breathe. He was dying, and he knew it. He was frustrated, and I knew it.
I haven’t told many people about my
experience with my uncle during his last few hours, but because of what
happened last night in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of an Austin
hospital, I’m telling it now.
Saying
goodbye
Uncle Marvin had Stage 4 lung cancer. He
was a big man in his younger years: tall, strong, and opinionated. A Vietnam
vet. He was the person who sat beside me in my family's dining room as I
read a story I wrote called “Clink Clank” about a talking dog. He told me, “Keep
it up, kid.” (I was in the third grade then, and I never forgot those words.) Now he was reduced to lying motionless in a nursing home bed, eating
pureed meals, and receiving oxygen to help him breathe.
When I sat with him that night, his
decline from a few days before was remarkable. He was no longer eating or
drinking. He couldn't talk. He didn’t have the energy to move, yet he was still somehow able to
communicate his feelings: He was irritable. Frustrated. Powerless. Then
suddenly he’d stare out into space at something
and take hard breaths.
I knew I had to say goodbye, so I
positioned my chair in his line of sight, held his hand, and started talking,
just like I do with the babies in the NICU. Sometimes, the most comforting
thing you can do for people who might be feeling powerless and afraid is to
talk to them.
Because they hear you.
I told him how incredibly grateful I was
that he took the time to say those four simple words—“keep it up, kid”—to me,
and about how I have kept up the writing, and how I’ll continue to do so. I
told him that his disabled brother, Ronnie, would be O.K., and that in no time,
Ronnie would be getting speeding tickets for running his motorized wheelchair
up and down the nursing home hallways too fast.
Marvin raised one eyebrow.
I knew he heard me. So I continued.
I told him that I’d recently gone out to
his house on the outskirts of Llano to check on things, and that though the
yard was overgrown, everything looked just fine.
Marvin took a deep breath.
He owned several properties before going
into the nursing home but had to sell them off one by one to pay for his care.
The nursing home wanted him to sell this homestead too, but he insisted on
keeping it in case he got better and could go home.
Everyone knew he wouldn’t return. HE knew
he wouldn’t return. But, by golly, he was a stubborn man who wasn’t going to
let go of his home because someone said he should. Marvin fought them every
step of the way, and in the end, Medicare officials allowed him to keep it.
“You can go back home now whenever you’re
ready. It’ll just be in a different realm,” I said. “And, by the way, nice job!
They never took that place from you!”
He raised both eyebrows—twice.
For hours, I held his hand and talked about
all my childhood memories of him. I thanked him again for his service in
Vietnam. And I thanked him for taking care of Ronnie for the past 40 years.
He raised an eyebrow.
I continued to talk, and though I knew
Marvin was already halfway in another realm, I
sensed that he could hear me perfectly.
He died a few hours after I left his side.
Now,
about last night
I have a routine when I rock babies at the
NICU. After scrubbing up, I head to the nearest bay to see who needs
comforting. There are seven bays, and the lower the bay number, the sicker the
babies. Bay 5 is the nearest bay to the entryway, so I usually pop in there first.
But not last night.
Last night I intuitively changed my
routine and headed first to Bay 1.
It’s less common to rock babies in that
bay. Most are too sick to be held. Many have a lot of wires and tubes attached
to their tiny bodies, and they’re just trying to survive. But I go there anyway
to talk to them, hold their tiny hands, hum, and sing off key.
In a room off to the side of the bay, I
came up to a little girl who I’d seen many times before, but who was always off
limits. A sign posted in the entryway said to be quiet and ask the nurse before
touching her. She was very sick and needed her rest.
Last night I walked over to her bedside to
see how she was doing and to greet her primary care nurse. The poor little girl
was upset because the nurse had just run some assessments. But you didn’t hear
her cry. She couldn’t cry; she had a trach tube in her neck. The tube helped her breathe, but she was frustrated.
So I put on the required purple latex gloves and held her hand. At first
she didn’t want it and pushed my palm away. (My ving tsun kung fu sifu would be
impressed at her pak sau.) So I asked her if I could just sit and talk, and I just held my hand out in case she changed her mind. She
seemed to settle.
“I’m Cathy,” I said. “I’ll be your guide tonight.”
She curled the fingers of one hand around my forefinger.
And so I talked: I told her about my four dogs—two with three legs—and my predatory
cat. I told her about the hospital and how it was a really safe place for her,
and that she could relax and rest here.
“You’ve got the best nurse ever and she’d going to take good care of you.”
She was listening.
“She really likes you,” the nurse
said.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“Her oxygen levels are higher when you talk to her,” she said, pointing to
the monitor. “Her heart rate is always pretty low, but it’s great now.”
“Well, I’ll just keep talking then,” I said, turning toward the little girl.
She was dressed in a cute pink elephant onesie. She had a clean diaper and
clean bedding. She was warm and safe. Yet she was irritable. Frustrated. Powerless.
Just like Uncle Marvin.
So I told her about him, then suddenly realized that I was sitting by his side exactly a week ago—to the
hour.
“If you see a big guy, and he says he knows me, that’s my uncle. Don’t be
afraid. He’s here to help you. He’ll watch over you to make sure you’re O.K.”
She raised an eyebrow.
In shock and exhilaration, I continued: “He knows exactly how you feel! It’s
so hard to feel like you can’t breathe. He understands.”
She squirmed in a frustrated attempt to say something, her one free hand
flying in the air like a bull rider in a rodeo. But she couldn’t make a
sound.
So she squirmed some more, moving her eyebrows, ears, and forehead. She was
talking to me via facial expressions—so fast that I couldn’t keep up with the
conversation.
“I’m listening,” I said. “Tell me all about it.”
Though I didn’t understand what she was saying, I wanted her to feel heard.
I wanted her to know someone cared and that someone was listening.
This little girl was a joy to watch. She had a fascinating ability to
contract and relax her facial muscles. She was even able to move the skin on
her skull forward and backward.
“How do you even do that?” I asked as I tried to mimic her facial
expressions. All I could muster was a double raised eyebrow. (I stopped when a nurse
walked by, fearing that she might think I was odd.)
What was that little girl trying to say? I don’t know, but after the flurry
of activity, she calmed a bit, and her eyes began to slowly close and open
until they remained closed and her breathing settled. I stopped talking,
holding her hand until she fell asleep. Ten minutes later, I quietly left the
room.
I walked away feeling so lucky—fortunate
to have sat with my uncle while he was dying and fortunate to sit with this
little girl while she was fighting to live. It seemed the perfect example of
yin and yang, and it made me realize something profound:
Sometimes you don’t have to necessarily understand everything a person says
for them to feel heard. You just need to listen.
